Learning to teach: mentoring and tutoring student teachers

Introduction

This course introduces the roles of the mentor and tutor in supporting student teachers. It explores the similarities and distinctions between these two roles, the need to balance student teacher support with appropriate levels of challenge and some commonly used approaches for supporting student teachers development.

Student teachers may be supported by a mentor in school and a tutor at university or by mentors and tutors who are both based within school contexts. The aim of this course is to highlight how student teachers benefit from the involvement of two professionals with distinct, but different, roles.

Supporting beginner teachers, whether as a mentor or a tutor, can be a professionally rewarding experience, despite the time and energy involved. It provides opportunities to share good practice, and to connect with the latest research and developments in both subject pedagogy and broader educational practice. It provides an opportunity to engage in critically reflective dialogues about practice, with both the beginner teacher and others who support them.

For many, mentoring or tutoring is a valuable CPD opportunity as well as providing important evidence on a CV of involvement in the latest educational developments. This course is underpinned by the belief that, from the student teacher’s point of view, both roles are important in supporting and guiding them, wherever the people concerned are based, and it aims to explore the differences and similarities between these two roles.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you will be able to:

• understand the differences between tutoring and mentoring in Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

• consider the similarities and differences between tutoring and mentoring pedagogy

• develop a range of strategies for supporting beginner teachers.

1 What is the difference?

The roles of mentor and tutor vary between courses, national systems and school contexts. For the purposes of this course, the term ‘mentor’ is used to indicate the person (usually a member of the school staff) who works with the beginner teacher on a daily basis in the school context supporting their development while on placement.

The role of ‘tutor’ may include providing academic support, if the student is studying for an academic qualification, and visiting the school to observe teaching in order to moderate and coordinate grading with the school mentor. It may also involve leading tutorials or seminars that help students to link theory and practice. The tutor is unlikely to be from within the immediate school context (i.e. from the same department) and may be from a Higher Education Institution, external teacher education provider or from a different school within an alliance of schools.

Fundamental to the success of Initial Teacher Education is the collaboration and coordination of these two roles in providing a coherent experience for the beginner teacher. However, the distinct nature of the two roles and what they bring to the student teacher, require separate consideration. To help do this, it is useful to keep in mind the student experience.

Maldrez et al. (2007), through their large sample of student teachers, identified four key themes that underpin the process of learning to be a teacher:

1. the concept of teacher identity or sense of self as teacher
2. the importance of potential and actual relationships with a number of ‘significant others’
3. the role of emotion in student teachers’ reasons for becoming a teacher and (more strongly) in their accounts of their early experiences in schools
4. student teachers’ concerns about the relevance of ITP (Individual Training Plan) course provision.

Mentors and tutors both have a role in supporting student teachers in these aspects, but in sometimes quite different ways, as we will begin to explore throughout this course.

2 Mentor role

The mentor has a crucial role in Initial Teacher Education. Essentially, the mentor’s responsibilities for a student teacher are to:

• act as a positive role model
• enthuse the student teacher about their subject and subject pedagogy so that student teachers, in turn, will contribute to enthusing pupils of all abilities, aptitudes and backgrounds to want to learn, enjoy and achieve
• help the student teacher to understand something about the context of the school and how this affects practice
• help the student teacher to develop in a planned way using an appropriate balance of support and challenge determined by the student teacher’s progress
• be familiar with the aims and expectations of the ITE curriculum
• understand how to assess the student teacher’s progress and be able to do this accurately
• set the student teacher SMART targets in relation to the ITE professional standards/competencies and the course requirements
• facilitate the student teacher’s links with colleagues and professional development opportunities beyond the student teacher’s subject area.

Activity 1: Characteristics of an effective mentor

Timing: Time: 10 minutes

Listen to the audio below and note down the key characteristics of an effective mentor, as described by the teachers and student teachers. Do you agree with their views? Would you add anything to your list?

Download this audio clip.Audio player: pgce_1_audio.mp3

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

We interviewed people who have recently been through the mentoring experience and asked them to describe the mentor role.

