Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani

NIM : 1605085009

Review of Previous Study

Unpacking Pre-service Teachers’ Dilemmas through Online Teaching Practicum
during Covid-19 Outbreak

Numbers of studies from various countries and background have addressed

pre-service teachers’ dilemmas during their teaching practicum. One of the most

apparent studies is the study of Deng, Zhu, Li, Xu, Rutter & Rivera (2018). Drawing

upon grounded theory, this qualitative study focused on exploring how Chinese pre-

service teachers construct their professional identities related to the emotion and

dilemmas in their teaching practicum. There were at least 6 female pre-service

teachers that also participants of 4-month teaching practicum agreed to participate in

this study after the researcher shared requirement posters among pre-service teachers.

Grounded theory approach (Glasser, 1998) was utilized in data collection process that

consist of three steps: practicum reflections, emotional journals, and in-depth

interviews. Moreover, the collected data generated into coding categories through

inductive analysis (Miles, Hubberman, & Saldana, 2013).

Therefore, this investigation identified four dilemmas that restrain the student

teachers’ professional identity formation, such as: ethical dilemma regarding the

tension between classroom authority and the care of teaching, political dilemmas

regarding acting as the community member or as an outsider and working as office

assistant or a “real teacher”, and pedagogical dilemma (Wang and Clarke, 2014)

regarding conflicting pedagogy when teaching different academic performing

students. This finding confirmed Turner’s (2016) study that claimed conflict between

two different commitments, obligations, or values will lead into dilemmas. Moreover,
Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

this study also suggested the further study to examine how pre-service teachers’

emotional literacy, their strategies to handle their authority, vulnerability, and

professional identity that will influence their pedagogical development through

communities of practice. Lastly, the researchers mentioned that their study limited in

small sample, thus a greater number of participants is needed in order to expand the

finding.

Has similar aims, investigate pre-service teachers’ dilemmas during teaching

practicum, the current study will adopt grounded theory as the research method.

Moreover, practicum reflection and in-depth interview will also be adopted to collect

the data. However, the data collection time will be different from Deng, et al. (2018),

since the current study will collect the data after the pre-service teachers finished their

teaching practicum. Considering the suggestion of this study regarding pre-service

teachers’ tactics to regulate their authority, vulnerability, and professional identity

during practicum, the researcher plan to examine the way pre-service teachers deal

with the dilemmas and their perspective regarding their action during teaching

practicum. The limitation of small participants also brough attention to the current

research to have more participants.

Furthermore, similar research also done in Taiwan (Ding & Wang, 2018).

Participated by 13 female pre-service teachers using purposeful convenient sampling

(Merriam, 2009) to recruit the participants. This phenomenological study used semi-

structured interview to investigate the source of dilemmas, the decision that made,

and how the pre-service teachers justify their decision. Analyzed using thematic

analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) the result demonstrated that conflicting ideologies
Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

and pre-service teachers’ identities as student teachers were the main source of their

dilemmas. The conflicting ideologies happened when pre-service teachers found that

their ideologies that they owned from past experience sometimes different from other

stakeholders’ ideologies on the new environment. While as student teachers and

novice teachers, the pre-service teachers sometimes still had complex interpersonal

relationship with the environment, thus the dilemmas were arising since the school

administrator and mentor teachers were the one who determined their success or

failure of the teaching practicum. Whereas for the decision making, some pre-service

teachers chose to maintain their personal beliefs and practices (n=4), some others

chose to opposing their personal beliefs and practice (n=4), and the rest of them chose

to not taking any action (n=5). Herein, the recent study will adapt the purposive

sampling to minimize the number of participants that will join in-depth interview.

Besides, present study will also adapt the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to

analyze the collected data. Similar with Deng et al. (2018) study that had all female

participants, the present study will try to gain the perspective of male pre-service

teachers.

Another qualitative grounded theory study came from Sweden by Lindqvist,

Thornberg, Colnerud (2020). Investigated pre-service teachers’ ethical dilemmas

experienced during teaching practicum, there were 22 participants that involve in this

study. Semi-structured interview was utilized to gain pre-service teacher’s reason of

working, challenges experienced during teaching practicum, and their worries about

working as teacher in the future. Next, the collected data were analyzed using

grounded theory tools, which involve initial coding (Charmaz, 2014), focused coding
Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

(Charmaz, 2014), and theoretical coding (Glaser, 1978) in flexible way. The findings

reported that the ethical dilemmas that experienced by pre-service teachers were

come from two sources: pupils that involved poor economic circumstances and

aggression from or among pupils, and teachers that involved the teachers who were

disillusioned and derogatory talk in the teachers’ lounge. Comparing to the finding of

Ding & Wang’s (2018) study, this study found out that the pre-service teachers could

navigate their dilemmas and their identity was influenced in the mutual relationship

between them and the dilemmatic space.

