Is Experience the Best Teacher? Extensive Clinical Practice and Mentor Teachers’ Perspectives on Effective Teaching

• In Event: Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Mentoring in Urban Contexts

Abstract

Current calls for intensive clinical practice shift key responsibility for new teachers’ development from the university to mentor teachers. This means it is important to understand how mentor teachers define effective teaching, notions that they will likely convey through their mentoring of student teachers. This paper presents a study of mentor teachers working with residents in an urban teacher residency program. Mentor teachers articulated moments of effective mentoring, as well as their own strengths and weaknesses as mentors. Implicit in their descriptions of effective mentoring were their perspectives on effective teaching. These perspectives offer insight into the challenges of clinically rich teacher preparation, and raise dilemmas that demand consideration given moves to teacher preparation more deeply rooted in field practice.

Authors

• A. Lin Goodwin, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Rachel Roegman, Purdue University

• Emilie N. Reagan, University of New Hampshire