[Spain] Eliciting Student Teachers’ Practical Knowledge Through Mentoring Conversations

• In Event: International Perspectives on Mentoring in Practicum Settings

Abstract

Objectives
We attempt to examine the practical knowledge of Student Teachers (STs) when reflecting on their practice in mentoring conversations. Also, we seek whether adopting critical thinking stances help them to be more precise in recalling their teaching activities.

Perspectives
Mentoring has been largely demonstrated as a way of improving STs’ communication skills (Moor et al.,2005), of giving emotional and psychological support (Clarke & Jarvis-Selinger, 2005) and scaffolding deeper levels of reflection (Ward & McCotter,2004). Regarding the last, it is assumed that guiding STs through critical awareness - i.e. providing explanations for events - will be more effective for scrutinizing teaching action than teachers’ habitual or intuitive accounts of events (Hatton & Smith, 1995). However the foremost purpose for reflection and mentoring lies in creating a discursive platform to elicit and construct professional knowledge (Chalies et al.,2004) ofall profession-related insights, concepts and pedagogical strategies that represent practice.

Methods
One hundred and four STs participated in a two-year long study in which they learned about problem solving processes and critical thinking in classrooms. They did their practicum in 73 schools and wrote a report about their teaching under the supervision of their collaborative teachers (CTs). Furthermore, 10 STs discussed one taught class-lesson with their CTs. The mentoring dialogues were recorded.

Data sources and analysis
Reports and transcribed dialogues were content-analyzed following propositional analysis (Kintsch &Van-Dijk,1978). The analysis focuses on the identification of the kind of statements made by STs sorted as appraisals, rules and artefacts (Mena, Sanchez & Tillema, 2009). The reports were analyzed in three steps: (a) Selection of propositions; (b) Grouping of propositions into themes; and (c) Theme categorization. Transcriptions were divided into episodes, cycles and propositions (Wells, 2001). Inter-rater reliability coefficients ranged from κ =.69 to .94. Each proposition was coded as 0=imprecise or 1=precise. Chi square tests determined whether there were differences between the kind of knowledge generated and its precision.

Results
Overall 1,520 propositions were identified in the reports and 886 in dialogues which referred to self-learning statements. The findings show that critical reflection does not always guarantee the production of more precise practical knowledge (χ2 = 1.65; p>0.05). The differences were found in the sort of knowledge that emerged in reports and dialogues. Whereas in the first STs focused on appraising their practice (episode oriented-gathering experience) when guided by mentors they tended to codify experiences into principles (skill oriented; acquiring expertise). It was also found that redescribing practice into rules and artefacts was regarded to be more informative (χ2 =29.04; p<0.05).

Significance
Mentoring focuses on characterizing teaching practices as related to domains of expertise, to interpersonal relationships and to knowledge development (Orland-Barack, 2010). The main interest of our study relies on disclosing the contents that come up from mentoring conversations and seek if there are ways that could be more supportive to improve teachers’ practice. This in-practice knowledge needs to be researched in order to construct a knowledge for-practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle,1999).

Authors

• Juan-José Mena Marcos, Universidad de Salamanca

• Maria-Luisa García Rodríguez, Universidad de Salamanca