Section archive - Mentoring & Supervision

Continuity of learning and development for children transitioning from pre-compulsory to compulsory education remains challenging in many educational contexts. There is little evidence about the potential of coaching to build teacher capability as a strategy to enhance continuity for children. This article reports details of how a collective case study and the theory of practice architectures framed an investigation of coaching practices aimed at building teacher capability to address student continuity issues. The research endorses a situated (site ontological) approach to building teacher capability to enhance continuity in the early years. Findings identify how site-based conditions influenced (enabled and constrained) coaching practices and transitional continuity.

Most professionalisation programmes to support teacher educators as research supervisors focus on the development of research skills. The methodology of practice-oriented research, in addition to a clear vision on the function, and purpose of student research often receives little attention. At the Amsterdam University of Applied Science, the authors developed such a vision and methodology and studied the development of 17 teacher educators as research supervisors during a programme that introduced this methodology. They questioned participants about affect, and understanding regarding their role as a student research supervisor, and their perception of their competences to perform that role. Results showed that teacher educators became more aware of their role, and became more critical about their own competencies. Growing awareness of the implications of their role as student research supervisors seemed to result in a lower self-efficacy regarding the performance of this role. Implications for the training of teacher educators are discussed.

This study examines the content (i.e., pedagogical skill) and purpose (i.e., praise or suggestion for growth) of university supervisor written feedback in order to improve the quality of observational evaluation provided to elementary and secondary pre-service teachers. Interview data reveal key factors influence the content of supervisor feedback, including the pre-service teacher’s instructional context and learning needs, as well as the supervisor’s content knowledge and teaching beliefs. Findings reveal supervisors provided significantly more praise versus suggestions for growth, and commented much less frequently on key practices, including supporting emergent bilinguals. Implications highlight the importance of supporting supervisors with targeted professional development opportunities which allow for critical examination of their feedback.

To support student teachers' well-being and ensure that they flourish during teacher education, it is necessary to examine the relationship between student teachers and their mentors during field experiences. Previous research has identified a connection between the quality of the mentor–mentee relationship and facets of student teachers' well-being. However, to date, this link has been insufficiently corroborated using longitudinal empirical data. This study aims to investigate the impact of mentor–mentee relationship quality on the well-being and flourishing of student teachers. A cross-lagged panel design with two intervals (six weeks apart) was applied during a 15-week field experience with a sample of 125 German student teachers. Well-being and flourishing were captured using the positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, achievement (PERMA) framework. Relationship quality was assessed by adapting a questionnaire from the field of mentoring in medicine. The study found that relationship quality at the outset significantly predicted all five PERMA dimensions at the end of the assessment period. The impact of relationship quality was especially strong on the dimensions of relationships (R) and meaning (M). Conversely, the PERMA dimensions (except achievement) did not significantly impact relationship quality.