More allied study was the study of ethical dilemmas experienced by pre-

service teachers during teaching practicum by Davies & Heyward (2019). Conducted

in New Zealand, this study investigated the pre-service teachers’ views regarding

which ethical dilemmas that count as important and why they choose these dilemmas

as significant among other dilemmas that faced by them. Using computer software to

randomly choose 100 out of 150 students as participants of their study, the

researchers then asked the participants to write reflective statement about the critical

incident that had occurred during their practicum. Then, thematic analysis (Braun &

Clarke, 2006) and three stages of coding; open-coding, axial-coding & selective-

coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) were used to analyze the collected data. This

investigation revealed that the main dilemmas experienced by pre-service teachers

were: personal pedagogical beliefs versus associate teacher/ school pedagogical

practice, dealing appropriately with the challenging behavior of children versus

protecting a safe learning environment; demonstrating cultural and religious

Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

sensitivity versus providing equal time and value to all learners; and fear of

accusations of misconduct versus meeting the needs of children (p. 4).

This study inspired the researcher to conduct similar research that will

examine what dilemmas that considered as important by pre-service teachers and the

reason they choose that as important. Besides, this research will not only focus on

ethical dilemmas, but also other dilemmas experienced by pre-service teachers.

Moreover, coupled with thematic analysis, current research will adopt three stages of

coding; open-coding, axial-coding & selective-coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) to

analyze the data. The number of participants of the present study will be smaller than

Davies & Heyward’s (2019) since the researcher will do interview to get in-depth

understanding about pre-service teachers’ experiences.

Even though number of studies had investigated about the dilemmas that

experienced by pre-service teachers during teaching practicum. However, those

researches conducted under offline teaching practicum and normal circumstances.

Since covid-19 breakout, the education practice had transformed from face-to-face

into online meetings. The shift of offline practicum to online practicum will affect the

way pre-service teachers communicate with other stakeholders (students, colleagues,

mentor teachers, supervisor lecturer, and school administrators). As mentioned by

Davidson and Major (2014), in the process of learning how to teach, pre-service

teachers require to have an active engagement, peer interactions, and collaborative.

Therefore, the remote teaching may rise dilemmas among pre-service teachers. In

addition, studies had focused on investigating the effect of pandemic into teachers

education (Donitsa-Schmidt & Ramot, 2020; Kidd & Murray, 2020; König, Jäger-
Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

Biela & Glutsch, 2020; Nasri, Husnin, Mahmud & Halim, 2020; Osman, 2020;

Sepulveda-Escobar & Morrison, 2020).

One of the most related is the study of Sepulveda-Escobar & Morrison (2020)

inspired the researcher to conduct similar research. Directed in Chile, this qualitative

case study recruited 14 pre-service teachers which chosen with convenience sampling

procedure. Focused on exploring challenges and opportunities experienced by pre-

service teachers during online teaching practicum, the data were generated online

through questionnaires, practicum reflection through blog entry (Garza and Smith,

2015; Bener and Yildiz, 2019) and semi-structure interview to gather further insight

into participants’ experiences. The quantitative data were analyzed to provide a

contextual framework of pre-service teachers’ experiences. While the blog entry and

interview were analyzed using thematic analysis by Clarke, Braun, Gareth, Nikki

(2019). Moreover, the interviews were transcribed and transferred to Nvivo12 to be

coded. This research found three factors that considered as pre-service teachers’

challenges during online teaching practicum, such as: the lack of direct interaction

with school learners, the lack of a ‘live’ teaching experience, and working remotely

from home considering all the possible distractions in the household. Lastly, since

pandemic made the teacher education programmes in uncertain condition, the

researchers insisted the needs of examining how other teacher education from

different context, countries, characteristics, and situation develop the teaching

practicum during pandemic, and how it will impact on pre-service teachers.

From the abovementioned explanation of Sepulveda-Escobar & Morrison

(2020) study, the researcher will adapt the data collection method which done online.
Name : Exa Suci Sekaryani
NIM : 1605085009

The reflection will be gathered using google form, while the interview will be done

using online platform such as Zoom or Google Meet. The suggestion of this study

also shed a light to the present study to explore the practice of teacher education,

especially teaching practicum during pandemic in Indonesia context.

Overall, limitation of these previous study and the absence of the study of pre-

service teachers dilemmas through online teaching practicum urges the researcher to

do similar research to expand the result of these previous studies. Therefore, the

present study will investigate pre-service teachers’ dilemmas through online teaching

practicum during covid-19 outbreak that involved what dilemmas that considered as

important, how they deal with those dilemmas, and their perspectives about their

action regarding the dilemmas. Will be drawing upon grounded theory, this study

collects the data using practicum reflection and in-depth interview. The participants

of this study will be chosen using purposeful sampling (Merriam, 2009). Moreover,

the collected data will be analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006)

and three stages of coding; open-coding, axial-coding & selective-coding (Strauss &

Corbin, 1998). Nvivo12 will be used to help the researcher code the transcribed

interview. Finally, detail methodology of the study will be presented in the next

chapter.