Virtual Mentoring in the Practicum: Teachers Learning Together in the Third Space

• In Event: 35.063 - Mentoring Practices: What Works, for Whom, and Where

Abstract

Effective mentoring is crucial in helping student-teachers negotiate the tensions during the field experience (Bullough, 2012; Ganser, 1997; Hudson, 2013; Orland-Barak, 2010b). However, previous studies have found that the theory-practice dilemma is acutely felt by student-teachers in practicum schools in Hong Kong, largely due to hierarchical school cultures and untrained, and often unwilling mentors (Mann & Tang, 2012; Yuan, 2016). All these factors suggest that there is a need to broaden the research on mentoring to consider the learning for teacher candidates and mentors too. More research is also needed to examine mentoring spaces in which the hierarchical structures and inherent power roles associated with mentoring are made less visible.
In 2016, as part of a larger research project, the author created an informal social semiotic third space (Zeichner, 2010) for in-service TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) in the Hong Kong community to provide an additional layer of informal mentoring to help TESL teacher candidates to negotiate tensions and challenges associated with transitioning from learning in university to teaching in practicum schools. The mentees were all undergraduate English major teacher candidates from a Bachelor of Education Programme from one tertiary institution who were about to begin their practicum. Virtual mentoring groups were created in which 2-3 in-service TESL teachers from different ethnic, cultural and diverse school backgrounds mentored 2-3 student-teachers collaboratively during each 8-week practicum block. Two different virtual platforms were used: web-based forum and instant messaging. The virtual mentors themselves were also completing a part-time teacher education programme in the same institution, thus they had insider knowledge of TESL and they understood the demands of the undergraduate teaching practicum. They had joined the virtual mentoring project as an experiential learning opportunity.

Qualitative inquiry principles and research methods were adopted to understand the meanings and significance of actions from the perspective of those involved and within their natural settings. Online mentoring conversations and semi-structured interviews were analysed using discourse analysis to uncover what and how virtual mentors and mentees learnt from each other (Gee, 2005; Kvale, 2007).

Findings suggest that the creation of a virtual third space for mentoring offered mentors and mentees opportunities to disclose ‘difficult’ teaching dilemmas, which led to new understandings of TESL teaching, including how teachers can attend to marginalising teaching practices in Hong Kong schools. Drawing on the theory of critical pedagogy in language teaching (Giroux, 2005; Nieto, 2009), I will discuss how the diverse backgrounds of the virtual mentors and mentees became social and cultural resources for learning and how the teachers supported each other to adopt more culturally responsive TESL practices.

To date, there has been limited qualitative research in the field of mentoring that offers rich and deep insights into how mentors and mentees’ learn together as professionals in different sociocultural context (Long et al., 2012). The study makes a new contribution to the field of mentoring by highlighting how third space can offer collaborative learning opportunities for teachers in contexts where face-to-face mentoring may be problematic or not available.

Author

• Cheri Chan, University of Hong Kong