Katharine Burn (Mentor):

It’s quite a complex role in that it embodies lots of different things. I mean you’re essentially responsible for the school-based training of the student teacher so that at one level it has kind of management aspects that you’re planning a timetable for them, working out sort of what proportion of lessons for them to be involved with, how much time they’ll spend working with you and working with colleagues. So there’s a kind of organisation element. There’s … there’s a pastoral element in kind of the concern and the support that you need to offer to the student teacher, and learning to teach them, many people can be very stressful and quite traumatic. But essentially it’s … it’s being there to provide the training that they need in schools.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

Katharine Burn, from the Cherwell School in Oxford.

So mentoring is a complex activity which ranges from the organisational to the pastoral but is fundamentally about training. But what kinds of skills do mentors require to carry out that role? Geoff Rhodes is in charge of mentor training at Larkmead School in Abingdon.

Geoff Rhodes (Mentor):

The need to have quite a lot of different skills. They clearly have to be efficient and have to be able to organize experiences, so that students in school can make progress because there are successful plans laid for them that they can work with and can learn. But they also have to be very good at working with people. They have to be very good at working with students. They need to be welcoming, they need to be warm, they need to be accepting of people, and they certainly need to give students the feeling that students can make mistakes, that they won’t be damned for them, that they’ll be helped to … to make progress. But students really need to have great trust in their mentors and I think that’s really a very important quality that really can’t be ignored.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

So students need to trust their mentors. But what do students themselves think? What’s a good mentor to them? I put this question to Daniel Park.

Daniel Park (Student teacher):

Someone who’s prepared to give you the space that you need to get used to being a teacher, to being an independent teacher, but at the same time someone who is always prepared to give you the new ideas or the direction that you might be lacking to help you out with your organisation of lessons and always to give good feedback. I respond well to positive criticism rather than negative criticism and to be encouraged is always very … er … helpful.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

So what type of skills do mentors need to be effective?

Daniel Park (Student teacher):

One of the key skills they’ll need is to be organized themselves so that they can fit in the time necessary to train a teacher as well as all the duties that they have themselves.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

Daniel Park. Certainly a mentor has to be well organized to do the job in the first place. But personal qualities like approachability, objectivity and listening skills were also mentioned by most of our student teachers – in fact, they found them more important than anything else.

Nicky Poole (Student teacher):

I think first and foremost they need to be very approachable. They need to be there for you and to make you feel that you can go to them with any problems, any help, whenever you need it. You really want to feel that they’re happy to give you their time whenever you need it and I think also they need to be objective. I think it’s very easy for people to sit at the back of the classroom and have too many of their own thoughts about the way they teach and put those onto the way they think you should teach and I don’t really think that’s the right way of doing it. They should sit there, as impartial as they can, not make a judgement with respect to how they do it, but purely look at how you do it and talk about your skills and what you’re good at and not good at. They need to be objective.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

Nicky Poole. And Rob Hynes.

Rob Hynes (Student teacher):

I think it’s very important for them to be able to listen. They need to be able to hear what a student teacher needs, to know what their problems are, what their difficulties are, especially as many mentors are quite experienced teachers, they’ve perhaps lost touch a bit with what it’s like to be a new teacher, what it’s like to be a student. So they need to be able to listen to what a student is saying, listen to what their problems are, even though their problems may be things that they left behind a long time ago, and have almost forgotten what it’s like to have problems with. So they need to be able to listen to you. They need to be able to know what the priorities of the new teacher are. I found that the first worry when you go into a school is discipline, so perhaps they need to be able to see things like discipline and know what the problems are that new teachers have, and be able to deal with them begin with.

Ann Shelton Mayes (Academic consultant):

So mentors should try to put themselves in the place of the student teacher, remember what it was like when they started, and see any problems from the student’s point of view. A final comment from Elin Williams.

Elin Williams (Student teacher):

My mentor’s looking after me and one other person and we were very different and I think he had to adapt himself to both of our needs really. So that I would have though that was the most important thing. They need to be very good at listening as well because sometimes it’s … it’s just like going to be a counsellor, you end up pouring your heart out about things that went wrong. So sometimes that … in fact that’s all you need is someone to listen to you rather than tell you what you did wrong because you’re really fairly aware of it.

