Thematic and Interactional Asymmetries in Productive Mentoring Dialogues

• In Event: 58.050 - Teacher Discussions of Problems of Practice: Conceptualizing and Investigating "Productive" Pedagogical Discourse

Abstract

In teacher education mentor teachers’ dialogues with prospective teachers in school-based practica are considered to be pivotal (Hobson et al. 2009). Based on empirical research on mentoring dialogues Hennissen et al. (2008) proposed the MERID-model (MEntor (teacher) Roles In Dialogues) to conceptualize the behavior of mentor teachers. It suggests mentoring dialogues to be analyzed with respect to two dimensions: (1) The extent to which the topics of the mentoring dialogue are introduced by the mentor teacher (active vs. reactive input). (2) The degree to which the mentor teacher steers the course of the dialogue related to a particular topic (directive vs. non-directive). Based on how the thematic input and the steering of the dialogue depart from a symmetric relationship between mentor and student the MERID-model stipulates four roles: Imperator, Advisor, Initiator and Encourager. For a sample of dialogues from primary education in the Netherlands Crasborn et al. (2011) found the largest number of mentors to take on the role of an imperator: The mentor more often introduces topics than the student teacher and the mentor displays a directive interactional style. The MERID-model, however, has not yet been researched in relation to teacher learning outcomes.
Our objective was to analyze dialogues of Swiss mentor teachers based on the MERID-model. In addition, all dialogues have been analyzed with respect to evidence for teacher learning. Linking the analysis of key features of dialogues with an analysis of teacher learning outcome allows to address the following question: Do thematic units in mentoring dialogues with evidence for teacher learning differ from thematic units without such evidence with respect to interactional directiveness and thematic dominance of the mentors?
Our sample consists of 21 mentor teachers on grades 7, 8 or 9, each assisting a student teacher. All students taught three mathematics lessons on circumference and area of rectangles based on their own materials. For these lessons 61 mentoring dialogues have been videotaped (23 hours). Video-based analyses, including the transcription and coding of all recordings were conducted with MAXQDA. All coding reached sufficient reliabilities. A total of 783 thematic units were identified. These units were coded with respect to directiveness and dominance of thematic input based on the MERID-Model. The coding of teacher learning looked for evidence of student teachers’ intentions to make specific changes in teaching or higher order reflection including arguments or explanations (Bakkenes et al. 2010). A total of 243 thematic units with evidence for teacher learning were identified. The results based on the MERID-model show that the mentoring dialogues in our sample were highly unbalanced in terms of thematic and interactional control with mentors in the dominant role of the imperator. These asymmetries, however, turned out to be significantly lower for thematic units that include productive talk with student teachers verbalizing specific intentions for change or higher order reflection. These differences suggest that the emergence of productive talk with student teachers is associated with mentoring dialogues in which the thematic and interactional asymmetries are shifting to a less asymmetric state.

Authors

• Kathrin Futter, University of Teacher Education Schwyz

• Fritz C. Staub, University of Zurich