Mentoring: Perspectives on School-Based Teacher Education

Team teaching during field experiences in teacher education: Exploring the assistant teaching model

“…However, in the research context of self-determination of teaching assistance practice, four mentors and their student teachers choose to link the teaching approach to an activating initiative external to the normal lessons. It seems that by creating these chances to define assistant teaching in a broader context, for instance within initiatives external to the normal lessons, mentors and student teachers start to define their mentoring relations in a motivating self-directed way, which is supported by research (Ambrosetti & Dekkers, 2010;Hagger, Mcintyre & Wilkin, 2013;Schelfhout, et al, 2006;Wildman, Magliaro, Niles & Niles, 1992).…”

“…Student teachers were also pleased to have more opportunity to compare their approach with the approach of the mentor. This is interesting in light of the typical challenges involved in smoothing the transition between learning to teach in theory and real teaching practice (Britzman, 2012;Hagger, Mcintyre & Wilkin, 2013) and challenges related to the difficulties with encouraging student teachers to really reflect on their teaching (Korthagen, Kessels, Koster, Lagerwerf & Wubbels, 2001;Loughran, 2002;Moon, 2013;Svojanovsky, 2017). Therefore, as such this interpretation of assistant teaching can make sense.…”

Reprint: Lost in Translation: Mentors Learning to Participate in Competing Discourses of Practice

“…Numerous studies stress the connection between teaching and mentoring as related to the planning of mentoring activities, to what mentors learn about teaching through mentoring interactions, and to how mentors articulate their knowledge as teachers in ways that can help the mentee (Hawkey, 1998;Feiman-Nemser, Parker, & Zeichner, 1995;Maynard, 1996;McIntyre, Hagger, & Wilkin, 1993). For example, in the context of preservice education, McIntyre et al (1993) and Maynard (1996) described learning to mentor as a process of "reskilling" as mentors learn to disentangle one kind of practical knowledge from another in their work with student teachers.…”

“…Put differently, learning what to say, how to intervene, and how to behave in the process of acquiring communicative competencies in mentoring should also account for the pedagogical, moral, and educational conflicts brought about by tensions between internal and external professional agendas and between top-down and bottom-up orientations to educational change. This suggests that just as in the case of preservice mentors (Elliot & Calderhead, 1993, Maynard & Furlong 1993McIntyre et al, 1993;Wang, 2000), inservice mentors' roles and practices are shaped and influenced by many "players in the system," such as inspectors, school principals, and professional and academic course leaders.…”