Evaluation of the practicum program of Farhangian University

The reflective approach is a new approach in the field of teacher training, especially the practicum program. In this approach, practicum is not a place to practice and repeat the learned techniques, but a process to start and develop the power of analysis, to improve the capacity of judgment through reflection and practice. Farhangian University practicum program has a reflective approach. This research aims to develop an evaluation of the practicum program of Farhangian University (FU) from three perspectives: scientific and theoretical resources in the field of reflection, global experiences, and stakeholders' lived experience. This research can be considered applied because of its purposes and uses mixed methods for data collection. In order to examine and evaluate to which degree reflective criteria have been considered in the planned program, first theoretical resources were documented. Then significations used for reflective practicum by these resources were deductively extracted in order to compare and evaluate the existing program. At the same time, for evaluating the consideration of reflective criteria, 4 practicum programs from Singapore, Australia, Canada, and Finland (countries which are known for their reflective practicum) were chosen and analyzed using George Bereday’s four steps of comparison' model. Furthermore, to deepen the evaluation process, the practicum was examined from stakeholders’ view (i.e., instructors, teachers, associate teachers, teacher candidates, and novice teachers). Stakeholders lived experiences were phenomenologically examined in order to grasp their perceptions on the quality of the practicum program. The results from the evaluation showed that the reflective practicum program at FU has not considered some of the criteria mentioned in the literature for reflective practicum especially in areas of timing, objectives, expectations, program content, regulating the role of associate teacher, and assessment element. Examining the lived experiences of stake holders also showed shortcomings and drawbacks in some areas as well strong points and advantages in some other areas.