Mentoring Preservice Teachers Research Articles

Willing and unable or willing and able? Insights from an evaluation of a mentoring training programme for early childhood teachers in Ireland

ABSTRACT Many early childhood teachers mentor pre-service teachers engaging in practicum within their settings. Given their significance in early childhood teacher preparation, mentors must be prepared for their mentoring role (Balduzzi and Lazzarri 2015). However, while early childhood teachers may be willing to mentor, they may be ill-equipped for this role. This paper draws upon participants’ responses to an evaluation of a mentoring training programme in Ireland. Findings indicate that participation in the programme resulted in greater knowledge and understanding of mentoring processes, approaches, skills, roles and responsibilities; increased confidence in participants’ ability to mentor; enhanced critical reflection; ability to share learning; improved professional practice, and willingness to embrace communities of practice. From a policy perspective, a mentoring policy concerning a continuum of early childhood teacher education, financial support and time in lieu is essential to enable mentors to fulfil their mentoring role in supporting the professional formation of pre-service teachers.

Mentoring pre-service teachers in situated learning: A case study of a Zimbabwean teacher training college

Mentoring pre-service teachers on teaching practice is an important part of the teacher development process. Pre-service teachers initially did teaching practice in schools where they could put what they had learned in their teacher education institute into practice. Teaching practice is now possible in virtual classrooms. This connects mentorship to the situated learning theory, which holds that effective education necessitates learning rooted in authentic contexts of practice, where pre-service teachers will participate in activities within social communities. Two teaching practice coordinators, eleven lecturers, seventeen pre-service teachers, and ten mentor teachers who were purposefully selected to participate in the study were interviewed using qualitative research approaches. Face-to-face interviews and focus group discussions were used to gather information. In this paper, I discuss the aspects that contribute to effective TP mentoring implementation as well as the contextual learning theory. Collaboration, introspection, coaching, multiple practice, acquisition of new abilities, and authentic situations are among the factors shown in the study. The mentor teacher serves as a knowledge provider, facilitator, and mediator. In the college under study there is great emphasis on that pre-service teachers get attached to mentor teachers in their practicing schools.

Service-Learning Collaboration: Improving Teachers’ Critical-Thinking and Job-Skill Training Using Active Simulation

Mentoring preservice teachers in collaborative instructional practices with public school partners has been a proven and substantiated way to improve their executive functioning and self-regulation skills. This study explores whether a contextually developed set of active-learning simulations in the lecture portion of a teacher education service-learning course can further improve preservice teachers’ efficacy in the field. Using mixed-methodology, findings show how preservice teachers respond differently to styles of traditional lecture-style recitation and active-learning simulation and how that translates to working with middle school students. Data shows teachers feel more supported, confident, and positioned for success when engaged with authentic teaching simulations that challenge their approach to be effective managers of diverse student behavior.

Mentorship and Class Size: Approach to Building Self-Confidence for Rural Preservice Teachers

Self-confidence is a vital trait that teachers are expected to possess before venturing into the teaching profession or going into a class to teach. The issue of self-confidence of teachers is considered to be predicated on different factors. This research study explored the connection between support from subject mentors to preservice teachers, class sizes taught by student teachers, and their self-confidence. A qualitative method was adopted for data collection from the six selected preservice teachers undergoing teaching practice in three carefully selected high schools in KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. The finding of the study shows that large class sizes mostly affect the self-confidence of preservice teachers negatively. Also, the role played by subject mentors in boosting the self-confidence of preservice teachers is immense and cannot be overemphasised. Thus, the study recommends, among other things, that preservice teachers should first be exposed to small class sizes to aid their self-confidence before being exposed to large class sizes. Meanwhile, subject mentors should be given periodic workshops on the things expected of them during teaching practice exercises and they should be motivated through various means to mentor preservice teachers.

