The Effect of Mentoring on Beginning Chemistry Teacher's Teaching Practice

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the changes in beginning chemistry teachers' teaching practice without mentoring program and after the implementation of mentoring program. Participants in our study included two chemistry teachers who have less than one year of teaching experience and three mentor teachers. We collected data such as video recordings of teacher's classes, interview, and recordings of mentoring after each class. The results show there were slight changes in teaching contents, teaching procedure, and explanation method without mentoring. On the other hand, there were a lot of significant improvement in classroom environment, teaching contents and teaching procedure, teaching-learning techniques, questioning and feedback, and explanation method after mentoring has been implemented. However, there were no easy changes in the teaching style, understanding of students, and ways of interaction with students in connection with teaching purposes. Based on the results of this study, we explored the possibilities of instructional improvement through mentoring on beginning chemistry teacher's teaching practice. Therefore, we consider that more systematic and long-term mentoring is necessary to improve professionalism in teaching beginning teachers. In particular, we propose mentoring programs reflecting the individual needs of beginning teachers.