An exploration on mentoring process in ELT practicum: Perspectives of student teachers, cooperating teachers, and supervisors

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Eğitim Bilimleri Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2016

Öğrenci: ÖZGE AYDIN

Danışman: AHMET OK

Özet:

The present study aimed to investigate mentoring practices by focusing on the fulfillment of mentoring roles-responsibilities, and problems encountered in practicum from the viewpoints of three actors, who are namely student teachers, supervisors, and mentors. The participants of the study were 194 student teachers who were senior students from English Language Teaching departments at three state universities in Ankara, ten supervisors who actively supervised Practice Teaching course at the above-mentioned departments in Spring 2016 term, and ten cooperating teachers with whom the supervisors cooperated with at practice schools. A sixty-item instrument developed by the researcher was utilized to collect quantitative data from student teachers after the factor and reliability analyses had been conducted. Supervisors and mentors were interviewed via semi-structured individual interview schedules also developed by the researcher. Statistical Package v for the Social Sciences was used to obtain descriptive statistics, and the interviewees responses were analyzed via content analysis. The findings of the study indicated that the student teachers agreed on the fulfillment of their mentors’ protector, facilitator-supporter, observer-feedback provider, and friend-colleague roles whereas they partially agreed on the fulfillment of trainer-informant, role model, assessor-evaluator, collaborator, and reflector roles. Moreover, the actors’ perspectives on problems regarding practicum were defined under five themes: student teacher related, supervisor related, mentor related, practice school related, and practicum process related problems. The findings of this study can make contributions to planning-implementation stages of the practicum process, and help teacher education institutions improve mentoring practices with the detected problems and proposed recommendations.