Theory based counseling for students in teacher education during a long-term internship

Didactic implementation and evaluation

Abstract

One important goal in teacher education is to reflect experiences which pre-service teachers gain in their practical training during internships. On macro-level teacher education was optimized by implementing a long-term internship. For students, on micro-level, there are still challenges in relating theory and field experiences. That means for university teachers who accompany these students during their long-term internship to establish good working concepts for lectures. The following article presents a special lecture format, the theory based counceling (TFR), with two implementation forms. TFR offers a specific possibility to systematically relate theory and practice. Furthermore, TFR will help students gaining own and specific opportunities to act in the future. With regard to the evaluation, 410 comments of N = 93 students were analyzed by Mayring’s (2015) content analysis. The students emphasized that TFR especially supported a deeper understanding of relevant theories, a more intensive discussion with other students, and a good option to relate theory and field experiences.