Understanding the nature of mentoring experiences between teachers and student teachers (original) (raw)
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The need to improve teachers’ professional knowledge and skills is recognised across the globe. However while a neo-liberal model of education puts emphasis on skills and expertise; transformative agendas in education seek to establish educational environments that promote both cultural and social change in a systematic manner. Against this backdrop, educational reforms are initiated globally with the intention of implementing a ‘change’ process agenda which could conceivably serve alternative if not opposed goals and outcomes. Drawing on a study in a teacher education reform initiative in Scotland, this paper argues that a critical constructivist approach to mentoring can support collaborative learning between teachers and student teachers and in so doing, serve a model of teacher learning that is grounded in and conscious of the normative structures of classrooms and schools. In this paper, the critical constructivist approach to mentoring is seen as an integrated and egalitarian process encapsulating apprenticeship, reflective, socio-constructivist and participatory strategies to learning. Data collection was carried out using qualitative strategies including semi-structured interview and case studies. A series of examples of practice derived from this empirical study illustrate features of a complex process that incorporates apprenticeship and collaboration based on the critical constructivist approach to mentoring.
Conceptions and Expectations of Mentoring Relationships in a Teacher Education Reform Context
Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 2016
Research on mentoring indicates that prior experience and beliefs about learning and teaching held by practicing and pre-service teachers contribute significantly in shaping their mentoring relationships and, more broadly, their career outlook and aspirations. While mentoring is commonly seen as a form of support for pre-service teachers, mentoring can be pivotal in the creation of enabling environments in which collaborative, professional dialogues are undertaken. Yet, there lies a tension between enculturation into the norms of schools and promoting selfbelief, participation and collaboration. Drawing on a qualitative methodology, this study focuses on the conceptions and expectations of classroom mentoring within the context of a teacher reform initiative in Scotland. Findings indicate that participants in the study held a mixture of beliefs regarding mentoring practices. Implications for partnership arrangements in initial teacher education and teachers' career development were discussed.
Exploring collaborative mentoring relationships between teachers and student teachers
Located within a broader initiative of teacher education reform in Scotland, this study explores teacher and student teacher mentoring relationships in the classroom. A preliminary study to investigate these relationships was conducted involving a focus group discussion with three teachers and an interview with a deputy head teacher in two Scottish primary schools. Findings indicate that teachers are clear about the concept of mentoring and its potential benefits for supporting a new scheme in initial teacher education. More importantly, teachers acknowledge the need for on-going training for those serving as mentors or supporter teachers and they are also positive about establishing a collaborative relationship with student teachers in the classroom based on egalitarian principles. The research showed that how a collaborative mentoring relationship between teachers and student teachers can be enhanced is one of the key questions/issues that needs to be explored in the next stages o...
International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, 2012
This paper, drawing on research carried out as part of a qualitative case study, explores the effectiveness of the mentoring of trainee teachers within the further education sector. Drawing on data collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews from mentors and mentees in a network of further education colleges in the North of England and from documentary analysis of the forms and reports that are produced by the mentoring process, the paper explores three key problematic issues: firstly, the ways in which mentors and mentees define and understand their roles; secondly, the extent to which both mentors and mentees find worth or value within their professional relationship; and thirdly, the processes by which these invariably informal relationships are established. The paper concludes by suggesting that the complexities and vagaries of mentor-mentee relationships that are outlined both in this and other research raise further questions concerning what mentees learn a...
Mentor pedagogy and student teacher professional development
Teaching and Teacher Education, 1998
The recent and growing literature on mentoring has seen a lot of studies focusing on how mentors think about and conceptualise their work. There has been less which has examined what mentors actually do in practice or which attempts to relate mentors' 'espoused' theories to their 'theories in action'. This study elicits two mentors' conceptions of their role, along with their views about what has influenced these conceptions, before examining the pedagogical practice of the two mentors. Secondly, the study looks at how three student teachers respond to their experiences of mentoring with these same two mentors, and attempts to understand the various ways in which the student teachers' thinking about their teaching is influenced by discussions with their mentor. The article concludes with a discussion of the agency of the mentoring relationship in learning to teach.
