Preparation mentors teachers pdf

Log In Sign Up. Download Free PDF. Lily Orland-Barak. Download PDF. A short summary of this paper. Drawing on extant research and conceptualization, including my own research on mentoring for teacher induction, this article addresses three interrelated questions: What are the central tasks of mentors in promoting effective induction of novice teachers at the workplace?

What do mentors need to know to perform these tasks? What kind of professional frameworks for learning to mentor? Such kind of mentoring is, thus, attentive to discursive tensions between ideologies, rituals, values, belief systems and behaviors that surge amongst the various players involved. Breaking from experience during induction Consider the above excerpts selected from stories in a published booklet of stories written by novice teachers during their internship year Orland-Barak et al.

As they become socialized both into the school culture and norms Zeichner, and into their respective professional teaching communities, novices experience the socializing pressures in their early professional development Kelchtermans, due to the fact that schools generally contain multiple ideologies and social groups. At this background, the importance of formally sustaining the first years of teaching as a unique learning phase for teachers has gained significant acknowledgement throughout the years, as more countries have initiated induction programs Long et al.

Upon termination of their studies, all new teachers must undergo a one-year internship referred to as induction , as a requisite for obtaining a teacher certificate from the Ministry of Education and Culture.

This period is accompanied by mentoring systems and professional development institutes for new teachers. The national induction program is based on workplace collegial learning, mentoring and assessment Israeli Ministry of Education, With this focus in mind and based mainly on a synthesis of my own research and conceptualization of mentoring for teacher induction, I address the following three interrelated questions: 1 What are the central tasks of mentors in promoting effective induction of novice teachers at the workplace?

Examining their interrelations can help us to crystallize the particularities of mentors' roles and functions, as called for by the unique challenges of mentoring teachers at their novice stage of development and by the features of induction within a particular workplace setting. Such examination can inform, in turn, on the central tasks of teacher educators and educational policy makers for facilitating effective mentoring programs in in-service teacher education.

They can also direct the central tasks of educational researchers to create research agendas that would investigate the processes and outcomes of such programs. To begin addressing the question, let us first briefly consolidate some core ideas about mentoring as evidenced in the teacher education research scholarship. As critical friends, mentors are bestowed with the role of supporting the professional development of beginning.

Hobson et al. These different approaches range from technical, strategic, approaches to mentoring rooted in the early 80's to more recent dialogical, socio-cultural, discursive views of mediation in mentoring and mentored learning Orland-Barak, The latter approaches emphasize contextual aspects of mentoring relationships related to cultural, ideological and identity aspects Zeichner, According to the approach, the focus of assistance might range from granting emotional support and sustaining relationships, to providing cognitive challenge, feedback and scaffolding, mediating between different stakeholders, sometimes supervising and assessing teacher performance [or all] Orland-Barak et al.

Relational aspects of mentoring also attend to how mentors position themselves in their own schools, in mentoring dyads and in collaborative partnerships Bullough et al. The relational focus of mentoring is particularly relevant for sensitively attending to the emergent tensions and contradictions that novices grapple with during induction.

What are these tensions? This is the focus of the next section. It is also vastly agreed that although there is a certain progressive continuum of stages from novice to expert, teachers move backward and forward between phases during their working lives, due to different personal, contextual and social factors such as taking on a new role, changing schools, or teaching a new group age or a new syllabus.

These changes inevitably result in development disruption, at least temporarily Day, ; Zeichner, We also know that pre-service and initial teaching appear to constitute a continuous developmental stage during which novices acquire knowledge of pupils, use that knowledge to modify and reconstruct their personal images of self as teacher, and develop standard procedural routines that integrate classroom management, pedagogy and subject matter instruction Hashweh, ; Wilson, Misalignments between the state of being a novice and the nature of the workplace.

Let us now consider a recent study that illustrates some of the above challenges and tensions that novices experience during induction as related to the socio- cultural features of school contexts in the Arab society in Israel. Findings point to complex relations between cultural and social characteristics of the Arab society in Israel and novices' learning within the workplace.

The intensity of these concerns seems to be rooted in cultural norms of the society which are often transferred to the structures of school settings such as hierarchical roles, status, reputation, respect and authority.

