Social comparison motives that emerged in practicum process: A case study

Teaching a foreign language has been considered as a complex profession. Within the years, there exists several developments and amendments of the language teaching methodologies to make teachers more interactive and make pre-service teachers be prepared to their profession. The practicum process has been considered as a first step into this journey. This study was conducted to gain insights into pre-service teachers' social comparison motives during their practicum process. The study was carried out in Çağ University ELT Department with three cases who were carrying out their fourteen-week practicum in a public school. This is qualitative case study which had used various data collection tools including structured and semi-structured interviews, practicum performance figures of the cases, and metaphor to gain more insights about their practicum experience throughout this process. The qualitative data were analyzed using a priory coding, descriptive content analysis, and emergent coding methods. The primary findings of the study suggested that the cases benefit social comparison in their practicum process while they kept skeptical to compare themselves in their social life. The study also suggested that the cases benefit from social comparison motives such as differentiation identification, similarity identification, distancing, self-enhancement, future-self, and modeling. Moreover, the study also shed lights into the role of social comparison in the practicum process. The findings also revealed that the cases used social comparison motives to evaluate their teaching performance, to improve themselves, and to form an early professional identity. The results of the study were discussed within the scope of relevant studies in the literature.