Effective mentoring: Understanding factors affecting the holistic development of pre-service teachers during teaching practice

Abstract

The purpose with this article is to amplify the significance of effective mentoring of pre-service teachers in order to address classroom matters and situational issues associated with teaching practice. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 10 pre-service teachers about the ways in which they experienced mentoring during their teaching practice. The majority of pre-service teachers have raised concerns that once they were dispatched to schools, they found themselves without adequate mentorship from in-service mentors and mentor lecturers. The study was contextualised in less-privileged South African schools and involved fourth-year Bachelor of Education and Postgraduate Certificate in Education pre-service teachers as participants. Findings suggest that the common denominator among the documented lived experiences of the interviewed pre-service teachers was a lack of information about the difficulties that in-service teachers in less-privileged schools faced on a daily basis, especially in townships or rural areas where facilities such as computer rooms, smart boards and data projectors are not available. The Situativity theory was used to frame the argument that the lack of effective mentoring that pre-service teachers received resulted in them not successfully adapting to the situation in less-privileged schools during teaching practice.