The professional inclusion dimension in teaching practice: an inventory of experiences and perceptions of Tunisian Future-Teachers

Abstract

Aim: This paper undertakes an investigation on the ‘practice’ of the concept of professional inclusion in the workplace, which explores cooperative teacher’s (CT) support during the teaching of practice and its impact on socio-emotional development of future-teachers (PE-FT). The concept of inclusion is to accept the person and their point of view and rebalance their relationship with the environment. Strongly inspired by social inclusion theory readings, the paper aims at producing accounts making visible the making of the concept of Future- teachers inclusion through relationships among teachers, student, material resources, rights, powers and opportunities in teaching practice. Materials and methods: A generic quantitative study was used incorporating questionnaires administered to 302 future-teachers after professional training. The questionnaire used to collect the data, and was adapted from Almeida’s Inventory of Experiences and Perceptions at Teaching Practice. Results: We found that all future-teachers did not adapt the training curriculum, most often to either perceived needs or mentoring practice pressures. Patterns of adaptation differed by teacher genre; male teachers appeared more able to adapt professional training to meet the requirement of work environments. Conclusion: We are far from an ideal teaching practice, where future teachers faced greater reform pressures. Taken together, these findings suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the role of CT and support for teaching. We conclude with guidance to researchers, instructional leaders and others interested in the importance of experience-based curricula as a lever for improving the process of learning to teach and training device in the workplace.