Interest is growing in the potential of international intercultural teaching practicums to connect students to international dimensions of education and to productively disturb the conceptions of teaching, diversity and culture that some pre-service teachers bring with them into their teaching. This paper reports on an international teaching practicum, wherein a cohort of preservice students from Australia undertakes a three week practicum in schools and communitybased settings in Johannesburg, South Africa. The practicum is part of an ongoing international project, which is now in its fourth year. It is supported by partnerships between universities in Australia and South Africa, and ongoing relationships with schools and NGOs in the host country. Using narrative-based inquiry methods, the authors inquire into the experiences of three cohorts of pre-service teachers who undertook the practicum from 2009-2011. They find that the pre-service teachers’ experiences of this practicum in a developing country are usually positive, notwithstanding, or perhaps even because of, the ways in which the students have to grapple in deeply collegial ways with ethical dilemmas and other challenges.
This paper reports on an ongoing international teaching practicum, wherein a cohort of pre-service students from Australia undertakes a three week practicum in schools and community-based settings in Johannesburg, South Africa. The practicum is part of an ongoing international project, which is now in its fourth year. It is supported by partnerships between universities in Australia and South Africa, and ongoing relationships with schools and NGOs in the host country. Using a combination of ethnographic and narrative-based inquiry methods, the authors inquire into the experiences of three cohorts of pre-service teachers who undertook the practicum from 2009-2011. They find that the pre-service teachers' experience of this particular intercultural practicum in a developing country is almost always powerful and transformative, notwithstanding, or perhaps even because of, the ways in which the students have to grapple in deeply collegial ways with a wide range of ethical dilemmas in their teaching.