The Impacts of a Research-Based Model for Mentoring Elementary Preservice Teachers in Science

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the impacts of a program designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction. The mentor preparation program was grounded in research on effective science instruction and learning-focused mentoring. The goals of the mentoring professional development were to (a) develop mentors’ knowledge of what is important to talk about in effective mentoring conversations and (b) develop their skills with regard to how to structure and facilitate effective mentoring conversations about observed science lessons enacted by the mentees. We describe the impacts of the program on mentors’ and mentees’ beliefs about effective science instruction and their ability to facilitate and engage in effective mentoring conversations. Our analysis reveals that cooperating teachers who participated in the professional development sequence showed statistically significant increases in their beliefs about effective science instruction and their ability to facilitate effective mentoring conversations. Furthermore, the preservice mentees showed statistically greater gains in their beliefs about effective science instruction than their nonmentored peers.

Developing a Mentoring Framework Through the Examination of Mentoring Paradigms in a Teacher Residency Program

In this paper, we extend on our exploratory study that examined mentors’ conceptualizations and practices of mentoring preservice teachers in a residency program to develop a mentoring framework to guide mentors’ approaches to mentoring preservice teachers in a year-long clinical experience. Our mentoring framework has the potential to make mentors consciously aware of their roles and purposes of mentoring throughout the year and within respective contexts. This metacognitive approach may help them to improve their practice and grow alongside their mentee. The Mentoring Framework for Mentoring is a tool that may be instrumental in developing mentors’ deeper understanding of the roles and purposes of mentoring to promote quality guidance and support for mentees. Our instrument has the potential to inform teacher preparation programs regarding goals and expectations for mentors to develop more formal mentoring guidelines and expectations, to better support the professional development of both preservice teachers and mentors.

"I'm Not a Bystander"

Rural teachers need ongoing, flexible professional development designed to encourage collaboration and curriculum development. Furthermore, rural school reform requires successful collaborations between schools and colleges to create leaders within schools. Therefore, this case study is a program review that investigates how social studies teachers at Timberwood High School, a rural high school in the American southeast, are emerging as teacher leaders through a school-university partnership to improve their practice, mentor pre-service teachers, and generate reform. Interviews were conducted with members of the social studies department, all of whom were involved in the project. The findings indicate that the school-university partnership encouraged experimentation with new strategies, stimulated reflective practices and teacher growth, and created a more cohesive social studies department. However, while it was evident that teacher leadership did develop through the process, traditional school norms of egalitarianism and structural hierarchy prevented teachers from fully embracing their roles as teacher leaders. Study findings suggest that rural administrators and rural school-university partnerships must focus on developing teacher leaders to initiate school reform and grow professionally.

Does Cooperating Teachers’ Instructional Effectiveness Improve Preservice Teachers’ Future Performance?

Increasingly, states and teacher education programs are establishing minimum requirements for cooperating teachers’ (CTs’) years of experience or tenure. Undergirding these policies is an assumption that to effectively mentor preservice teachers (PSTs), CTs must themselves be instructionally effective. We test this assumption using statewide administrative data on nearly 2,900 PSTs mentored by over 3,200 CTs. We find the first evidence, of which we are aware, that PSTs are more instructionally effective when they learn to teach with CTs who are more instructionally effective. Specifically, when their CTs received higher observational ratings and value-added to students’ achievement measures (VAMs), PSTs also received higher observational ratings and VAM during their first years of teaching; CTs’ years of teaching experience, though, were mostly unrelated to these outcomes. These findings have implications for teacher education program leaders and policymakers who seek to recruit and set requirements for CTs who are more likely to support PSTs’ future instructional effectiveness.

Support and assist: approaches to mentoring in a yearlong teacher residency

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine mentor teachers’ approaches to mentoring preservice teachers in a yearlong teacher residency program (TRP).Design/methodology/approach– This multiple-methods study examined 15 mentor teachers’ approaches over the course of a year in an urban TRP through the lens of Wang and Odell’s (2002) framework for mentoring. Data sources included mentors’ self-assessments over three points in time across one academic year. These self-assessments included numerical ratings of practice (quantitative) as well as open-ended rationales and goal setting (qualitative).Findings– Mentors predominately provided support and technical assistance to the residents learning to teach, drawing on humanistic, and situated apprentice perspectives on mentoring. They worked to develop residents’ self-confidence and exposed residents to a range of practices and school contexts. Glimmers of a more critical constructive approach were apparent in some mentors’ discussions of reflection and collaboration.Research limitations/implications– This study informs the work of teacher education programs as they develop mentoring structures that align with program visions, expand notions of mentoring, and consider the many roles of a mentor teacher.Originality/value– Increased emphasis on clinical experiences for preservice teachers highlights the need to attend to the practices of the mentor teachers with whom they work. These mentors, as field-based teacher educators, play a critical role in teacher education, and teacher education programs need to support their professional development as mentors. Understanding mentors’ approaches to mentoring is necessary in order to provide this support.

