Being a Pre-Service English Language Teacher in Covid-19 Times: A Narrative Study

Pre-service English language instruction is fraught with tensions between academic goals at the university and those at the school. These conflicts were exacerbated by COVID-19 contingency. This critical qualitative narrative study aimed to understand three aspiring English language teachers’ perspectives they designed pedagogical innovations during their teaching practicum in the context of remote education. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using grounded theory principles. Results show experiences before, during, and after the practicum. They serve as examples of both formal and experiential knowledge-based methods for practicum, as well as concern over the introduction of schoolteachers or supervisors. Finally, findings echo reflections from aspiring teachers’ lived experiences during teaching practicum. Conclusions call for agreement between the processes involved in language teaching development and academic needs, as well as pre-service teachers’ autonomy for the enrichment of practicum.


ABSTRACT
Pre-service English language instruction is fraught with tensions between academic goals at the university and those at the school. These Given the study's scope and nature I adopted a critical epistemological positioning (Kincheloe et al., 2018). Thence, the research subjects are immersed in a "complex ontology" (p.437), while the researcher recognizes reality as a set of interwoven value systems in which thoughts are mediated by power relations and language.
To avoid reductionism and discrimination, a subject's worldview represents a piece of the truth rather than a normative paradigm. As a result, bricolage (i.e., the appeal to multidisciplinarity) emerged as an important tool for addressing the complexity of knowledges (de Sousa Santos, 2018) underlying PELT experiences.

PROBLEMATIZING THE RESEARCH TOPIC
The research problem assumes that PELTs' expectations and realities are complex and influenced by a variety of challenging situations in the context of contingent remote teaching. It stemmed from reflections with my colleagues on our teaching practicum. At first, it seemed that PELTs' interests in creating materials and the available resources to do so were at odds.
There was a mismatch between PELTs' idealized B O L E T Í N R E D I P E 1 1 ( 8 ) : 1 6 5 -1 8 3 -A G O S T O 2 0 2 2 -I S S N 2 2 5 6 -1 5 3 6 · 1 6 7 · notions of teaching and the characteristics of the available environments (Dunn et al, 2018 (Çakmak & Gündüz, 2019) and the link between the emotional experiences lived during the practicum and their "motivations, attitudes, professional learning, and engagement in the teaching profession" (Rahmawati et al., 2021, p. 278).

ON EXPERIENCES
Experience concept is two-fold. From an external origin, Larrosa (2006)  Firstly, PELTs are prone to experience a wide range of emotions during the teaching practicum (Méndez, 2020). Second, they recognize and talk about the connection between emotions and PELTs' professional identities (Teng, 2017).
Finally, constrained factors in the teaching practicum have a direct impact on PELTs' sense of agency (Rahmawati et al., 2021;Teng, 2017).

Pre-Service English Language Teachers' Pedagogical Innovations
Although modernity has attributed knowledge construction to academic "experts" (Cruz-  (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). This

Teachers' Pedagogical Innovations
Participants outcomes in terms of the instructional innovations were divided into two: those that adhere to an instrumental agenda of innovations and those that go beyond. Results language is used as a tool for everyday activities (Oladi, 2013). The instrumental results suggest that learning grammar was accomplished in a shorter time in line with Serdyukov's (2017) notion that "productivity and learning efficiency" Accordingly, the goal of the humanistic approach is associated with a democratic vision of education: to educate sensitive and respectful of various forms of life citizens (Gil Claros, 2018;Nussbaum, 2012). To achieve it, the humanistic approach places interaction as the key factor for language learning. According to Arifi (2017)

In-service English Language Teachers
Communication between PELTs and schoolteachers and university mentors detaches from a unidirectional transmission model that emphasizes transfer (Klaus, 2021).

Communication with teachers is associated
with Carey's ritual model of communication, in which interaction "is a sharing of meaning and a condition of community" (as cited by Klaus, 2021, p. 13 given that "assessing student performance is also a critical aspect in the teaching practices" (Çakmak & Gündüz, 2019, p.14). This feature is similar to Carpintero's (2015) notion of an My schoolteacher and my supervisor stayed with me, and they told me a lot.

Wow! but it was the first time I felt her
[university supervisor] in her role as a teacher, and I tried to keep in mind all the things they told me for the future.
The final feature concerns the active presence of mentors in language classes. In excerpt 24, support was essential for PELTs because of their quick response to unexpected class issues. This role is similar to that of an emotional supporter (Cakmak and Gündüz, 2019), who concerns not only with the conditions of the instrumental teacher but also with PELTs' human dimension.
Certainly, in addition to supervisors' guidance, the role of mentors as counselors can be explicitly valued in language teacher education planning of PELTs' practicum. "My device had frozen. The teacher asked me to calm down, send her the slides, as she would help me to display them.
You think, wow, the teacher is accompanying me, she realized that I was dead nervous (Eva, Interview, My translation). In sum, comfort zones encounters create barriers to pedagogical innovations of PELTs (Serdyukov, 2017). Both schools and universities have a duty to constantly communicate with one another to transform their pedagogical conceptions so mentors can step outside their comfort zones to create and support PELTs' pedagogical innovations.

POST-PRACTICUM EXPERIENCES: THE END
The ideas but rather putting those preexisting ideas into practice (Ismail, 2006;Sánchez, 2011): "One thinks that innovation has to be something new from scratch. But not really, it is the idea that brings positive results in a social group". (Zoe, Interview, My translation). From an economic standpoint, any implemented idea must bring successful results to be considered innovative (Sánchez, 2011). Hence, this PELT endorses the idea of innovation as related to successful results and the extent to which they focus on the needs of society (Watts & Zimmerman, 1978, as cited in Sánchez, 2011. This decision parallels the idea of locality, because it responds to hegemony in a local setting through empowerment (Oda & Toh, 2018). Participants acknowledge students' sociocultural and academic backgrounds as sources of inspiration for their inventions, as evidenced in excerpt 28. This suggests PELTs reinforce education as a common good whenever they take bottom-up consideration of specifics (Locatelli, 2018).
We can have a lot of activities, but when we try to put them into action, they don't

INNOVATIONS AS CHANGEABLE.
PELTs continually assessed and changed their pedagogical innovations. Accordingly, participants' evaluations relate to Rogers' implementation stage as innovations go through constant "reinvention processes" (Ismail, 2006, p. 4). Albeit some PELTs have a behaviorist (Moreno, 2020)

Post-Practicum Beliefs
PELTs were disruptive not only in the way they conceptualized innovations, but also in the way  (Freire, 2017). According to Méndez (2020), In sum, a democratic education develops when PELTs prioritize the humanitarian sphere of their profession over an instrumentalizing agenda (Locatelli, 2018;Nussbaum, 2012 In this way, PELTs' pedagogical love (Jiménez, 2021) beyond "natural vocation" is something they nurture with supervisors' guidance while