For example, in their accounts of learning, novices expressed intensified concerns with having to prove themselves to other colleagues, which can be interpreted as being rooted in the sociocultural features of Arab schools where teachers' reputation plays a key role in their status in the broader community Abu Saad, Rather, novices often described the entrance into the schoolteachers' community as a hardship that operated as an obstacle which eventually hindered their learning to teach.

To this end, our participants frequently reported perceiving colleagues as judgmental and were cautious about sharing and consulting with them. Thus, most novices described their induction as a solitary process, and they report seeking advice informally from colleagues whom they professionally or personally trusted, not necessarily from the same school such as seeking advice among family members or friends who teach in other institutions.

In addition, the Arab familial close lifestyle increases the availability of teachers within closer social circle outside the workplace. Novices can, then, seek advice on an almost daily basis within the family or friend circles, as safer spaces for consulting without being judged. Another intensified concern related to the expectation of new teachers to teach in novel ways, some of which they had never experienced as students.

This is especially challenging for novices who were educated in the Arab conservative educational system through traditional teaching methods. To cope with these challenges and impasses, novices in our study report to have broken with what they perceived as a solitary experience of induction and compensated for the absence of collegial support by seeking active support for useful learning resources outside the workplace.

These findings have led us to the conclusion that it is important to develop forms of mentoring assistance that can allow novices to recognize their own learning strategies and how these can promote their own learning and socialization when the contextual features of the workplace cannot fully sustain their process of induction.

Our findings also raise questions about standardized induction programs for contexts such as the present study, where most of our participants feel that formal mentored learning spaces at school do not manage to provide safe spaces for sharing experience given the hierarchical distribution of roles and norms of interaction that characterize the teaching workplace context. We suggest that policy makers take into account cultural aspects of different communities, especially the marginalized ones, and examine the compatibility of policies with different contexts.

As for learning resources and strategies, our study suggests that novices ought to be encouraged to identify their entering perceptions towards the schools they are inducted into, as we found that novices' perceptions of colleagues and school culture constitute a major factor in the way novices utilize workplace resources. The dissonant character of the novice-workplace encounter, including complexities that emerge which are rooted in socio-cultural aspects of the induction process such as the above case raise the question of how mentoring can attend to these challenges during induction.

What are, then, the central tasks for mentors during induction called for by these challenges? Deliberatively, in any one mentoring interaction, mentors can appropriate different strategies according to the areas of growth and foci of concern that need to be attended Orland-Barak et al. Taken together, the above suggested tasks can offer a core of mentoring practices geared to assisting novices during induction.

The question remains: How can mentors need to be prepared for these tasks? What do they need to know? The above tasks require preparing mentors for thinking and performing adaptively in order to flexibly function within and across different mentoring models during mentoring relationships and interactions.

This calls for acquiring competencies of adaptive expertise, in terms of cognitive abilities and analogical problem solving in order to make sense of the context-specificity of knowledge and of the particular characteristics of novel situations Carbonell et al.

Adaptive expertise allows individuals to perform at a high level in the face of changing job tasks or work routines. Taken to our context of mentoring novices, this would imply adapting themselves to new tasks and strategies based on mentoring models that they might be less familiar with. While in earlier work Orland-Barak, I emphasized the generic discursive attributes of mentoring, recent study has extended this view to include the social roles that mentors attribute to subject matter and how these direct their actual mentoring practices.

Learning how to conduct mentoring conversations grounded in relational agency can encourage novices to discuss openly their personal histories and understandings of teaching, what drives their interpretations and decisions in classroom contexts and their decisions about students and curricula in relation to the wider purposes of schooling Edwards, One might wonder, however, whether fostering this kind of agentic mentoring might clash with the pragmatic needs of being a novice as elaborated in early section.

In developing relational agency, mentors learn to understand how ideologies, rituals, values, belief systems, and behaviors play out in mentoring interactions amongst various participants coming from different cultural, ethnic religious backgrounds and educational orientations Orland- Barak, Such knowledge of the complex interpersonal, social and cultural professional webs is of paramount importance for promoting a culturally responsive mentoring agenda e.

This implies developing an affirming attitude towards novices who differ from the dominant culture, and a commitment to act as agents of change with an understanding of the cultural and political forces that shape the school contexts within which they function. In general, the recognition of the need to promote professional development frameworks that prepare mentors for assisting new teachers is not new in the teacher education research literature.

