Practitioner research in internship and the practice of teacher educators

ABSTRACT This paper presents a proposal for organizing practitioner research during teaching internship, developed within two courses in a Physics teacher education program. To better understand this proposal, we analyzed the practices of the teacher educators in conducting these courses. Our analysis draws on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to characterize the formative actions within the context of these courses. The research data derive from a doctoral study that investigated the implementation of one edition of the courses. Specifically, we analyzed data from classroom recordings and field journal notes. The results indicate that the activities required active participation from the pre-service teachers through collective work, problematization of issues related to education, Physics teaching, the teaching profession, collective evaluations, and shared decision-making processes regarding rules, topics, and actions within the courses and internships. Based on these actions, we characterized the formative activity developed in the courses, whose intended outcome was to foster initial teacher education from a critical-reflective perspective. We highlight that the educators’ practices sought to address the diversity of teaching-related challenges by interweaving thematic and methodological dimensions, aiming to incorporate the experiences and knowledge of the pre-service teachers and promote the study of topics aligned with their formative needs, as identified through classroom discussions and practicum experiences.