The Impact of Home Visit in Students' Perception of Teaching

According to Vygostky (1978) the learning that takes place in this social interaction creates a zone of proximal development, the zone a child enters when he/she has partially mastered a skill and can more fully master it with the help of a more knowledgeable other. Because I wanted these experiences to be meaningful and engaging, I also asked preservice teachers to reflect on how their involvement in the project would impact their future practices. [...]I asked the preservice teachers to reflect on their experiences, draw connections among the three microsystems (home, community, and school), as well as discuss the role that social, political, and economic structures played in the preservice teachers' interactions with parents. [...]the assignment in the second course had three main purposes: (a) to expand the preservice teachers' understanding of the role that parents perceived themselves playing or not playing in the educational system, (b) to enhance the preservice teachers' understanding of the unofficial teaching practices and informal communication systems of the student, and (c) to enable the preservice teachers to explore how the experience would impact their own beliefs and practice. (First semester) These conversations offered preservice teachers the opportunity to hear about the linguistic realities faced by many parents, as well as the value placed on the relationship with the school.