Abstract:

Teaching practicum is an indispensable part of preservice teacher education, which enables teacher candidates (TCs) to put their theoretical knowledge into practice. In this process, the importance of mentor teachers' (MTs) practices cannot be denied for TCs’ learning. According to the literature, effective mentoring practices are not solely based on teaching skills, and should be subject-specific and based on clear standards. Thus, Hudson and Peard (2006) presented a set of standards under the Five-Factor Mentoring Model for effective mentoring in mathematics teaching. Even though the importance given to mentoring in preservice teacher education has increased by the recent regulations in Turkey, the practices on the mentor education do not match current trends in the literature and there exists limited research on mentoring particularly in mathematics teaching. Therefore, there is a need to examine mentoring practices in the field of mathematics education in Turkey. Using quantitative analysis approach towards participants’ answers on open-ended question of a questionnaire on effective mathematics mentoring, this study seeks to investigate participating Turkish mathematics MTs’ typical examples of their own effective mentoring practices. In total, 30 MTs from 6 different cities (each from different region of the country) of Turkey participated in the study. Their exemplars for effective mentoring practices were analysed based on the factors of Five-Factor Mentoring Model; Personal Attributes, System Requirements, Pedagogical Knowledge, Modelling and Feedback. Under each factor, there exists a set of practices as the indicators of factors. The answers of each MT were first open coded, then these open codes were matched to the indicators of the five factors. Most of the answers were coded with more than one factor which results in number of codes more than number of MTs. In total there were 43 many codes from participating 30 MTs. In this study the findings will be reported as frequency of participants who discussed factors in their exemplars. The findings indicated that most of the participating mentors (20.4%) gave typical examples related to their mentoring practices associated with pedagogical knowledge. The percentages of MTs stating exemplars of personal attributes, modelling and feedback were 14.8%, 13.0% and 16.7%, respectively. However, there was no MT stating a practice related to system requirements as a typical example of effective mentoring practices. Considering all practices under five factors, the percentage of MTs who evaluated “making the mentee feel more confident” as an effective mentoring practice, which was aligned with personal attributes, was the highest (11.1%). In this presentation the findings will be discussed further with the regard of Turkish teacher education system and international perspective on MT practices.

References:
[1] Hudson, P., and Peard, R. (2006). Mentoring pre-service elementary teachers in mathematics teaching. Paper published in Proceedings of the EDU-COM 2006 International Conference Engagement and Empowerment: New Opportunities for Growth in Higher Education, Perth Western, Australia.

Keywords:

Secondary education, mathematics education, mentoring, mentoring practices.