HOW ENGLISH STUDENT TEACHERS DEAL WITH TEACHING DIFFICULTIES IN THEIR TEACHING PRACTICUM

In the process of becoming professional, every single teacher will normally go through a series of experiences that are cognitively, physically, and emotionally challenging. One of the first steps they have to go through is a form of first teaching experience with real students and real school environment like what many student teachers are required to face in their teaching practicum. This paper explores kinds of teaching difficulties and efforts carried out to overcome them by English student teachers in the context of teaching practicum conducted in 14 different secondary schools in Bandung, Indonesia. Qualitative case study is applied as the research design, with interviews as the main instrument in collecting the data. This study involves the participation of students enrolled in an EFL Methodology class in collecting the data as a part of their course assignment. The results of data analysis reveal that there are a variety of problems that can be mainly categorised into three types, namely problems related to students, to the supervising teachers, and to the student teachers themselves. Several efforts carried out are also identified and some suggestions are also highlighted at the end of the paper.

Teaching practicum for student teachers becomes one of the essential stages in which they have a chance to apply what they have learned during the academic program in the real teaching situations.By following this kind of activity, student-teachers, according to Richards & Crookes (1988, as cited in Gebhard, 2009), will have a chance to experience many valuable things, such as getting practical classroom experience, putting theories into practices, gaining insight from observing experienced teachers, improving lesson planning ability, improving ability in designing and developing materials, sharpening their teaching ability, strengthening their understanding of teaching in terms of theory and practice, and improving decision-making ability in teaching by looking and exploring into themselves and other's teaching practices.It is also believed that through teaching practicum, "as teachers reflect on their practice, they try to make sense of it and in so doing develop their own principled understandings" (Murray & Christison, 2011, p. 199).
Applying knowledge in teaching practicum is not as simple as one can imagine.Not much has been known on how teachers transform what they believe and know into what they practice in the real teaching situations.Putting theories into practice is one the complex areas that many are still investigating, especially in the context of second language teacher education.Many potential factors, in this case, can contribute to the success of a teacher in delivering the lesson to the students.
The experience of student teachers in applying what they have learned in teacher education program during their teaching practicum can become one potential field of research that can contribute to providing insight on how second language teacher education can be further developed.By carefully examining student teachers' prior beliefs and knowledge, how they practice what they believe, kinds of difficulties they face in the classrooms, and reasons for choosing certain pedagogical solutions over others, it is expected that teacher educators have a wider perspective on how to improve the quality of student teacher preparation program prior to releasing them to the real teaching situations and how to design a more effective clinical supervision for these novice teachers to become pedagogically more mature by passing this kind of program.
This paper presents the results of a study that explores kinds of difficulties faced by the student teachers during their teaching practicum in secondary schools and the efforts they do to overcome such difficulties.The presentation of the issues is made in the form of elaboration that is combined with some visuals for the ease of communication.Some implications for better student teacher education are also highlighted.