Several studies that I conducted with colleagues explore frameworks for learning to mentor which focus on how mentors learn to construe their new role by articulating differences and similarities between their practice as teachers of children and as mentors of teachers Orland-Barak, a ; on the regressions and progressions that play out when experienced professionals take up an additional role, such as in the passage from teaching to mentoring Orland- Barak et al.

Formalizing frameworks for learning to mentor in the context of in-service teacher education programs carries the important message that mentoring should be recognized as a professional practice which requires a formal background of academic and professional studies as a requisite for selection. This formal process of professionalization would culminate in an official recognition of the role as part of the ladder of promotion for teachers within the educational system.

To this end, mentors can be invited to document their experiences through portfolios, cases, journals and stories of critical incidents in their practices with novices. These are brought to the course sessions, constituting working texts through which connections across contexts and theoretical notions are made. These frameworks of participation allow them to share their own stories of practice as teachers and as former mentees, through which they can collaboratively reflect and reframe their thinking and possible misconceptions of practice.

During and for all teachers to improve teaching practice. Teaching at the Then the novices were assisted by their mentors to boundary of acceptable practice: What is a new teacher implement the "data not guesswork" strategies in their mentor to do? Journal of Teacher Education, 55 5 , classrooms.

One mathematics teacher was sent to attend a summer Donahue, D. Learning with and learning from: reciprocity in service The teacher introduced the program to others who used the learning in teacher education. Other teachers enrolled in a Jenkins, L.

Data not guesswork, graduate level classroom-based action research course and Bozman, MT: Train the Trainer http: used the results of their research to improve teaching and IIwww. These teachers then disseminated their findings at Robinson, J. A regional and national conferences. Mentoring is effective when used as part of professional Rodriguez, F. However, it requires long-term commitment A.

The frame and tapestry: teacher. Three recurring problems revolve around the Standards-based reform and professional development. MSTEP implementation. They were teacher turnover, the In L. Darling-Hammond and G. Sykes Eds. San Francisco, CA: Jossey- building required among different parties. The program is now firmly embedded in the schools and has withstood the departure of a major administrator. During the next academic year, MSTEP will be expanded to four schools, with the long-range plan of doubling the number of participating schools each year.

Read Autumn's Story. The PEBC Teacher Residency is currently accepting applications for urban and rural cohorts for the school year! Teacher Preparation.

Other content area. Teacher Pathways. Discover which Pathway is right for you. Vicki Zakrzewski. Residency Alumni Facts. More Resources for Future Teachers.

Create an account today and immediately access resources including: An interactive application checklist to keep you on track. Residency Year Key Roles. Through its authentic, performance-based and educative approach, edTPA helps develop and assess the effectiveness of aspiring teachers.

A kindergarten teacher does not communicate the same way as a middle school math teacher. Current course-completion tests of subject-area knowledge alone may not comprehensively reflect the realities and authenticity of what it takes for a beginning teacher to be effective. This cycle of planning, instruction, and assessment mirrors what real teachers do day-to-day to ensure their students learn.

For questions about edTPA, please email Mrs. Why edTPA? Using edTPA. National Cooperating Teachers. Mentor Information Form. Personal Information Change Form. Residency Clemmer College Mentors Research suggests that the mentor teacher serves as an especially influential person in the professional development of the residency candidate. The mentor teacher assists the residency candidate in the following ways: In becoming a caring professional Become familiar with the mentor section of the Educator Preparation Handbook.

Provide class rolls, textbooks, etc. Prepare to receive the residency candidate by adjusting the classroom situation as necessary.

Establish a supportive climate of acceptance, enthusiasm, and open communication with the residency candidate to ensure a positive relationship and successful experience. Communicate frequently before problems escalate and work with the residency candidate to remedy problems promptly. Generate the necessary faculty cooperation for school-wide acceptance of the residency candidate. Help the residency candidate to develop a positive perception of the profession, a commitment to teaching, and a realistic concept of the total responsibilities of a teacher.

In becoming an effective practitioner Discuss with the residency candidate the decision making process and alternatives as they relate to planning, implementing instruction, and managing the classroom. Model effective teaching techniques and behaviors: - Accommodations for learner differences - Classroom management techniques - Professional behavior.

Instruct the residency candidate in methods, technology, and strategies used in the classroom. Provide opportunities for the residency candidate to observe varied teaching styles and methods. Work with the residency candidate using co-teaching models.