[France] “Rules of Practice” in Learning to Teach: Mentoring Within a Training Collective

• In Event: International Perspectives on Mentoring in Practicum Settings

Abstract

Objectives
What professional development circumstances for collaborative work between the preservice teachers (PTs) and their mentors-- the cooperating teachers (CTs) and university supervisors (USs)--is optimal for PTs learning?

Theoretical framework
This study is based on three assumptions drawing on the basis of a theory of collective action (Wittgenstein, 1996): (1) that PTs’ ability to correctly attribute meaning to their practicum experience is conditional on learning “rules” that are grounded in the normative situated practices of the community (Chaliès et al., 2010); (2) that after particular rules are learned through ostensive teaching, a period of time for “explanation” and “critical debate” (Williams, 1999) is important so that a PTs’ early attempts can be “monitored” for their conformity (Nelson, 2008) to ensure that PTs don’t they become rule-bound but rather rule-guided in their practice; and (3) that when PTs understand the rules, they are able to expand their understanding to identify “family likenesses” (Wittgenstein, 1996) in similar circumstances and that this functions like a “measuring rod” (Wittgenstein, 1996) for assessing action.

Method
The members of the training collective volunteered for this longitudinal case study. The focus was the “training visits” held in the school. In this type of program, stable US-CT training dyads accompany PT over an entire school year, with six training sequences following the same format: observation of the PT’s classroom lesson followed by a post-lesson interview (all video recorded). Data were then collected from each of the study participants during self-confrontation interviews using the videos. The data were qualitatively analyzed to identify each participant’s activity and the articulation of their respective activity during the post-lesson interviews. The objective was to identify and formalize the rules learned and/or followed. By convention, each rule was labeled from (a) the object of the meaning attributed by the participant, (b) the set of circumstances evoked to support the meaning, and (c) the observed and/or expected results.

Results
Two key findings were established with respect to the role of the training collective in rule-learning and rule following: (1) to teach a rule it is important to make reference to the experiential circumstances that the PT encounters in the classroom. This result shows the importance of the CT and US associating all ostensive teaching with explanations drawing on the PT’s initial attempts at rule-following; and (2) to facilitate the first attempts at rule-following it is critical to monitor and articulate the PT’s conformity to the rule and for the CT and US to “lends their professional intention” to the rule.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study
This case study presents key perspectives for mentoring in order to optimize PT training. It also points up the need for further studies to more clearly delineate the circumstances in which CTs and USs can collaborate to present and give examples of work rules and to monitor how they are followed by PTs in the specific circumstances of the classroom.

Author

• Sébastien Chalies, University of Toulouse