Teaching Practicum: A Place for Practicing and Reflecting
As a part of many teacher education programs, teaching practicum is also known in a variety of terms, such as "practice teaching, field experience, apprenticeship, practical experience, and internship" (Gebhard, 2009).This activity, as many believe, is mainly intended to provide an opportunity for student teachers to become a pedagogically more practical person by having a real teaching experience by observing and applying (most of) what they have learned in the teacher education program in the real classrooms with real students, teachers and curriculum (Farrel, 2008).By directly teaching in the field, the student teachers have the chance to sharpen their ability in making instructional decision and improve their teaching skill through the process of reflective practice (Moore, 2003).By learning to teach, student teachers will also have a chance to construct "a cognitive map of the key elements of the classroom and school environment" (Hammond & Bransford, 2005, as cited in Darling-Hamond, 2006).
Teaching practicum can be regarded as a realization of the importance of experience in the process of teaching and learning.In the point of view of experential learning theories, practice, in its many forms, including problem-based activities and work-based learning, is essential in teaching and learning (Jarvis, Holford, & Griffin, 2003).Teaching practicum, in this case, provides an experience in which student teachers bring together with them cognitive, physical, and emotial capabilities into the real teaching practice in order to adjust and modify them according to the needs of teaching and learning in the classroom.From expereriential learning perspectives, experience one gets through practice is important in shaping knowledge.Experience according to Boud et.al. (1993, as cited in Gregory, 2006, p.118) is important in terms of the followings: 1. Experience is the foundation of, and the stimulus for, learning; 2. Learners actively construct their experience; 3. Learning is a holistic process; 4. Learning is socially and culturally constructed; 5. Learning is influenced by the socioemotional context in which it occurs.Experience provided by teaching practicum is also seen to serve the basis of human expertise.By practising, teachers will better strengthen their "knowing how" of teaching.According to Tsui (2005), "at the core human expertise is 'knowing how' rather than 'knowing that'" (p.167).The process of improving the quality of "knowing how" through teaching practicum involves many kinds of possible activities, starting from teaching a class, doing self-observation and refelection, observing other (usually more senior) teachers, and having a discussion with supervisors.When student teachers can do all the suggested activities well, the way to the right track of teacher professional development is in front of them.
Another important issue in teaching practicum is the quality of supervision.Many studies have indicated that during their teaching practicum, student teachers need a lot of guidance and support from their supervisors, especially those of pedagogical and emotional kinds (Farrel, 2008).However, it has been quite unfortunate that in many contexts of language teaching, there is still a lack of concern on how to provide adequate training to help faculty members or lecturers to become effective supervisors (Bailey, 2009).In many teacher education programs, the low quality of supervision for pre-service students has become one of the serious problems to overcome, especially in terms of the commitment and the quality of the guidance given by the supervisors, both the supervising teachers and faculty supervisors (see Beck & Kosnik, 2002;Farrel, 2008).In comparison to conducting research and publishing, supervising preservice teachers is not regarded to be awarding for many faculty members (Beck & Kosnik, 2002).
In the current approach to supervising student teachers, Gebhard (1990, as stated in Bailey, 2009) stated that supervisors are needed to help the student teachers achieve their "ideal teaching behaviour."Supervisors should no longer take the role of an expert but more as a partner who can help the student teachers to gain valuable insight from their teaching through the process of reflection and exploration (Chamberlain, 2000, as cited in Bailey, 2009).
Guiding future teachers to be reflective in their teaching has been considered as an integral part in teacher professional development.Reflection is important for teachers to provide different perspectives about themselves and how they work, so that they can learn about themselves more critically in terms of who they are and how they teach (see Aubusson & Schuck, 2008).By practicing reflective teaching, teachers will have to be an active character who is more critical by doing repeated observation before making decision in relation to teaching and learning in their classroom.Reflective teaching according to Pollard andTann (1993, p.9, as cited in Hitchcock &Hughes, 1995, p.11)In relation to this, Richards (2010) mentioned that the ability to reflect to oneself in an conscious and systematic way will hold an important role for a long term professional development.He exemplified some questions that teachers can ask to themselves when conducting reflection.Among some of the questions are as follows: 1. What kind of teacher am I? 2. How do my students and colleagues view me? 3. How and why do I teach the way I do? 4. What are the gaps in my knowledge?5. What is my philosophy of teaching and how does it influence my teaching?(Richards, 2010, pp. 119-120) Doing reflection, Richards further suggested, can be realized in many possible ways (e.g.discussions, analysing critical incidents, journal writing).He also underlined that reflection should involve "both looking back at teaching experiences as well as looking forward and setting goals for new of changed directions" (p.120).

