Teaching practice 1a

Course goals

The student:

• integrates various types of knowledge and begins to develop their own personal practical theory;
• exchanges experiences and purposefully processes feedback;
• specifies their own competencies and skills related to being a teacher in training and connects these to the theory;
• defines learning objectives;
• analyzes their own professional development and documents their progress and competencies in a portfolio;
• integrates knowledge and skills related to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), International Cross-cultural Education (ICE)and Internationalize your classroom (IYC) into their lessons.

Content

The practical courses Teaching Practice 1a (also known as PiP1a), Teaching Practice 1b (also known as PiP1b) and Teaching Practice 2 (also known as PiP2) are aimed at gaining the necessary teaching experience and teaching competences in practice.

During PiP1a an initial orientation on the profession takes place. The student (teacher in training) learns practical professional skills and gives a number of lessons under supervision of a placement supervisor (in Dutch, 'werkplekbegeleider' or 'wpb') at school. The purpose of the practical period is to learn the basic competences of a teacher: providing lessons using different (activating) forms of instruction (such as teacher explanation, direct instruction, dialogue based teaching, individual instruction, experts), interaction with pupils, key pedagogical skills and classroom management.

Most of the course takes place at school. U-TEAch students do their internship at a bilingual ('tto') school or an international school. The internship office of the Graduate School of Teaching provides internship placement for the students within the partner network of schools in the Utrecht region. Students are not permitted to arrange an internship placement themselves.

A full time student is required to be available for the internship for eight half-days and is present at school for at least six half-days, spread over four days. Part-time students are present at school for approximately three half-days spread over two/three days. The student observes a total of 25 lessons and independently teaches 25 lessons (or partial lessons), including at least 10 full lessons independently (assuming 50-minute lessons) in the lower grades.

At school, the student is supervised by a placement supervisor (wpb), a teacher of the same school subject. In addition, the teacher in training receives a lesson visit by their PiP1 teacher at least once. On Mondays, students taking PiP1a follow education at the university. In a U-TEAch-specific work group, they work on their own professional development. In these seminars practical experiences are discussed through peer review.

The courses PiP1a and PiP1b and the courses Teaching Methodology 1 (Pedagogiek 1) and Subject Teaching Methodology 1 (Vakdidactiek 1) are closely related. Therefore, these courses must be taken concurrently. In addition, U-TEAch students are required to take Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) alongside PiP1.

The course PiP1 can also be followed in the job variant. For the job requirements see this document.
You can find detailed information about teacher training at the Graduate School of Teaching in the Informatiebrochure Leren op de werkplek (in Dutch).

Please note:

• The programme and this course starts with a mandatory fulltime start-week (Monday to Thursday) in August during the last week of the summer holidays (region "midden"), i.e. before the official start of the academic year. For the exact dates check https://students.uu.nl/teaching/intro-gst.
• For those following the part time (deeltijd) U-TEAch programme, you will follow all Teaching Practice and Teaching Methodology sessions with the rest of the U-TEAch group for the first semester of year 1. Arrangements for adjusted deadlines can be made with the course coordinator. See the part time schedule on the website.