Mentor Teachers' Mentoring Practices in Science Teaching: Views of Pre-service Early Childhood Teachers

Abstract

Practical experiences in teaching settings are an important component of pre-service teacher education programs. Pre-service teachers advance what they learn and improve their science teaching (ST) skills as well as other subjects in early childhood education for the period of teaching practices. In addition, teaching science in early childhood education requires more practices for improving teaching skills. Mentor teacher (classroom teacher) is valuable as well as professors in teacher education programs to pre-service teachers while teaching science. The purpose of this study is to reveal mentor teachers’ mentoring practices in ST according to pre-service early childhood teachers’ views. The method employed method was descriptive study. The sample is composed of 96 pre-service early childhood teachers and their mentors (N=41). Data were collecting within MEST survey. The results showed that most of the pre-service teachers reported their mentor teachers demonstrated less mentoring practices on the system requirement about ST. The pre-service teachers also pointed out that their mentor teachers mostly showed mentoring practices on personal attributes, pedagogical knowledge, modeling, and feedback factors. Knowing and 7understanding the mentoring skills of early childhood teachers in system requirement, pedagogical knowledge, modeling, giving feedback, and personal attributes would have an important growing on preservice early childhood teachers science teaching skills. That will be helpful for shaping new teaching practices and field experiences in different majors for improving teachers teaching skills.