Identifying Leadership Practices for Mentoring Preservice Teachers

There are many forms of leadership and concepts of school leadership have evolved significantly over the last few decades. Mentoring is a form of leadership, where the classroom teacher (mentor) leads and guides the preservice teacher towards advancing teaching practices. What do school executives identify as their leadership practices and what leadership practices have inspired them? This study uses a five-part Likert scale survey with extended written responses that were coded into themes. These participants indicated they had leadership potential, which they associated with being organised, passionate and knowledgeable about education, interpersonally-skilled to build relationships, and visionary with action plans for improving education. These practices were also identified by participants as inspiring practices from leaders they knew. Generally, these participants perceived themselves as transformational leaders. Transformational practices associated with individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation, and idealized influences were agreed upon by 80% or more of the participants. Mentors need to understand inspiring leadership practices and identify their own leadership practices that may lead towards reflection on practice and, hence, a way to make educationally-sound changes in leadership behaviour.

Taking Stock

This article characterizes the first ten volume years of From the Classroom (FTC), one of three featured columns in Pedagogy. FTC articles, like other Pedagogy articles, showcase the work of scholars representing different ranks, subdisciplines, and institutional levels; unlike regular articles, FTC articles tend to be just 500 to 3,000 words. FTC authors, then, are challenged to raise a specific question or phenomenon by placing it momentarily within a larger theoretical, historical, and conceptual framework. Brockman groups most FTC articles into nine categories: Minding the Margins; Honoring Creative Nonfiction; Understanding Class, Culture, Gender, and Race; Mentoring Preservice Teachers; Incorporating Technology; Constructing Academic Arguments; Teaching Non-English Majors; Highlighting Effective Methods; and Showcasing Subdisciplines.

Mentoring Preservice Teachers in Primary Mathematics

A literature-based instrument gathered data about 147 final-year preservice teachers‟ perceptions of their mentors‟ practices related to primary mathematics teaching. Five factors characterized effective mentoring practices in primary mathematics teaching had acceptable Cronbach alphas, that is, Personal Attributes (mean scale score=3.97, SD [standard deviation]=0.81), System Requirements (mean scale score=2.98, SD=0.96), Pedagogical Knowledge (mean scale score=3.61, SD=0.89), Modelling (mean scale score=4.03, SD=0.73), and Feedback (mean scale score=3.80, SD=0.86) were .91, .74, .94, .89, and .86 respectively. Qualitative data (n=44) investigated mentors‟ perceptions of mentoring these preservice teachers, including identification of successful mentoring practices and ways to enhance practices.

Preparing Special Education Mentors Using Classroom Artifacts as a Vehicle for Learning About Teaching

The authors examine a project that focuses on preparing special educators to mentor preservice teachers throughout their preparation program, instead of mostly at the end of their program. Through use of classroom literacy artifacts, mentors are prepared in how to guide novices as they transition through coursework and into classroom practice. Fifteen mentors participate in the yearlong project and have regular interactions with preservice teachers through campus field advisories. Responses regarding the selection, preparation, and discussion of the artifact are collected. Findings indicate that mentors can select and use artifacts that illustrate teaching complexities. Also, pre-service teachers value the discussions surrounding the artifacts and say it helped them learn about teaching students with disabilities. Although helpful as a way to focus on learning to teach students with disabilities, the artifact is still only a resource. Key to its usefulness is work with mentors to help them select, plan, and discuss the artifact.

Mentoring Preservice Teachers for Development and Growth of Professional Knowledge

How can professors, teachers, colleagues, and administrators mentor preservice teachers toward professional growth? How can music teacher education programs exemplify, generate, and nurture a cultu f metoring? It seems self-evident that mentoring is an important topic in the professional development of teachers. The publication of Great Beginnings for Music Teachers: Mentoring and Supporting ~rs1 acknowledges MENC's interest in the topic and articulates important strategies for addressing the needs of beginning teachers during the induction phase of their professional developent. ven earlier than their first years in the classroom, however, preservice teachers can benefit from a mentoring environment while still students, as they begin to develop an identity with the role of teacher.

