Practicum is an important part of the teacher education program and an important part of becoming a teacher. We believe that to understand the conditions and processes of practicum, a special attention needs to be drawn upon the preservice teachers’ own accounts of their practicum learning experiences. We are exploring practicum learning from the preservice teacher perspective as described ‘in their own voice’ and ‘in their own worlds’. We have conducted a parallel study with Australian, Chinese and Swedish preservice teachers studying in universities in the cities of Dubbo, Liaocheng and Stockhom respectively, in an effort to identify the distinguishing features of each context. Through gaining a greater awareness of the lived experience of the preservice teachers, a better understanding of the different practice architectures or the mediating preconditions which prefigure the practicum in these three countries can, through their particularities, contribute to our common knowledge about teacher education in general and the practicum in particular. Besides, we will argue, becoming a teacher and being a teacher have a certain universalism which makes it possible for us to recognise through comparison of sayings, doings and relatings, what makes a particular architecture work and where we might make changes.