The Influence of Mentoring Roles in Preservice Teachers' Professional Knowledge Acquisition

• In Event: 21.061 - MTCC Roundtable Session Five
  In Roundtable Session: 21.061-9 - Mentoring in Teacher Education: Preservice

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that mentoring conversations help pre-service teachers (PSTs) to recognize and explicate their developing professional knowledge. However, it is yet unclear what kind of knowledge PSTs acquire during those dialogic interactions. This study explores how specific mentoring roles influence PSTs’ learning from practice. A mixed methodology was applied with a focus on examining mentoring conversations in relation to the MERID-model through turn-taking analysis and Propositional Discourse Analysis (PDA). Mentors tended to use a more directive mentoring role and, consequently, the PSTs’ acquisition of knowledge from their experience was low. Encourager and initiator roles are needed to support the elicitation of inferential knowledge (i.e., rules and artefacts) in contrast to just situated specific knowledge (i.e., recalls and appraisals).

Authors

• Juanjo Mena, Universidad de Salamanca

• Paul Hennissen, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences