- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1758264
- First Name Karin
- Last Name Lohwasser
- Institution University of California, Santa Barbara
- Role/Position Principal Investigator
- Workshop Category Track 4: Noyce Research
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological
- Target Audience Evaluators/Education Researchers, Higher Education Institution Administrators, Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, Project PIs / Co-PIs / Other Faculty/Staff
- Topics Effectiveness of Program Graduates
- Session Length 45 minutes
- Additional Presenter(s)
Caroline Hadley, hadleyce@uw.edu, University of Washington, Research assistant;
Soo-Yean Shim, sys7829@uw.edu, University of Washington, Research assistant
Goals
1. Participants will learn about 6 high-leverage mentoring practices that support preservice teachers’ effective professional learning in field placements.
2. Participants will get familiar with a variety of resources and materials (e.g., feedback tools, mentoring videos, and trajectories of preservice teachers’ experiences) developed by our research team for supporting mentor teachers and preservice teachers during field placements.
3. Participants will discuss potential strengths and limitations of the resources/materials and think about how they can use them in their own contexts.
Evidence
We have created tools and resources in response to what we found in a previous study mapping the experiences of 65 preservice teachers (DUE-1540678). We have also examined the literature around the clinical experience, the roles of mentors, the nature of feedback, and novices’ need for structured support over time. Our findings from the prior project showed inequities in the preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn about teaching, planning, and assessment in their field placements. For example, 63% of these novices never got to participate in regular co-planning with their mentors. Some novices took the lead in planning for lessons as early as December, while others had to wait until mid-February, and some never had this opportunity at all. Similarly, with teaching, the duration of novices taking the lead ranged from more than five months to as little as three weeks. In our current study, we created resources that provide just-in-time support and direction to both the preservice teachers and their mentors and we are examining the effects they have on preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn. Through surveys and interviews with mentors and candidates, we are seeing that several of these resources–e.g., trajectories of preservice teachers’ experiences, newsletters– are taken up and found valuable by the teaching partners.
Proposal
What makes mentoring effective for preservice teachers who are just learning to teach? In this workshop, we introduce a system of supports (practices, tools, and resources) that can promote productive partnerships between preservice teachers and mentor teachers during field placements. In the first part of this workshop (15 minutes), we will introduce six effective mentoring practices for supporting preservice teachers, which are 1) making thinking explicit, 2) modeling the work of teaching, 3) pre-briefing and debriefing, 4) co-planning, 5) co-teaching, and 6) analyzing student work together. Participants will share their experiences of mentoring and/or supporting mentoring and discuss the six practices based on their experiences. In the second part of the workshop (20 minutes), we will share tools and resources that we have developed for supporting productive collaboration between preservice teachers and mentors. These include a website with mentoring resources (http://mentorteachers.org/), short video guides and protocols for mentoring practices, trajectories for preservice teachers’ learning opportunities, and feedback tools that mentors and candidates can use together in classrooms. Participants will be invited to try out these tools and resources. In the third part (15 minutes), we will invite participants to think about how they can use these supports in their own contexts and will discuss potential strengths and limitations of the materials. For the last part (10 minutes), we will open up discussions to talk about broader implications for supporting the collaboration between preservice teachers and mentor teachers and possible tensions that might arise.
