Abstract:

In literature researchers usually mention student teachers’ teacher education program and after that. On the contrary, student teachers’ experiences about their primary, elementary and high school physical education are rarely mentioned. The aim of this study was to explore the effects of student teachers’ acculturation and professional socialization on teaching practice course with a triangle of the student teacher, cooperating teacher, and university supervisors. In this study, the action research of qualitative research design was used. Participants of this study were two male and one female student teachers who were 4th-grade students in Physical Education and Sports Teacher Education Department, one male cooperating teacher and one female teacher educator and her assistant responsible for teaching practice course of the university. Data collection tools were semi-structured interviews, field notes and student teachers’ lesson plans. Collected data were analysed by content analysis (Patton, 2002). After the analysis, there were 2 themes named “remains from secondary school and high school physical education classes” and “prior experiences for being a physical education teacher”. The results indicated that teaching practice course is productively affected by student teachers’ previous physical education experiences and time spent in university before their inaugurations. It is seen that the help of university supervisors and the cooperating teacher is needed to solve encountered the problems. As a consequence, student teachers’ physical education course experiences gained during secondary and high school education positively or negatively affect their experiences in the profession during undergraduate education. University supervisors and the cooperating teachers should concertedly intervene into teaching practice period of student teachers by taking into consideration of their experiences gain during acculturation and professional socialization.

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