Section archive - Mentoring & Supervision

In this conceptual article, the authors present a theoretical framework designed to illustrate the many contexts and factors that interact and shape the work of mentor teachers. Drawing on the literature on K-12 teaching and on teacher preparation, they argue for greater acknowledgment of the complex work of mentor teachers as they navigate multiple contexts. They conclude by considering how this framework helps to better understand the work of mentor teachers and by offering suggestions for teacher preparation programs and K-12 schools to better support mentor teachers and best prepare teacher candidates.

This study sought to explore from the student teachers’ perspectives, the domains of knowledge that they gain from mentoring meetings during residential teaching practice (TP). A qualitative approach which employed open-ended questionnaires was used to generate data from 16 student teachers: seven men and nine women in two education districts. Students indicated that they had good relationships with their mentors, and held formal meetings weekly, fortnightly or monthly. They also reported gaining general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, curriculum knowledge, knowledge of learners, and knowledge of educational contexts. Three students experienced ineffective mentoring, as such had limited benefits from mentoring processes and most likely from the practicum. Knowledge of what to teach, how to teach it as well as appropriate strategies for particular topics, the kinds of students and their specific settings often merge into what student teachers are expected to learn in teacher preparation inclusive of residential practicum. Comprehensive, prolonged, on-going mentor training workshops would expose mentors to the entire essence of mentoring and the centrality of formal mentor-mentee meetings not only for student teacher TP mentoring, but also for mentor growth and rejuvenation in their practice.

This article describes key features of a hybrid professional development (PD) program that was designed to prepare elementary classroom teachers to mentor preservice teachers for effective science instruction. Five classroom teachers who were new to mentor training participated in the study to document the impacts of the PD sequence. The PD combined an in-person immersion into the components of effective science instruction with online modules centered on learner-supportive mentoring practices. Findings indicated that mentors who engaged in the hybrid face-to-face and online PD more effectively coached their mentees and displayed specific shifts in their approach to mentor conversations. Participants showed statistically significant increases in their ability to use coaching as a default mentoring stance, to focus on evidence of students’ science learning, and to draw on a consistent framework for effective science instruction for their conversations.

The aim of this study was: (a) to measure the effectiveness of a supporting tutor-training curriculum and content knowledge gains for preservice teachers engaged in service learning and (b) to determine whether tutor training and field experience improved the preservice teachers’ teaching self-efficacy beliefs. One hundred and thirteen upper-division undergraduate students enrolled in Social Foundations of Multicultural Education courses participated in course-embedded tutor-training and fulfilled a 20-h service-learning requirement by tutoring pupils in local elementary schools. The study results suggest that a course-specific tutor-training curriculum advances the participants’ knowledge and skill in tutoring. The results also indicate that the combination of tutor training and field application (i.e. tutoring in a classroom) function to increase students’ self-efficacy as future teachers.