Understandings of mentoring in school placement settings within the context of Initial Teacher Education in Scotland: dimensions of collaboration and power.

Author(s):

Lorele Mackie(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 04 A JS, Professional Learning through Mentoring

Joint Paper Session NW 01 and NW 10

Time:

2017-08-23

09:00-10:30

Room:

K3.17

Chair:

Eimear Holland

Contribution

This conference paper is derived from a sizable empirical research study which explored mentor and mentee understandings of mentoring primary education student teachers within Scottish school placement contexts, and their perceptions of the use of formative assessment principles and practices to support professional learning within that process. Three sequential research questions were constructed:

What are mentors’ and student teachers’ understandings of mentoring within a school placement context?
What are mentors’ and student teachers’ understandings and perceptions of the use of formative assessment in mentoring student teachers within a school placement context?
To what extent does formative assessment support mentor and mentee professional learning?

This paper addresses the first research question in its exploration of understandings of mentoring in school placement settings within the context of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Scotland and, in doing so, offers a contribution with regard to further understanding the complexities of the mentoring process. It follows on from a previous paper (Mackie, 2016) and as such research questions, methodology, theoretical framework and contextual literature are comparable. Scottish education policy is used to frame and exemplify points made alongside those from international literature to inform discussions and suggest recommendations for future mentoring policy and practices.

The significance of mentoring is a recurrent theme within the literature on initial teacher education. The current context of a ‘knowledge society’ and its focus on lifelong learning suggests that the processes of learning and teaching are important (Grabinger, Dunlap and Duffield, 1997). This means that teachers require more wide-ranging, complex knowledge, skill and competence bases (ibid.). This has implications for the quality of the future generation of teachers and the mentoring practices employed to foster such quality. Beginner teachers learn within the realms of relationships with others (Harrison, Lawson and Wortley, 2005) so having a mentor who is part of the teaching community is essential (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2000). Collaboration is recognised as a key concept in mentoring practices appropriate for learning to teach in a twenty first century context (Hargreaves 2000; EPPI 2008). It is central to mentoring as it addresses improvement in teaching and issues of social justice and equality through practices such as critical reflection, active trust, self-regulation, respect and reciprocity (Hargreaves, 2000). However, all learning environments are influenced by power relationships (Seddon, Billett and Clemans, 2004). In the context of mentoring, traditional hierarchies of power may inhibit collaborative, constructive dialogue (Graham, 1999) in that mentors are viewed as more experienced and may use this perception to direct dialogue, sanction particular actions and associated reasoning (Ritchie, Rigano and Lowry, 2000). Within this sort of traditional power duality, an oppositional dynamic of powerful and powerless is apparent (Seddon et al., 2004). In mentoring relationships this manifests as a perception of mentors as the ‘expert’ and of mentees as the ‘novice’ (Berliner, 2001).

A constructivist methodological approach was undertaken in the study. Constructivism has been defined variously (Larochelle, Bedwarz and Garrison 1998) but in educational contexts two conceptions are commonly deployed, namely cognitive constructivism, with its emphasis on the individual’s construction of knowledge, and social constructivism where knowledge is constructed through interaction with others (Phillips 2000). Constructivist research is exploratory and process-oriented to undertake in-depth investigations that foster understanding of the perspectives of ‘actors’ within their social and historical contexts (Littledyke and Huxford 1998; Jonassen 2006). These epistemological conceptions are appropriate for this study as it addresses the perceptions of mentors and mentees in interpreting the mentoring process. This process is subject to both individual and social constructs where participants develop knowledge and understanding both independently and collaboratively.

Method

An instrumental, collective case study was employed for this study. Instrumental as the focus is on looking at an overarching case, the mentoring process, to understand a phenomenon (Cohen et al., 2007): mentor and mentee understandings of mentoring and perceptions of the use of formative assessment within that process. It is collective to provide a more holistic view of that phenomenon (Stake, 2005) where individual cases are examined but situated within a collective study. Within the overarching collective case of the mentoring process four individual cases were investigated: class teacher mentors (CT mentors), mentees, school management mentors and local authority mentors. A purposeful sampling strategy was employed in terms of selecting student teachers at a particular stage on an undergraduate primary education degree. The rationale for this strategy is that students in year three have experience of the mentoring process from a previous placement and would be able to use the experiences gained through this study to build on and enhance professional learning, and to reflect forward to their final year four placement. This research study is underpinned by a constructivist epistemology. To foster methodological congruence, data collection, analysis and interpretation are viewed as active (Esterberg 2002) and shared processes with participants as co-creators of data and meaning. This led to the selection of semi-structured interviews where a probing strategy was employed as the inherent flexibility of this type of interview allows for comprehension of viewpoints of participants’ lived world (Kvale, 2007) during the interview and so presents opportunities for the interviewer to inquire further thereby promoting depth of analysis (May, 2001). Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) was subsequently used as an approach to data analysis and theory generation as this offered systematic guidelines for analysis where theories are constructed from the data gathered (ibid.). Classic notions of the ‘discovering’ of data and theory are rejected where the researcher is silent (ibid.) and replaced by the researcher as the author in rebuilding participants’ experiences and understandings (Hallberg, 2006).

