Perceptions of Taiwanese teacher candidates concerning their field experiences with low-achieving junior high students

[[abstract]]To reduce the theory-practice divide, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education has recently launched a policy of promoting field experiences at least 54 hours for secondary teacher candidates. This study explored 14 teacher candidates‟ perceptions about their filed experiences with low-achieving junior high students. In the fall semester of 2016, these teacher candidates went to a nearby junior high school once a week and sat in a remedial class for low achievers in the subject area of Mandarin, English, or Mathematics. Such remedial program, supported by our government, was implemented after regular school hours, and each class with less than 12 students lasted a period, that is, 45 minutes. At the beginning, the teacher candidates sat and observed classroom teaching. A few weeks later, they had opportunities to work with one or two students under the classroom teacher‟s supervision. Finally, they were appointed to provide specific guidance to individual or a small group of students. Some even got a chance to teach the whole class. An open-ended questionnaire and group interviews were conducted at the end of the semester and field journals for each period were collected. Based on the qualitative data analysis, four themes were identified. First, the teacher candidates renewed their knowledge about junior high students from quiet, obedient, and passive learners to vivid, assertive, and active individuals. Secondly, their aspects of teaching shifted from focusing only on knowledge delivery to concerning if students were able to understand what was taught. Thirdly, their perspectives about remedial teaching included considerable individual differences among low achievers, use of different teaching approaches to meet their specific needs, and importance of motivating these students to learn. Finally, the teacher candidates expressed that they learned a lot from field experiences as well as realized the important role a teacher plays in teaching settings. Based on the findings, recommendations for teacher education and further research were provided.[[notice]]補正完