Effects of mentoring on teacher mentors' development of expertise in teaching: Some experiences from Hong Kong

Effects of mentoring on teacher mentors' development of expertise in teaching: Some experiences from Hong Kong

• Che, Man Wai The Hong Kong Institution of Education

2008

• M Teachers & Education for Teachers
  • MA Professional Education for Teachers

Teacher Education Mentoring in Education - Hong Kong Teachers - Training of - Hong Kong

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Post-Secondary Education

Mentoring has been seen as an ongoing effort to professionalize teaching in teacher education since the 1980s. It is commonly believed that collaborating mentors and student teachers can benefit through the dynamics of school-based mentoring. Reflectivity is said to be one mechanism by which changes occur both in the student teacher and the mentor.
Conventional studies on the reciprocal effects of mentoring on mentors have usually used survey and follow-up interviews, after mentors have completed the mentoring process, as the main methods of data collection. Hence, there is scant literature about how mentors' professional growth develops during mentoring and what factors sustain or hinder such development. The present study aims to investigate the effect of mentoring on mentors' development of expertise in teaching.
Ethnographic research methods incorporating direct observation and interviews were employed in studying four mentors' mentoring practices. These mentors are English and Chinese language teachers who acted as mentors in 2005 for Year 4 students of the Bachelor of Education programme at The University of Hong Kong. An analytical framework developed from the literature is used to interpret and illustrate the effects of mentoring practices on their development of expertise in teaching, in terms of reflection, practical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.
The results indicate that student teachers' practices in learning to teach become an object about which mentors engage in reflection. Reflection through conversations plays a key role in experienced teachers' development of expertise in teaching. Such reflection requires three kinds of capacities: theorizing practical knowledge, pedagogical reasoning and collaborative inquiry.
Relationships that are reflective and collaborative, involving co-inquiry about teaching and learning, have been found to be pivotal in mentors' development of expertise in teaching. This study demonstrates three possible conditions for modes of mentors' reflectivity: (1) reflection as inspecting and assessing the conventions of teaching practice; (2) reflection as theorizing practical experience; (3) reflection as inquiring from and posing questions on existing knowledge about teaching and learning. Of these, the last appears to be the most effective in developing the mentors overall expertise in teaching.
Such reflectivity was found to be bound up in the mentors' conceptions of mentoring and learning to teach. If mentors conceived that a mentor knows best and that their wisdom of practice should be followed and seldom questioned, they attempted to directly impart their knowledge or experiences to the student teachers, without questioning it themselves. As a result their professional competence as a teacher was simply taken for granted. Whereas, other mentors conceived that the professional competence of a teacher has to be reflected upon with critical reasoning by their student teachers. In the reflection process, the student teachers were stimulated to be active partners, reflecting together with the mentors on their teaching practice. As a result mentors were themselves learners and mentoring led to their personal and professional development.
The significant findings merit attention and suggest the need to prepare mentors to be aware of opportunities for learning through the mentoring processes.

PhD

University of Hong Kong

Hong Kong

• English

Dissertation Theses

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/d4ee8a76

2010-12-16