Exploring the Experience and Meaning of Pre-service Teachers’ Teaching Training: About Teacher Leadership

This study explores the experience of pre-service teachers' participation in educational practice and the meaning of that experience. To this end, interview data from 17 prospective teachers who participated in the teaching training course were collected and analyzed using phenomenological qualitative research methods. The “Teacher Leadership Experience of Educational Trainees” was used to convey the essential meaning structure of teaching training. This was based on 5 main meanings and 14 themes, and the 5 main meanings were "living like a teacher," "my first students," "improved teacher professionalism,", "positive changes in students," and "relationships around trainees in education." This study reveals the experience structure whereby pre-service teachers, who are not yet sold on the teaching profession unconsciously experience teacher leadership through educational practice and hope. In this study, pre-service teachers who participated in educational practice were able to experience unconscious teacher leadership due to better-than-expected followship, which is meaningful because it explored how the leadership of educational trainees should differ from that of pre-service teachers.