a comparative study of teacher education in iran & china: initial recruitment & pre-service practicum procedures

Teacher education is regarded as one of the crucial elements in the development of education in any country. undoubtedly, the procedures implemented in the entry recruitment phase, i.e. the qualification requirements needed for attracting teacher candidates in teacher education centers as well as the preparation programs designed and applied in teaching practice courses, i.e., practicum courses, play acritical role in ensuring the quality of teacher education systems. the present paper then aims at describing the teacher education systems of iran and china in general, and the initial recruitment procedures and their preparation programs in practicum courses in particular to address applicable issues and constructive lessons to be learned from the relevant experiences of the countries. in so doing, the current study, as a comparative and descriptive one, collected its required data via existing documents and reports published by oecd, the international and governmental organizations and previous research done relevant to the target countries. using the bereday comparative framework (1964), first the required data on each country were collected from valid and reliable sources and interpreted respectively. following this, the data were classified and categorized based on specific criteria. finally, similarities and differences were analyzed in the final stage. the results indicated that iran and china bear some resemblance to one another in preservice teacher recruitment requirements and also practicum courses. however, there are several differences which needs due attention and can be the source of learning for either of the countries.