What's up DOCC? Creating Third Space Courses in Teacher Education

N

9

Teacher Education; Educational Quality; Practicums; Foreign Countries; Focus Groups; Preservice Teachers; Teacher Education Programs; Mentors; Online Courses; Teacher Attitudes

There are increasing calls to improve the quality of Teacher Education by reconceptualising the connection between university-based coursework and the teaching practicum. In response, the School of Education at RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria redesigned courses in its first year program to interconnect the two spaces of universities (first space) and schools (second space) in an effort to facilitate Third Spaces. This paper focuses on how one university designed a practicum or Work Integrated Learning (WIL)-based course, underpinned by a Distributed Open Collaborative Course (DOCC) pedagogical approach, aiming to navigate and bridge the two spaces with the intent of realising third spaces. Using data from focus groups, we examine pre-service teachers' (PST) perceptions of this redesign. In doing so, we illuminate some of the possibilities and challenges in attempting to create a third space course using a DOCC approach.

As Provided

15

2017

ED573139