‘I owe to my tutor much of my professional development’: looking at the benefits of tutoring as perceived by the tutees

Abstract

The context of the present paper is a school of professional development for teacher educators. One of the school's unique features is the employment of tutors/mentors, who are colleagues of their tutees in different study programmes. It has been established that many teacher educators enter the profession 'accidentally', whether from school teaching or from academia, without any prior training. Therefore, they require lengthy periods of time to consolidate their new professional identity. This paper presents a model of professional development that involves tutoring/mentoring, and focuses on the interaction between tutor and tutee as perceived by the tutees. There are four tutors assigned to each of the two-year specialization programmes offered at the school. All of them are staff members from various teacher training colleges. The research reported employed a mixed-methods design methodology comprising a questionnaire that was drafted especially for this research and was based on semi-structured interviews and pilot sampling. Six graduates were interviewed and 231 (out of the 500) graduates responded to the questionnaire. They were asked about the required properties of a tutor and about the elements they perceived to be most beneficial to the tutees' professional development. The findings point to the benefits of tutoring. The terms 'tutor' and 'mentor' are used in this paper interchangeably. IntroductionThe context of the present paper is a school of professional development (SPD) for teacher educators. The school is part of an intercollegiate professional development institute serving teacher educators. It offers several specialization programmes for the purpose of enhancing teacher educators' professional development. One of the unique features of the school's model of professional development involves tutoring/ mentoring, and in many cases the tutors in the different study programmes are colleagues of their tutees.In this paper, we employ the terms mentor and tutor interchangeably. Further elaboration on the topic is offered in the background section.

Teacher educators' professional learning: A literature review

“…The professional context (i.e., working environment and culture) of teacher educators. Barak et al, 2010;Coronel et al, 2003;Gallagher, Griffin, Parker, Kitchen, & Figg, 2011;Karagiorgi & Nicolaidou, 2013;Patrizio et al, 2011;Pienaar & Lombard, 2010;Reichenberg et al, 2015;Viczko & Wright, 2010 Note: a&b Numbers in parentheses represent the frequencies of the summaries for each category and subcategory, respectively.…”

“…First, the fact is that the work of teacher educators is not yet a well-developed profession. Most teacher educators have neither a formal route to become teacher educators nor a supportive induction program to learn from (Mayer, Mitchell, Santoro, & White, 2011;Reichenberg, Avissar, & Sagee, 2015). Teacher educators enter the profession either after having taught in a school setting for several years or after having obtained a degree in their subject of study in a university setting.…”

Teacher educators’ professional learning: perceptions of Dutch and Chinese teacher educators

“…Teacher educators' professional learning is challenging and demanding, because there are no formal routes to become a teacher educator and usually hardly any supportive induction programmes to learn from (Mayer, Mitchell, Santoro, & White, 2011;Reichenberg, Avissar, & Sagee, 2015). The majority of the teacher educators often enter teacher education institutes after having taught in a school setting for several years, such as in the UK and the Netherlands (Murray, Swennen, & Shagrir, 2009), or after having obtained a degree in their subject of study in a university setting as is the case in countries like China (Chao, 2015).…”

Perceptions of Peer Tutoring at a University in Chile

“…The ASP is aimed at supporting students who belong to the pedagogical programmes at the Faculty of Education and whose grades are between 2.0 to 3.9 on a scale from 1.0 to 7.0 in the core courses during the first five weeks of classes. Tutors are advanced students guiding and helping those who have not acquired the required knowledge (McDowall-Long, 2004;Reichenberg, Avissar & Sagee, 2015;Stigmar, 2016). Tutorials involve four hours of teaching per week to a maximum of 10 students throughout 11 weeks.…”

“…The proposition that was co-constructed from this sub-theme was that tutors and tutees valued the ASP as an experience that gave them a sense of ownership of their learning, and as a contribution to the integration of knowledge as part of their life-long learning, as mentioned in Table 1. Finally, tutors' and tutees' social interactions enabled a collaborative learning environment that promoted collective growth without fearing judgment (Miquel & Duran, 2017;Reichenberg, Avissar & Sagee, 2015).…”