Mentoring pre-service teachers’ reflective practices towards producing teaching outcomes

Abstract

Reflective practice appears crucial for professional growth; making connections between mentoring practices and mentees’ reflections may assist mentors to guide reflective processes. This interpretive study initially explores common processes of reflective thinking in the literature. It then uses a mentoring feedback framework with six practices to collect and analyse video, audio and observational data around two mentor-mentee case studies with experienced primary teachers as the mentors and pre-service teachers as the mentees. The findings showed that these mentors articulated expectations for teaching, modelled reflective practices to their mentees, and facilitated time and opportunities for advancing teaching practices, which influenced the mentees’ reflective practices and their pedagogical development. This study demonstrated that the mentors’ personal attributes influenced the mentoring relationship and the mentees’ abilities to critically reflect on their practices.

Keywords

• Mentoring
• pre-service teacher
• mentor
• feedback
• reflective practice