Survey of Mentorship Model in Teaching Practicum of Student Teachers in Primary School Teacher Education Program: A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

Recently, Ministry of Education of China issued a serial of teacher education policies, including Opinions on Implementation of Excellent Teacher Training Plan and Opinions on Implementation of Excellent Teacher Training Plan 2.0, both of which clearly require the implementation of mentorship model supported by university mentors and school supervisors cooperatively. So, what is the advance and current situation of implementation of this mentorship model? Our study took student teachers majoring in primary education and their mentors and supervisors in Linyi University in 2016 as a case, and used mixed methods to survey 102 samples and in-depth interviewed 19 samples, involving 44 teachers and 63 students, in order to comprehensively explore current situation and existing problems of this mentorship model during teaching practicum period. Survey results showed that this mentorship model has not achieved ideal effect in some aspects, for example, frequencies and communication of mentoring. Interview results further indicated that there are still some problems in the implementation process of this mentorship model, such as insufficient number of mentors, imperfect evaluation mechanism for mentors, and poor communication between university mentors and school supervisors. Based on this analysis, we provided some specific advices in future, including: focusing on selection of mentors in universities and supervisors in primary schools; improving working mechanism of supervision, evaluation and reward and punishment; strengthening communication between mentors and supervisors.