Mentoring Preservice Teachers for Development and Growth of Professional Knowledge

Mentoring Preservice Teachers for Development and Growth of Professional Knowledge

Mentoring Preservice Teachers in the Preschool Setting: Perceptions of the role

The success of professional experience for preschool preservice teacher learning is valued and based very much on the relationship developed between all stakeholders. What motivates the preschool-based teachers and how they see their role in this relationship is integral to achieving effective outcomes for both themselves and the preservice teachers. Recent data collected from preschool teachers has identified their perceptions of what participating in the preservice relationship adds to their personal and professional self-concept. Findings from this data provide an insight and a challenge for those designing and implementing early childhood teacher education programs, indicating the need to give greater emphasis to understanding the personal and professional motivation of the mentoring teachers when establishing and maintaining these programs. They too are key learners in an effective relationship of professional growth.

School/University Partnerships: Rhetoric, Reality, and Intimacy

The rhetoric of school/university partnerships is no doubt familiar to everyone. But the reality is another matter. And how to handle the intimate relationships between the people involved presents the hardest question to answer. The authors share their experiences, especially with this final question. THE GOAL OF school/university partnerships is the simultaneous renewal of colleges of education and of K-12 schools.1 In theory, this improvement comes about as university and K-12 faculty members work together to mentor preservice teachers in the best possible environment. Ideally, as they participate in these collaborations, the faculty groups do a better job together than either could accomplish alone, and both become better educators. However, achieving this goal is difficult. It is difficult because, until the collaboration has begun and problems arise, partners cannot know what particular challenges each partnership will face. We cannot know ahead of time how best to address those challenges, nor can we know what kinds of solutions will be practically and politically possible. This does not mean that partnerships are doomed. If all partners assume responsibility for the success of the partnership, the collaborations can succeed and teacher education can improve. As part of assuming responsibility, each partner needs to try to understand as fully as possible, in the beginning and along the way, that behind the rhetoric of school/university partnerships, there is reality and that behind the reality, there is intimacy. Each of us needs to be willing, every step of the way, to ask and address hard questions, which we might prefer to avoid. These questions are not only about the intimacies of our particular partnerships but also about policies, practices, and relationships within our home (K-12 or university) institutions. These are challenging responsibilities. Neither university nor K-12 faculties know much about collaborative professional relationships. Both K-12 teachers and teacher educators are more used to working independently than to collaborating with their colleagues. In making a decision to form a partnership, K-12 and university educators are making a commitment to learn together how to do something on shared turf that neither group necessarily knows how to do on its home turf. We commit to an intimate relationship with one another but bring little prior experience with professional intimacy. As a faculty member at the University of Hawaii, Diane Stephens spent seven years working with two different university/public school partnerships. Diane and her colleague Joe Tobin first worked with an elementary school to pilot a field-based program that prepared students to be elementary school teachers. Three years later, Diane and Joe piloted a program with a K-12 Hawaiian immersion school, helping prepare students to become teachers in elementary and secondary Hawaiian immersion classrooms. As a graduate student, Gail Boldt coordinated the field-based program for the University of Hawaii's Kauai Teacher Education program and then worked as an instructor and field supervisor for elementary cohorts on Oahu. As we've looked across our particular experiences with these partnerships, we've identified four questions we believe partners need to be willing to address if the partnership is going to survive, let alone thrive. These are questions that need to be raised as close to the beginning of the partnership as possible and then raised again and again throughout the life of the partnership. These questions are not discrete but overlapping, and they can each be approached from successively deeper layers of complexity. The first layer is that of rhetoric, and at that layer, the questions seem easy. At the second layer, reality, the questions seem impolite. At the third layer, intimacy, the questions are hard and often painful. We have come to believe that it is only by asking and collaboratively addressing the hard questions that partnerships can survive and education can improve. …

Mentoring Preservice Teachers through Interdisciplinary Teams: A School-University Partnership

Mentoring Preservice Teachers through Interdisciplinary Teams: A School-University Partnership