Introduction Teaching practice (TP) is an indispensable component of any teacher education or preparation programme. As Furlong et al. (1988) observe, TP provides beginning teachers or student teachers with the opportunity to be socialised into the profession. This socialisation process enables student teachers or teacher trainees to acquire and develop purposeful scientific experiences that include knowledge and skills needed to perform their future roles as qualified teachers (Mostafa, 2005, in Wambugu et al., 2013). Thus, TP situates itself in a key position in teacher education programmes. As a culminating experience in any teacher preparation programme, TP provides the teacher educator with some prediction of the future success of a teacher. As Farauta and Omuche (2013) argue, TP then becomes a yardstick or factor determining the quality of a teacher education programme. In other words, a teacher education programme would be incomplete without the TP component because TP brings to life the theoretical underpinnings of the practice of education at a given level. Arguably, the TP component takes the student from the college world of theory into the practical field of classroom practice. It is also the time when the student teacher gets to work with experienced, qualified teachers, variably known as school-based mentors, which is a crucial step in one's learning to be an effective teacher(Wilson et al., 2001).