Student Teachers in Their Teaching Practicum: Problems and Performance
Most student teachers in their practicum can be seen as new comers in the profession of teaching.In terms of level, they can be regarded as novice teachers, who are still in the process of finding their ways to become more professional in teaching.Many of them, especially during their teaching practicum, will face many challenges in dealing with a variety of situations involving not only those related to students but also a lot more related to the socio-cultural contexts in a certain school where they conduct their practicum.In this paper, I use the term student teachers and novice teachers interchangeably to refer to teachers who are still new in the profession of teaching.
Several studies on how novice teachers experience the process of teaching and learning indicated some important findings to underline.The first issue, which is often considered to be the biggest main concern for novice teachers, is classroom management.As many studies indicated, many novice teachers found serious problems with classroom management (see Nunan, 1992, cited in Borg, 2005;Moore, 2003;Farrel 2009).Novice teachers often spent much of their attention to enforce discipline and appropriate techniques to control student behaviour to create a conducive and positive atmosphere for effective learning in the classroom.In comparison to more experienced teachers, Andrews (2007) stated that novice teachers tend to exhibit a low level of competence in behaviour-related language awareness in their teaching practice.This may become an indicator that many novice teachers' attention to linguistic content is not as much as what is shown by more experienced teachers.Novice teachers, in this case, tend to focus on how to manage, to control, and at the same time to please the students in order to create a good atmosphere so that students can carry out every single task given to them.Novice teachers' focus on classroom management indicated Freeman's (1989, as cited in Bailey , 2006) belief that novice teachers may have good understanding of declarative knowledge, that of "knowing what", but they "may lack the skills for working with real language students" (p.242).Real teaching, therefore, is not only about mastering the declarative or scientific concepts of the subject matter, but more about creating strong and reflective dialogue with the realities in the field (everyday concepts) to create a stronger understanding to be further used as the basis for making any pedagogical decisions (see Johnson, 2009).Richards, Li, & Tang (1998, as cited in Borg, 2005) highlighted another issue concerning the performance of novice teachers.They found that there are at least four poor aspects of novice teachers' teaching performance, namely (1) positioning themselves to be students who think about the subject matter, (2) mastery of the subject matter, (3) presenting a well structured subject matter, and (4) ability to make a connection between language learning and the curricular objectives.Understanding students, mastering the content, and pedagogical skills tend to be the main problems, and therefore, influence how the novice teachers practice their teaching.
Another important thing from novice teachers' experience is that the role of creating identity.Part of constructing teacher professionalism is creating an identity, particularly that of becoming " a 'real' teacher within an established school culture" (Farrel, 2009).This identity construction is mostly socio-culturally bound since novice teachers do not only struggle with "the how to teach" but also have to be familiar and be able to adjust with the school community as a whole.From the sociocultural perspective on teacher education, therefore: [L]earning to teach ... is based on the assumption that knowing, thinking, and understanding come from participating in the social practices of learning and teaching in specific classroom and chool situations.Teacher learning and the activities of teaching are understood as growing out of participation in the social practices in classrooms; and what the teachers know and how they use that knowledge in classrooms is highly interpretative and contingent on knowledge of self, setting, students, curriculum, and community.(Johnson, 2009, p.13)

METHOD
The study from which the paper is based is qualitative in nature.This study applies a case study design, in which the focus is directed on a unit of study that has a bounded system (Merriam, 1998;Stake, 2005).The unit of study, in this case, is English student teachers conducting their teaching practicum in secondary schools, namely Junior High School, Senior High School, and Vocational School.The problems explored in the study are: 1) What teaching difficulties do the English student teachers face during their teaching practicum in secondary schools?and 2) What kinds of efforts do they carry out to overcome those difficulties?
Participants 14 English student teachers participated in this study, consisting of 11 females and three males.All of them conducted their teaching practicum in 14 different secondary schools in Bandung, Indonesia.Six of them (all females) conducted teaching practicum in Junior High Schools; seven of them (five females and two males) taught in Senior High Schools; and the other (1 male) taught in a Vocational School.
The study itself was conducted in the middle of the semester, at the time when the teaching practicum entered the third month, out of the 4 required months for practicum.Each of the student teachers was guided and supervised by 2 supervisors, that is, one faculty supervisor (a lecturer) and one supervising teacher appointed by the school authority.For the supervising teachers accompanying the student teachers, 8 of them had been professionally certified, while 6 of them had not.This note on whether or not the students were accompanied by certified teachers is made explicit in the hope that this can provide additional information and valuable insight towards interpretation of possible related findings.

Data Collection
This study involved the participation of students in an EFL methodology class, in which I taught, as a part of students' assignments.In this class, one of the assignments that were required was that the students in pairs had to conduct an interview and an observation on the process of teaching and learning conducted by their senior students during their practicum.A number of issues were essentially addressed for the assignment; however, only some parts of the data were used for the study, specifically those related to kinds of teaching difficulties experienced and efforts done by the student teachers to overcome those difficulties.
The main instrument in collecting the data was interview.14 different pairs of students were assigned to conduct an interview to their senior student teachers doing teaching practicum in different schools.Two main umbrella questions on teaching difficulties and efforts carried out became the focus of the interview.The students were asked to conduct an interview to explore as much information as possible related to the issues by emphasizing that they had to explore not only their senior student teachers' understanding in terms of what they know, but also in terms of what they believe and feel on the two particular issues.This was partly done to aim at exploring the student teachers' cognition, which refers to the "mental lives" or the "unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching-what teachers know, believe, and think" (Richards, 2008;Borg, 2005) and has been regarded to play an important roles in determining the practice of teaching and pedagogical decisions made by teachers.

Data Analysis
The data that had been collected from the interviews were then transcribed by the students and further analysed.The process of analysis itself was conducted in two phases.The first phase of analysis, which is the basic one, was conducted by the students themselves.They were assigned to locate and identify the main issues related to the problem of the study.In this initial phase, the students, in pairs, were asked to read the transcription of the interview carefully, then to underline the important points that emerged as the result of their analytical reading.What they found from their analysis was, then, submitted in the form of written report as a part of requirement of EFL methodology course.
The second phase of analysis is conducted by analysing the reports made by the students.What was conducted here included (1) categorizing the teaching difficulties and efforts to overcome them, (2) finding potential patterns emerging from the reports, (3) synthesizing findings, and (4) drawing conclusions.The mechanism of the research in general is depicted in Figure 1.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The findings from this study are further elaborated in two main parts, first related to kinds of teaching difficulties and secondly about the efforts carried out to deal with such difficulties.Each part of the findings will be further discussed in reference to what theories and previous related studies have said.

Teaching difficulties faced by the student teachers
Based on the results of data analysis, teaching difficulties faced by the student teachers during conducting their teaching practicum in several secondary schools can be basically categorised into three main types, namely (1) student-related difficulties, (2) self-related difficulties, and supervising-teacher-related difficulties.The categorisation is made based on the consideration that it is mainly the sources of the difficulties that can best summarize and create a systematic elaboration on what the analysis has resulted in. Figure 2 depicts how the difficulties are distributed among the student teachers.

