THE PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE CHALLENGES AND COPING STRATEGIES FACED BY PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS DURING TEACHING PRACTICUM

Abstract

Abstract : Pre-service teachers are prospective teachers who undergo training or education before starting a career in the teaching profession. To become professional teachers, they must join a teaching practicum program. The teaching practicum program becomes an initial stage in increasing teacher competence skills for pre-service teachers. Through the implementation of this program, they can hone communication skills, classroom management, and the application of effective learning strategies, all of which contribute to the formation of the basics of a teacher's professionalism in teaching foreign languages. This study aims to investigate how pre-service teachers upgrade their professional competence in teaching practicum and to find out professional competence challenges and strategies they face during teaching practicum. This study used a qualitative research design with a case study approach. This research began with pre-research involving a survey given to 35 pre-service teachers who teach at the high school level in several schools around Malang. The survey results showed that professional competence is the most frequently chosen, followed by other competencies. Of the 17 people who decided on professional competence, the researcher selected 5 to be participants in this research, with details of 3 women and 2 men from different schools location, which has different conditions to make the data more variative. This study used two data collection methods: interviews to obtain participant data and documentation to support participant data. The findings of this study indicated that during teaching practicum, pre-service teacher upgrades their professional competence through reflective actions by taking feedback from tutor teachers related to teaching, which can improve their professional competence in teaching. Besides that, they also have taken some courses that led to the teaching practice program on campus. During teaching practicum, pre-service teachers faced professional competence challenges in creating lesson plans, using learning media, and creating a good class atmosphere. The study revealed that most of them used game-based learning in teaching and other strategies, such as developing lesson plans by using the internet to create good learning plans, relying on existing sources, and adding to them from various sources. Strategies to choose and use learning media to create a good classroom atmosphere are covered by using internet media. After joining teaching practicum program, it is addressed that pre-service teachers improve their professional competence as future teachers through other experiences in teaching, such as becoming English private tutors or joining other seminar teaching programs. Further exploration and investigation of different competencies, such as pedagogical competence, personality competency, and social competency, can be examined deeply by future research. 

key words: proffesional competence, pre-service teachers, teaching practicum