Expected Outcomes

Data from this study indicates that participants understood mentoring as a multidimensional process involving a range of relationships designed to support the mentoring of student teachers within a school placement context. The relationship between CT mentor and mentee emerged as the key one. It is a close relationship, evident on a daily basis within the classroom and the associated expectations derived from the wider context of the student’s degree stage and competency expectations. As addressed in a previous conference paper (Mackie, 2016), analysis of CT mentor and mentee responses suggests that they understood mentoring as involving both personal and professional dimensions. From these dimensions, elements of collaboration and power emerge. These elements are the focus for this paper. CT mentor and mentee responses indicate that collaborative practices are evident but in an implicit sense. Given the attention accorded to collaboration within the current Scottish education context influenced by the wider educational discourses and inherent agendas of a knowledge society, study participants may have been expected to be more explicitly recognisant of this element therefore its omission is an interesting one. In opposition to the notions of explicit and implicit collaboration, conceptions of power emerged from participants’ understanding of mentoring. These are interpreted as a traditional opposition (duality), where one party is perceived as powerful and one as powerless, and as in a more Foucauldian ‘flux’ form where no one person is viewed as owning power, rather actors can be both powerful and powerless in the same context (Foucault, 1979).

References

Charmaz, K. (2006) Constructing grounded theory. London: Sage Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2007) Research Methods in Education, GB: Routledge Deloitte & Touche (2001) The Scottish Executive-Report of the ‘First Stage’ Review of Initial Teacher Education, Edinburgh: Deloitte and Touche EPPI. (2008) International perspectives on quality in initial teacher education, London: EPPI Esterberg, K.G. (2002) Qualitative Methods in Social Research, London: McGraw-Hill Higher Education Foucault, M. (1979) The history of sexuality, volume one: An introduction, London: Allen Lane Grabinger, S., Dunlap, J.C. and Duffield, J.A. (1997) Rich environments for active learning in action: problem-based learning. ALT-J 5:2, 5-17 Graham, P. (1999) Powerful influences: a case of one student teacher renegotiating his perceptions of power relations, Teaching and Teacher Education, 15, 523-540 Hallberg, I.R-M. (2006) The ‘‘core category’’ of grounded theory: Making constant comparisons, International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 2006, 141-148 Hargreaves, A. (2000) Four Ages of Professionalism and Professional Learning, Teachers and Teaching, 6:2, 151-182 Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (2000) Mentoring in the New Millennium, Theory into Practice, 39:1, 50-56 Harrison, K., Lawson, T. and Wortley, A. (2005) Mentoring the beginner teacher: developing professional autonomy through critical reflection on practice, Reflective Practice, 6:3, 419-441 Kvale, S. (2007) Doing Interviews, London: Sage Larochelle, M., Bedwarz, N. & Garrison, J. (1998) Constructivism and Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mackie, L. (2016) Understandings of Mentoring within Initial Teacher Education School Placement Contexts: a Scottish perspective. Paper presented at ECER, University College Dublin, Dublin (August) May, T. (2001) Social Research: Issues, methods and process, Buckingham: Open University Press Phillips, D.C (ed) (2000) Constructivism in Education: Opinions and Second Opinions on Controversial Issues, Illinois: The National Centre for the Study of Education Ritchie, S.M., Rigano, D. & Lowry, R.J. (2000) Shifting power relations in “the getting of wisdom”, Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 165-177 Scottish Executive (2005) Stage 2 Review of Initial Teacher Education, Edinburgh: Scottish Executive Scottish Government (2011) ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’, Edinburgh: Scottish Government Seddon, T., Billett, S. & Clemans, A. (2004) Politics of Social Partnerships: a framework for theorizing. In Lingard, B. and Ozga J. (Eds) The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Education Policy and Politics, London: Routledge Stake, R.E. (2005) Qualitative Case Studies. In Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y. (Eds) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, London: Sage Publications Ltd Thomas, G. (2009) How to do Your Research Project, London: Sage Publications Ltd

Author Information

Lorele Mackie (presenting / submitting)

University of Stirling

School of Social Sciences

Stirling

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