Teaching Practicum: An Interplay between Ideal and Real in Pre-Service Teacher's Training

Teaching practicum has an essential contribution to the professional development of pre-service teachers. This study aimed to identify how the students enrolled in the Pedagogy of Preschool and Primary Education experienced the role of teaching practicum from the perspective of the theory learned during the courses and the reality in the educational institutions where they carried out the teaching practicum. Qualitative methodology was the choice to fit the purpose of the study with an embedded single case study research design, thus type 2 of a case study. The case was the teaching practicum, consisting of three groups of students in the PPPE academic program, second and third years, thus employing multiple units of analysis. The participants were 12 pre-service teachers chosen through purposive sampling from 53 students registered in the second and third academic years. Data collection methods comprised three FGDs and document analysis (16 pedagogical practice notebooks). Thematic coding was the option for data analysis after data was transcribed verbatim, conducted member checking, coded, grouped the codes into categories, and organized under themes. The themes revealed an interplay between theory and practice, ideal and real, regarding teaching practices.