A Qualitative Descriptive Study: The Contribution of First Year Teaching Experience Towards Second Year Teaching Practicum Among Students’ at English Education Department at One of Private Universities in Yogyakarta

This research proposed a discussion which leads to discover of teaching practicum
experiences of students at one of private universities at Yogyakarta. The researcher aimed two
objectives. The first objective was to identify the students’ perspective about the difficulties and
benefits towards the first year experience of teaching practicum, and the second objective was to
analyze the contribution of the first year teaching experience to the students’ teaching
performance in the second year. To dig up these objectives, the researcher designed a qualitative
research, this research was adapting with qualitative descriptive method. The participants of this
study were three second year students at one of private universities at Yogyakarta. To find out
the students’ perspective, the researcher preferred interview guide approach to get the data using
Bahasa Indonesia during the process of the interview. After the interview process, transcribing,
member checking, coding, and reporting were done by the researcher. The first finding
discussed about the difficulties that experienced by the participants during the first year
experience of teaching practicum. The participants experienced difficulties in teaching skills
such as classroom management and delivering the material, and difficulty related to the students
personal issues that described as a lack of support from teacher mentor. The next finding
discussed the benefits regarding teaching practicum at elementary school. The participants
revealed that they were benefited in their personal development such as creating relationship
among teachers as well as the students and also gaining their self-confidence, they were also
benefited in increasing their teaching skills that described as classroom management.
The last finding discovered the participants’ experiences that contributed to their
performance in teaching practicum at junior high school. The participants explained that
teaching skill: classroom management contributed to the second year of teaching practicum. The
participants described that the classroom management helped the students to understand children
characteristics, then it was beneficial for the students to the context of dealing with students
behavior. Then the participants explained that their personal development: self-confidence
contributed to their second year of teaching practicum. This self-confidence described by the
participants as identification to fully aware of their mistakes in last teaching practicum, they
know their weaknesses from the past so they can be more confident.