Investigating the Mentoring of Collaborative Teachers and Academic Supervisors in Pre-Service Early Childhood Education Teachers’ Teaching Experience

Abstract

The current study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the collaborative teacher and academic supervisor's mentoring in practicum classes in early childhood education. The study is designed as qualitative research, and an unstructured interview form is used. Twelve pre-service teachers from early childhood education department who participated in the school experience or practice teaching course are samples of the study. The results show that the guiding process is not efficient, especially for classroom management strategy. Additionally, inappropriate feedback of collaborative teachers and academic supervisors do not help to develop pre-service in the profession. In addition, incompatibility between collaborative teachers' and academic supervisors' request is a problem for pre-service teachers in the practicum process. The study recommends that collaborative teachers and academic supervisors could participate in a mentoring training program, and the collaborative teachers and academic supervisors could have a meeting before the teaching experience course.