A comparative study of mentoring for new teachers
Professional Development in Education
She researches professional learning, in particular informal learning and mentoring and is also interested in children and young people's rights. Rachel is a co-convenor of the Open Learning network of the European Educational Research Association (network 6) and is on the governing body of the Scottish Educational Research Association. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is a member of the Scottish Community Learning and Development Standards Council. Rachel previously had a varied career in research and education including positions as a law lecturer; employment rights adviser; and as a lifelong learning organiser.
New teachers, mentoring and the discursive formation of professional identity
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2010
This paper considers the implications of mentoring for the discursive formation of professional identities of newly graduated teachers. The site for this analysis is the Teacher Mentoring and Induction Program, in Victoria, Australia. The paper draws attention to the effects of mentoring as conceived in this context on the construction of new teacher identities, the close relationship between professional standards and mentoring, the relationship between mentoring and the performative culture of schools, and what it means to be 'a good teacher' within this culture. The aim is to reposition mentoring as a product of its contexts and times, and in so doing contribute to the development of a more theoretically informed and critical platform from which to conduct research into its effects and benefits.
2016
This symposium examines the praxis of mentoring and the potential of professional experience as praxis. A series of four papers present four distinctive but interrelated themes of consequence that together explore what Zeichner (2010) refers to as the third space in teacher education. The aim of the symposium is to reframe existing views of professional experience learning and mentoring by drawing from a suite of vignettes to portray the contextual, relational and mutually formative space that this space entails. In this symposium we draw on relevant research and a number of vignettes of recent innovations in mentoring practices to move discussion on from an historical focus on definitions of the roles of mentors and mentees, in what might be considered as largely ‘supervisory arrangements’. The vignettes are taken from four different Australian university professional experience programs. The actual doings of those involved in the mentoring relationships presented in the vignettes ...
This paper will present findings from original research for a PhD which seeks to identify approaches to measuring and monitoring the quality of training provided to trainee teachers in school-based settings. The context of the research is the Teach First ITT programme. Teach First places trainee teachers in selected schools which meet various criteria for social deprivation and educational underachievement. Teacher quality has been identified as a key factor in educational achievement; provision of a high-quality teaching workforce exerts significant influence on policy-makers. This influence was shown in the recent Schools White Paper 2010 which proposes an increasing role and responsibility for schools in ITT, with an expansion of SCITT and GRTP routes. School-based mentors have been identified as a significant factor in ITT outcomes (Hobson et al., 2009). However studies have indicated that mentoring can be the most variable element in the quality of ITT programmes (Hutchings et al., 2006). Mentoring is here defined as a practice operating within both cognitivist and situated learning theory (Ertmer & Newby, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991). This research arises from an initiative to develop the quality and consistency of school-based training provided to Teach First trainees; this is the first stage of this initiative, exploring possible approaches to defining and monitoring ‘quality’ in school-based training provision. A literature review suggested factors for consideration when monitoring quality in school-based provision. From this, questionnaires were developed and deployed among the groups directly involved in school-based training – trainees, HEI tutors, and mentors themselves. Following Weber’s interpretivist philosophy, questions explored respondents’ ‘inside’ perceptions of the mentoring process and their own role within it. Results were used to structure subsequent focus group discussions with representative groups. Quantitative and qualitative results from both questionnaires and discussions were subject to analysis, allowing refinement of the hypothesis suggested by the literature. The research engages with the following issues and frameworks: the principles of andragogy (Knowles et al., 1998); the nature of professional knowledge (Eraut, 1994); the influence of architectural factors upon professional practice (Cunningham, 2007); and issues of professional identity and self-image (e.g. Beijaard et al., 2004). Possible outcomes include suggestions for defining and monitoring school-based ITT provision through a holistic examination of the structures and practices of the programme; and approaches to demonstrate change over time within an ITT programme. This research will provide important recommendations for improvement to this and other teacher education courses in the UK.