PRE-SERVICE ENGLISH TEACHERS’ CAUSES OF STRESS DURING SCHOOL BASED TEACHING PRACTICUM: AN OBSERVATIONAL STUDY IN ISLAMIC SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS

Abstract

School based teaching practicum takes a very important role in teacher education, since it allows pre-service teachers to gain more knowledge through teaching in the school. However, although it brings many benefits for pre-service teachers, teaching practicum is also considered to be one of the most stressful program. Particularly, among others, for pre-service English teacher, teaching practicum may generate high level of stress because of their feeling of self-unconfidence in using English language. The purpose of this study is to find out pre-service English teachers’ causes of stress which they experienced during teaching practicum. This study was conducted using an observational study method, meanwhile the data were collected using three instruments namely observation, interview, and document analysis. Two pre-service English teachers from PBI UII who had undertaken teaching practicum in two Islamic senior high schools in Yogyakarta were involved as participants in this study. The result of this study revealed four main categories as the causes of pre-service English teacher stress: first teaching experience-related stress, classroom management-related stress, stresseed of being observed, and English language teaching-related stress. Furthermore, some emergent findings regarding coping strategies toward teaching practicum stress are also found in this study.