Learning the Teaching Profession in the Practicum: The Role of the Other, Modalities of Appropriation, and Professional Knowledge

This chapter explores the process of learning about the teaching profession that takes place in a practicum by applying the perspective of situated learning to study the role of other actors as drivers of learning, the modalities of appropriating contributions from the other by trainee teachers (TTs), and the professional knowledge they learn. It includes an exploratory case study with 13 TTs from two Chilean training centers. The self-confrontation interview was used as an information production technique, with a total of 28 h of audio recordings that were transcribed and codified by means of analysis of conceptualizing categories. The results show that interaction with different actors is a source of learning. The presence/absence of educational intentionality in the involvement of the other regarding the professional learning process of the TTs also leads us to consider interactions that are pedagogized; that is, the elements that emerge are intended to be understood as professional knowledge, while others lack an educational objective. Finally, the different modalities of knowledge appropriation share the fact that they represent different ways of exploiting the other as a driver of learning and of building professional knowledge, which is contextualized in the pedagogical interventions of TTs.