Collaborative mentoring sessions: Supporting the development of teaching expertise
Open Access
- Author:
- Arshavskaya, Ekaterina
- Graduate Program:
- Applied Linguistics
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 26, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Karen E Johnson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
James Lantolf, Committee Member
Celeste S Kinginger, Committee Member
James F Nolan Jr., Special Member - Keywords:
- pre-service teacher mentoring
ESL
a sociocultural theory perspective
MA TESOL practicum
teaching expertise - Abstract:
- Teacher mentoring is the most common way that novice teachers are initiated into the teaching profession. Though the literature on teacher mentoring suggests that mentors and mentees should engage in collaborative mentoring sessions, few studies have looked at what actually happens or what is actually learned as a result of mentoring (Harvey, 2011). For the purposes of my study, I created mentoring protocols based on what the mentoring literature (Easton, 2008; Jonson, 2008) suggests mentors and pre-service teachers should do. Then, I implemented the protocols with three mentor–mentee (mentor–pre-service teacher) pairs during a 15-week MA TESOL practicum. Based on my observations, I examined the quality and character of the interactions between the members of each pair and considered the impact of the mentoring on the pre-service teachers’ teaching. The data were analyzed from a sociocultural theory perspective on teacher learning (Johnson, 2009) in order to capture the dynamic nature of the dialogic mediation created by engagement in the collaborative mentoring sessions and to trace the extent to which such meditational means were taken up and internalized by pre-service teachers as they engaged in their initial teaching experience. The results indicate that the mentoring sessions served as mediational spaces wherein the pre-service teachers expressed their ideas and feelings in relation to the classes they taught. The results also indicate that the mentoring protocols helped guide the participants’ interactions during the mentoring sessions. In addition, the analysis of the mentor–pre-service teachers’ interactions during the mentoring sessions shows that the mentors adapted the mentoring protocols provided in order to better meet the pre-service teachers’ developmental level. The mentors were also found to provide the pre-service teachers with significant emotional support, apparently recognizing the challenges that the latter faced in the classroom. Lastly, the study shows that the pre-service teachers learned from conversing with their mentors and applied what they learned (emerging conceptions of teaching) to their own teaching. In one of the pairs, reciprocal mentoring (Wink & Putney, 2002) took place whereby the pre-service teacher, a more capable other (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), guided the mentor in regard to creating an instructional tool for teaching English grammar. The study demonstrates the importance of providing mentoring experiences that create spaces in which pre-service teachers can externalize their thoughts and feelings about their teaching. In addition, it highlights the significance of the emotional and professional support provided by mentors and the critical role that extended mentoring experiences can have on the development of pre-service teachers’ teaching expertise.