Student-related
Self-related Supervising-teacher-related

Figure 2. Types of Teaching Difficulties Faced by the Student Teachers
Student-related difficulties become the most frequently mentioned by the student teachers in the interviews.From the total of forty teaching difficulties reported, 25 of them (62.5%) are related to the students they teach; 12 of them (30%) are related to their personal competence; and 3 of them (7.5%) are related to their supervising teachers at schools.
As reported in the interviews, there are many kinds of student-related problems that are mentioned.From the most to the least frequently mentioned difficulties include students' low basic competence, being passive, being noisy, being not cooperative, being impolite, lack of motivation, large number of students in one class, being tired, and a variety of students' characteristics.The distribution of the difficulties is presented in Figure 3.In relation to self-related difficulties, the ability to manage the class and to apply suitable teaching strategies becomes the most popular issue.Others include how to develop suitable teaching materials, planning a lesson, and socializing with the students.Figure 4 depicts the distribution of kinds of self-related difficulties.The last type of difficulties mentioned by the student teachers is related to their supervising teachers.For this type of difficulties, three important things are mentioned, namely/ (1) lack of guidance, (2) giving a lot of teaching hours, and (3) forcing certain teaching materials.Each of them is mentioned only once, none of which becomes more dominant than others.From all the findings presented above, there are several important patterns that can be identified.While the distribution of teaching difficulties does not show any interesting patterns when viewed from the types of schools in which the student teachers conducted the teaching practicum, interesting pattern emerges when the distribution of teaching difficulties is viewed from whether the supervising teachers have been certified or not.Student-related-teaching difficulties are far more frequently mentioned when the supervising teachers have not been certified (20 out of 25); meanwhile, only 5 out of 25 cases of student-related problems are reported when the supervising teachers have been certified.On the other hand, the number of self-related-teaching difficulties is lower (2 out of 12) whenever the supervising teachers have not been certified.Ironically, those students supervised by certified teachers tend to have more self-related-teaching problems (10 out of 12) in this case.The following figure presents the comparison of the difficulties seen from whether or not the supervising teachers have been certified.Reflecting on the whole patterns of the findings, several important notes can be drawn.First, most of the student teachers have difficulties related to the students they teach.From what the result of analysis has shown, most of the problems have to do with how to manage students' behaviour.
Things like dealing with passive, noisy, uncooperative, and impolite students will, of course create, a difficult challenge for many novice teachers having the status of "new comers" or someone with little authority.As reported by many student teachers, it requires somewhat a long period of time just to direct the students to be ready to follow the lesson they give.Many times, more than half of their teaching time spent only for dealing with students' behaviour before ensuring that they can follow the lesson well.This finding confirms the idea proposed by Farrel (2009) and the result of previously conducted study, such as that of Moore (2003).As suggested by Fuller & Brown (1975, as cited in Farrel, 2009), on their first stage of teaching experience, novice teachers are usually concerned with "survival and mastery."Among many important things to consider, class control and teaching materials become two highly regarded concerns for novice teachers.This is also in line with what Moore (2003) found in her study, which underlined that management and maintaining control become among the greatest challenges in teaching practicum.
Second, the professional capacity of supervising teachers may have a relationship with the types of difficulties faced by the student teachers in the classrooms.While it is found that student teachers who are accompanied by certified supervising teachers tend to have less student-related-teaching difficulties than those accompanied by noncertified teachers, it surprisingly becomes an irony when this is viewed from the number of self-related difficulties faced by the student teachers.
One possible explanation related to this finding is that most certified teachers are senior teachers who have taught for more than five years.This can strongly influence the level of expertise in terms of how to deal with students' characteristics and behaviour.Therefore, student teachers with certified supervisors will potentially get more valuable information and feedback related to how to deal with students' behaviour and how to manage a class.
The last important point is that some student teachers still think that they still have some pedagogical weaknesses, especially in relation to classroom management, designing teaching materials, and applying suitable teaching strategies.Classroom management can range from managing the students to follow instructions, managing the kinds of tasks to be conducted in the classroom, to managing how to structure materials to be given to the students.This will, of course, require the student teachers to do more reading, to have more discussions, and to have more teaching practices in the classroom.The role of supervisors in this case will become very crucial and meaningful.Improving student teachers' understanding through explicit examples and good quality feedback will be something that is highly expected from the supervisors.

Efforts carried out to overcome the teaching difficulties
In terms of finding ways out to overcome the difficulties, several efforts were reportedly carried out by the student teachers.To give a big picture of measures taken by the student teachers, the following figure summarizes the result in a more simple form.

