Teaching Practice: Unifying Theory and Practice in Teacher Education

This is an exploration of Teaching Practice with a view that an Effective Teaching Practice is an indispensable bridge between Theory and Practice in Teacher education. The study regards student teaching practice as an apprenticeship phase of teacher education for students to gain practical and professional experience by translating all the educational theories they have acquired or learnt during training, into practice. To achieve this noble purpose, there is need for a serious and continuous modeling, scaffolding and proper communication among all stakeholders. Students need to be very well reinforced as they are being introduced into the professional demands of teaching. This case study revealed that students acquired and developed pedagogic skills necessary for them to teach well, however, the teaching experience could have been more fruitful if its organization, supervision, and communication was improved between the college and the schools; the lecturers and mentor teachers as well as between other supervisors and students. Therefore, the author proposes a framework which can be used to make teaching practice an effective bridge between theory and practice.