Post Graduate Female Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions Regarding Teaching Practice: Enhancing Self-Efficacy and Teaching Performance

Abstract

Pre-service teachers are student teachers engaged in a teacher education programme and pursuing teacher certification. They participate in supervised field-based teaching experiences while being monitored and guided by university lecturers and mentor teachers. These are students that have acquired professional teacher training from higher education institutions but have little to no classroom experience. Critically, female pre-service teachers to enhance their self-efficacy and teaching performance during their teaching practice they need to be mentored and supported. In the context of this paper, self-efficacy refers to a student teacher's belief in his or her own skills to do a required behaviour to accomplish the desired outcome in the art of teaching. This study aims to investigate female pre-service teachers' perspectives of teaching practice. A convenient sample of fifty postgraduate female pre-service teachers registered at Central University of Technology was employed. The information was gathered in a qualitative method. A thematic data analysis was used. The data was collected using a group interview questions, thematic analysis was used for data analysis. findings indicate that teaching practice is an excellent strategy for improving professional growth, teaching performance, and self-efficacy. However, the findings reveal that several difficulties, such as the length of the teaching practice, the lack of mentorship support, organizational problems, and the limited freedom allowed during teaching practice, Finally, the study recommends ways of how  to improve the quality of teaching practice for female pre-service teachers.