Mentor Integration in Teacher Education

• In Event: Mentoring as Professional Practice: Studies of Mentoring in Teacher Education

Abstract

This paper explores factors aimed at supporting the integration of school mentors into teacher education programs. Mentor integration, as understood in this paper, is related to the terms recognition, identification, and equality in the school mentor role: how do school mentors identify themselves as teacher educators, and how do teacher education institutions recognize their role as teacher educators?

Teacher education has a central role to play in encouraging dialogue around teacher professionalism as it brings together different target groups: school-based mentors, university-based teachers, and teacher students. The raison d’être of teacher training in school is that pre-service teachers should be prepared for a working life as teachers; it is intended to provide the initial basis for continuous professional development in the teaching profession. Mentoring in pre-service teacher training is regarded as one of the main factors that contribute to teacher professional development (Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Hobson, Ashby, Malderez, & Tomlinson, 2009).

However, despite the university and school both having a key role to play in teacher education, they have tended to be seen as two separate learning arenas (Darling-Hammond & Lieberman, 2012; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012; Timperley, 2011). The criticism of teacher education by pre-service teachers, school administrators, and politicians has revolved around the irrelevance of teacher education to the real life of the classroom (Korthagen, 2010; Korthagen & Wubbels, 1995). Different kinds of partnerships have thus become one of the concepts used in seeking to give schools and teacher education institutions a more balanced role in the training of teachers (authors and colleagues, 2017) (Haugaløkken & Ramberg, 2007; Lillejord & Børte, 2016). Furlong et al. (2000) and Darling-Hammond (2006) argue that teacher education needs to form strong relations with agents inside and outside academia, especially in the practice field.

This paper addresses attempts in different teacher education contexts to close the gap between school-based knowledge and academic-based knowledge in relation to school-based mentors in teacher education. Hobson and Malderez (2013) identify some main reasons for the failure of school-based mentoring at three different levels of the mentoring relationship: the personal level, the institutional level, and the national policy level. This paper addresses the problems at both the relational and institutional levels in the context of teacher mentor integration. Using questionnaires from mentors in teacher training in three different teacher education programs at two universities in Norway, it presents predictors of mentor integration in teacher education programs as one (of several) response to the challenges. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is performed, and we relate the discussion to theories about internalization and the regulation of identities (Ryan & Deci, 2003) and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). We suggest that the concept of relationships provides a framework for understanding what factors support mentor integration in teacher education programs. The research question is: which personal and institutional factors are associated with mentor integration in teacher education?

Authors

• Lise Vikan Sandvik, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology

• Trond Solhaug, Norwegian University of Sceince and Technology

• Eyvind Elstad, University of Oslo

• Knut-Andreas Christophersen