Negotiating Professional Identities in a Yearlong Residency: Narratives From Mentor Teachers

• In Event: 43.028 - Mentoring, Monitoring, and Moving Through Higher Education

Abstract

This paper examined the professional identity development of five veteran teachers who served as mentor teachers in a year-long, clinically rich teacher residency partnered between a university-based undergraduate teacher education program and schools in a southern state of the U.S. Qualitative data were collected through classroom observation and individual semi-structured interviews with each mentor teacher with a focus on their mentoring activities and the ways they enacted and described their identities. Results suggested that the participants came to new understandings and practices of mentoring as they navigated the residency and developed a multifaceted identity to mediate their learning to become mentors and teacher educators. Implications for mentor teacher professional support and engagement in teacher preparation were discussed.

Author

• Yiting Chu, University of Louisiana at Monroe