AN EXPERIMENTAL E-COACHING MODEL USED FOR TRAINING STUDENT TEACHERS
Authors: Neacsu Mihaela gabriela , Adascalitei Adrian , Dumitru Georgiana 
Published: February 2023

The article presents a pedagogical model, functional in the virtual moodle training environment, for experimenting online coaching in teaching practice. The construction of this e-pedagogical model is based on the needs analysis. The study presents the specific online coaching activities projected for optimizing teaching practice activities and highlights the formative aspects of the application of this pedagogical model.
The purpose and objectives of this study circumscribe to the following finalities: e-learning support for the students in the teaching practice probationary stage, experimenting the teaching act for the first time, students’ training in exploring online resources, activities, instruments and services created especially for them and for successful teaching, the dynamic participation of students in the virtual discussions on the Moodle platform (www.moodle.ro), focused on case studies taken from their teaching practice, the analysis of video registrations from teaching practice and the analysis of specific tasks to be performed for the practical activities. Those mediating and intermediating going through such experiences are resourceful persons holding teaching practice trainer capacities and have the professional experience necessary to the development of the knowledge, capacities, abilities of students to obtain excellent results in performing certain tasks specific to the didactical profession. The facilitators projected a precise agenda for the virtual guidance of the teaching practice. The online content was projected by reference to large interest subjects for the students at their first teaching practice experience, but also to the set of didactical competences targeted through the exercise of the professional behavior: filling in the assistance sheet for demonstrative classes, the application of techniques related to the operationalization of some lessons objectives, the selection of an efficient didactical strategy for a class, the projection of a training sequence, the projection of an application or of a pedagogical test, the integral project of a specialty lesson, the formative evaluation and the performance of self-evaluation. The communication among the students in the collaborative learning virtual environment but also between students and trainers/tutors is made at the level of the online system proposed by means of the interactive instruments such as chat-room, forum, instant messaging, blog. The students’ impressions and opinions on the teaching practice activity in application schools are stored in an online journal of reflection on teaching practice. Subsequently, they were analyzed and interpreted. Also, tutors configured an activity report according to three main indicators: 1) the analysis of the involvement degree of the students participating in such virtual course, 2) the analysis of the correctness of solving the proposed themes and 3) the analysis of self-assessments.
The article presents the preliminary results of experimenting the online coaching platform in teaching practice by 53 users (50 practitioner students at the University of Pitesti in the IIIrd year of psycho-pedagogical studies and two teaching practice tutors/coordinators in the University of Pitesti and one supervisor in the Gh.Asachi Technical University of Iasi). The methodology observes the structure of a qualitative research.
Also, authors are interested in direct feedback and integrated in the platform the online interview for experts having the role of analyzing the opinion of education science experts on the utility of the offered model.
The authors highlight, based on the obtained results, the advantages and limits in implementing the online coaching pedagogical model during the first teaching practice probationary stage and offer the premises for continuing the research also during the second stage through re-conceptualizing and optimizing the projected model.