TEACHING DIFFICULTIES EFFORTS CARRIED OUT TO OVERCOME THE TEACHING
The figure above contains the simplification of student teachers' efforts to deal with three types of teaching difficulties that have been identified and discussed in the previous part.Basically, from the analysis of the interviews, the student teachers' answers are further categorised based on similarities and differences in terms of the nature of the action taken.
In dealing with student-related teaching difficulties, such as students being noisy, uncooperative and impolite, there at least six important kinds of efforts carried out by the student teachers in this study.First, they apply some specific teaching strategies according to contextual needs.To take an example, when the students looked bored and tired, one of the student teachers mentioned that she modified her teaching by combining the lesson with games.Another example is that when the student teachers felt that their students could not understand the English instruction given, some of them made a decision to teach bilingually.The second strategy is by making interpersonal approach to the students.Some respondents admitted that remembering students' names and sharing their past experience as a student could help build a better relationship and bring more respect from the students.Students seemed to feel that the student teachers also tried to position themselves as friends, so that they found it a lot easier to share their learning difficulties in the lesson given by the student teachers.Third, when the student teachers feel that they cannot solve teaching difficulties alone, they often ask suggestions from the supervising teachers and other fellow student teachers.Even though the suggestions given do not always work effectively, at least they can gain different perspectives on how to deal with their problems.This finding seems to indicate that in the process of learning to teach, student teachers often need some emotional support from other colleagues or someone considered more experienced than them.The other three ways in dealing with teaching difficulties include adjusting with the situation, reminding (or even warning) the students about their final mark, and also giving rewards in a variety of forms.Some respondents said that one of the ways they could do was by being patient.Patience could help them understand why the students created problems in the classroom and also help them to become a wiser character.Warning students about final results (their final marks) is also regarded to be quite effective in drawing the students' attention to the lesson.However badly the students behave in the classroom, some student teachers believe that they are still concerned about their marks, about passing the final examination.The last form of efforts, namely giving rewards, is also often practiced by the student teachers.The rewards they give may range from a simple smile and a compliment to many kinds of small foods.
For self-related teaching difficulties, not many kinds of efforts are carried out.The main thing the student teachers do is doing self-reflection and improving their knowledge and skills through doing more reading and then modifying the teaching strategies in the classrooms.For this specific effort, some respondents stated that most of what they did was related to pedagogical modification, many of which needed a highly creative thinking.
In relation to problems from the supervising teachers, two main actions are taken here, namely trying to ask other available teachers at school for gaining some perspectives and suggestions and trusting themselves to become more independent in making certain pedagogical decisions.Whenever they find it difficult to get some suggestions or just some perspectives from teachers at school, relying on oneself becomes the only thing they can do instead of doing nothing.Often times, they try to overcome teaching difficulties, including those related to the supervising teachers, by carefully interpreting the situations and trying to be more informed before making a decision.

CONCLUSION
This study, to some extent, has shown that teacher professional development is more about a continuing process that will always be accompanied by many complex issues surrounding the struggle of a teacher in finding their own meaning of professionalism.Every process towards becoming a professional teacher will, of course, be started from becoming a student teacher who will have to struggle hard facing many teaching challenges and thinking about ways out to overcome those challenges successfully.
Special concerns on supervision and specific materials for teacher education programs become critical regarding what has been found in this study.While it is widely believed that student teachers should not be left alone in their teaching practicum, teacher educators and supervisors will have to pay a serious attention on how to improve the quality of their supervision.Effective measures that include improvement in quality time with the student teachers and commitment are critically important.The quantity and quality of materials on specific issues, such as how to effectively deal with students with a variety of behaviours and characteristics also need special attention, particularly in the training programs for basic pedagogical knowledge and skills.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The Mechanism of research Figure 3. Kinds of Student-Related-Teaching Difficulties

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Kinds of Self-Related-Teaching Difficulties Figure 5.The Occurence of Student-Related-Teaching Difficulties as Viewed from Supervising Teachers Figure 6.The Occurence of Self-Related-Teaching Difficulties as Viewed from Supervising Teachers

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Efforts carried out by the student teachers to overcome teaching difficulties