1LEARNING TO TEACH THE ELEMENTARY FIELD EXPERIENCE COURSE AT A TEACHERS ' JUNIOR COLLEGE IN TAIWAN1

This paper is part of an effort to compose my pedagogical autobiography. It deals with a small but significant segment of my learning to teach and to become a teacher and a teacher educator. The segment is about the process in which I learned to teach the field experience course for elementary school teacher candidates at a teachers ' junior college in Taiwan. I choose to write about this segment for several reasons. First, since it is a fairly recent experience, it is better remembered, and it is easier to see how my earlier experiences and personal history influenced my learning, thinking, and doing at the time. Secondly, it is a relatively small and focused piece of experience in professional learning and practice; therefore it is more manageable, given the time limit and length of the paper. Thirdly, it is a very important professional learning and working experience for me. I have invested more time and energy (and in return have learned more) in teaching this course than in any other course I have taught and studied. And it is through teaching this course that I decided to devote myself (maybe for the rest of my life) to studying how teachers think, feel, learn and grow and to helping them to achieve optimal learning and growth—which formed my dissertation topic in Taiwan (on teacher stress and burnout) and lead me to be here today. Fourthly, field experience is generally viewed as the single most important learning experienc