MENTOR’S REFLECTION DURING THE INTERNSHIP FOR ELEMENTARY SCIENCE TEACHING

This study explored a mentor’s reflection during the internship for elementary science teaching. The collaborative action research was used to improve the quality of mentoring. A professor of a teacher college and four mentors worked in a group for two years to explore the mentoring situation and problems, to design and to tryout different strategies accompany with different inventories or guides for solution, to use professional standards for science teaching and mentoring to guide mentoring, and to implement self-directed mentoring in the last research cycle. Researchers collected the field notes of meetings, mentor interviews, and mentoring journals to explore one key mentor’s reflection and changes. Triangulation was used to enhance the validity. It was found that the mentor’s reflection foci were on his mentees’ classroom management and pedagogical content knowledge. The theorizing reflection was dominant. The research group interactions and the challenges from mentees were the major factors inducing the mentor’s higher level reflection. The mentor gradually made the meaning, set the standard for mentoring competence, and built his own mentoring strategies and style.