THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE ROLE IN PREPARING FUTURE TEACHERS: THE IMPACT OF A MENTORING PROGRAM FOR PRESERVICE TEACHERS

Abstract

The imminent teacher shortage in the United States has caused educators, policy makers, parents and concerned citizens to focus on teacher preparation not only at the university level, but also at the community college level. As a result, many community colleges are developing teacher education programs and focusing on real life classroom situations for early field experiences. Mentoring, one of the most popular ways of benefiting from the positive influence of a more experienced person, is an approach to preparing teachers for educational occupations. The main objective of this study was to see if a preservice mentoring program can affect changes in the emotions, attitudes, and anxieties of students about the teaching profession. The participants were 60 education majors (30 in the experimental group and 30 in the control group) from a community college. The experimental group had first-hand experiences with 30 master teachers from a local school district. The 30 students in the control group were education majors from the community college who completed a pre- and posttest instrument. Data was collected from results of a pre- and posttest of a teaching attitudinal survey for preservice teachers. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed to test for significant differences between the means of the posttests for the control and experimental groups while controlling for the pretests. Results revealed that there were no statistically significant differences between the means of the two groups with respect to changes in emotions and anxiety. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in attitudinal changes.