Session Information
SES C 10, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
Collaborative partnership is seen as a necessity for improved initial teacher education (ITE) programmes (Blasé, 2009; Nevin, Thousand and Villa, 2009). Today, ITE schemes showcase collaborative partnership between schools, universities, governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The idea of collaborative endeavours between teachers and student teachers has also been recognised in literature as a factor for the development of professional knowledge and skills (Fieman-Nemsar and Beasley 1997; Lofstrom and Eisenschmidt 2009). This is probably because of the conceptions of mentoring as a means to give student teachers emotional support, orientations so as to understand the dynamics of school settings and the opportunities for reflection and development of teaching skills through practical experience in a collaborative manner with support teachers (Wang and Odell, 2007). However, the provisions of some sort of support are not enough to help student teachers to teach effectively. Wang and Odell (2007) reported that provisions of emotional support and orientations to student teachers do not mean that student teachers will be able to teach effectively. It is also observed that some teachers seem to be confused about what active collaborative relationships and learning entails as Allen (2008) argued that many teachers do not really get student engaged but rather expect them to replicate their style of teaching. In addition, research evidence shows that collaborative relationships/teaching is under-researched (Nevin et al 2009). It therefore becomes important to explore the collaborative mentoring relationship between teachers and student teachers in a more practical oriented context. As such, this study adopts the critical constructivist theory as a means to seek for knowledge and understanding as regards teacher and student teacher relationships. The critical constructivist theory is integrated in term of its principles as it contends that socialisation, cultural context, critical reflection and equal participation between supporter teachers and student teachers can enhance the effectiveness of ITE. Not surprisingly, Wilson and Berne (1999) argue that teachers’ learning and development could be enhanced with collaborative culture of sharing ideas and experimentation of such ideas. (Nokes et al, 2008). More importantly, the aim of the study is to explore the means by which a collaborative mentoring relationship between teacher and student teacher can be effectively contextualised in the classroom and how this can support change at the level of practices. This study is part of "Scottish Teachers for a New Era" a current Government funded research and development initiative in ITE.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Allen, M. (2008) Promoting Critical Thinking Skills in Online Information Literacy Instruction Using Constructivist Approach, College and Undergraduate Libraries, 15: 1, p. 21-38 Blasé, J. (2009) The role of mentors of preservice and inservice teachers, in Saha, L.J. and Dworkins, A.G. (eds.) International handbook of research in teachers and teaching, USA: Springer Science + Business Media LLC, pp171-181 Fieman-Nemsar, S. and Beasley, K. (1997) Mentoring assisted performance: A case of co-planning, in Richardson, V. (ed.) Constructivist teacher education: building new understanding, Washington, D.C.: Falmer Press. Lofstrom, E. and Eisenschmidt, E. (2009) Novice teachers’ perspectives on mentoring: The case of the Estonian induction year, Teaching and Teacher Education, p. 681-689 Nevin, A.I., Thousand, J.S. and Villa, R.A. (2009) Collaborative teaching for teacher educators-What does the research say? Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, p. 569-574 Nokes, J.D., Bullough, R.V., Egan, W.M., Birrell, J.R. and Merrell Hansen, J. (2008) The paired-placement of student teachers: An alternative to traditional placements in secondary schools. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24, 2168-2177
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