Excellent Mentor Teachers’ Skills in Mentoring for Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

This study aims to identify the performances of 76 Taiwanese awarded mentor teachers in mentoring pre-service teachers by analyzing their written reports related to mentoring processes. An inductive content analysis method was used to construct headings and codes in relation to mentoring skills. The analytical result reveals that 448 headings were formed and were further categorized into six groups, reported as six mentoring skills. The mentoring skills rank-order from high to low frequencies are as follows: employing the built model as a framework for teaching guidance, guiding interpersonal interactions, fostering career competitive ability, encouraging reflections on internship experiences, creating mentoring plan through discussions with pre-service teachers, and giving emotional supports. Like the previous studies, the study finding reveals that the person-oriented supports like giving emotional supports, only accounting for 1.3%, seem to be unusually used by Taiwanese mentor teachers.

استخدام إرشاد الأقران الهجین فی مقرر المناهج لتنمیة المعرفة بالمناهج والتنور الرقمی لدى الطلاب المعلمین تخصص لغة إنجلیزیة کلغة أجنبیة

“…In a classic mentoring context, Liu (2014) found that mentors implemented practice-oriented and technique-oriented skills in mentoring more than person-oriented support for pre-service teachers.…”

Pedagogical Practicum and Student-Teachers Discursively Conceived in an ELT Undergraduate Program

“…This move responds to abandoning a vision of those teacher educators who accompany practicum as supervisors or mentors who are knowing in the field, who give and transmit knowledge and skills, manage studentteachers' training, follow-up on them in terms of their attendance at schools, hold advisory meetings, and evaluate student-teachers by using established or predesigned checklists (Dakhiel, 2017;Fajardo-Castañeda & Miranda-Montenegro, 2015;Macías & Sánchez, 2015). We prefer to adopt the vision of practicum advisors as one of those who create empathy and dialogue for pedagogical guidance, offer emotional support and professional socialization, develop teaching knowledge and practices collaboratively, foster student-teachers' self-construction and esteem, and promote reflection on what is done, how, and why for language education (Castañeda-Peña et al, 2016;Clandinin et al, 2009;Liu, 2014;Quintero-Polo, 2016).…”

“…The former tends to imply training, repetition, effectiveness, and transmission (Crookes, 2003). The latter encompasses personal and contextual characteristics, educational backgrounds, and creation Pedagogical Practicum and Student-Teachers Discursively Conceived in an ELT Undergraduate Program of subject matter knowledge; this term also stresses the importance of experiences, skills, knowledges, and dispositions of all its participants (Fajardo-Castañeda & Miranda-Montenegro, 2015;Liu, 2014).…”

Relationships between Learning Styles, Perceived Advantages of Online Collaborative Learning and Practical Knowledge in Teaching among Taiwanese Student Teachers

“…However, the teacher education system of Taiwan did not train experienced teachers to be cooperating teachers with mentoring competences, resulting in that student teachers did not necessarily have enough opportunities to obtain sufficient training as a teacher. Literature has indicated that cooperating teachers failed in finding an adequate combination of offering emotional support and task assistance for pre-service teachers (Crasborn, & Hennissen, 2010), also lacked sufficient consulting competences (Rodgers, & Keil, 2007), and seldom used emotional supports (Liu, 2014). The field-experience is a platform to bridge the theory and practice gap in initial teacher education (Coffey, 2010;Darling-Hammond, 2006).…”