End transcript

Download

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

Despite the mentoring model being commonly used in schools involved with Initial Teacher Education, Maldrez et al. (2007) found considerable variation in mentors’ understanding of their role which we will now go on to explore in more depth.

2.1 Mentoring relationships

The relationship between mentor and student teacher is complex and demanding (Maldrez et al., 2007). However, it is clear, from the audio you listened to in Activity 1, that it can have an impact on student teacher outcomes.

The working relationship between the student teacher and mentor needs careful consideration. The mentor must avoid patronising the student teacher and should be sensitive to their adult status. Conversations between two adults, where one is the teacher and the other the student teacher, can be uncomfortable and non-productive unless both participants feel that their contributions are valued.

This can particularly be the case if the student teacher has had previous experience of other school contexts or alternative approaches to subject pedagogy. Appreciating this and understanding what the student teacher is learning on their ITE course can provide a starting point for discussion.

As with any effective teaching, understanding where the student is coming from is important. Good mentors explore the assumptions, values and beliefs held by the student through questioning and keeping dialogue open to differences of opinion. Such questioning helps to establish a productive climate in which critical reflection and valuable learning can take place.

2.2 Balancing support and challenge

As with any effective student-centred learning, development and progression in Initial Teacher Education is based on achieving the right balance between support, appropriate to the stage in their learning and challenge to move the student teacher forward in their thinking or practice. This balance is represented in Figure 1.

Maximise

Figure 1 This diagram demonstrates pictorially the balancing dynamics of the mentor role, of providing both support and challenge to the student teacher. (Source: adapted from Martin (1996), Daloz (1986))

Show description|Hide description

Axis for support, low to high, vertically on the page. Axis for Challenge, low to high, horizontally on the diagram. Low challenge, high Support: Confirmation, Student become confirmed in their pre-existing images of teaching, A lot of support with little challenge - there is no perceived need for the student to put any energy into changing what they do. Low challenge, low support: Stasis, Student is not encouraged to consider or reflect on knowledge or images, Little support and little challenge, little progress. High support, high challenge: Growth, Student grows through development of new knowledge and images, Support and challenge - the ideal situation to promote growth. High Challenge, low support: Retreat, Student withdraws from the mentoring relationship with no possible growth, Too much challenge, with little support, student finds it difficult to cope. Box below: Challenge... is aimed at helping a student develop their teaching competence, needs to be appropriate to a student's development and the stage and phase of the course. Vision... provides the context for and sustains the motivation for supporting and challenging student teachers; goals are likely to be both long- and short-term.

Figure 1 This diagram demonstrates pictorially the balancing dynamics of the mentor role, of providing both support and challenge to the ...

Although this model can be taken to represent the overall balance between support and challenge, it is quite likely that student teachers will need different levels of support and challenge in different scenarios. This may change from week to week or even day to day. An obvious example is when students are at different levels of the course. A shorter term example may be if they are struggling with one issue, such as behaviour management, with a particular class or individual. Recognising the level of support or challenge that is needed in a particular circumstance and being flexible in your approach is a key mentoring skill.

3 Supporting the student

It is common to hear mentoring in ITE referred to as a supportive role, but what does this mean in practice? It is invariably more complex than the term suggests (Calderhead and Shorrock, 1997, Maldrez et al., 2007). For the purposes of this section we can break support down into the following two areas:

• support in developing an identity within the school community
• emotional or pastoral support.

3.1 Identity

The body of literature around teacher identity is substantial, and impossible to cover within this space. However, it has been demonstrated that development of a teacher identity was seen as a key part of the learning to teach, by student teachers (Kagan, 1992, Maldrez et al., 2007).

Maldrez et al (2007) identify three perspectives from which to think about the issue of developing identity, which give rise to a number of strategies.

Firstly, within a socio-cultural perspective, the critical role of the mentor is in ‘supporting student teachers’ development of a comfortable and congruent sense of self as teacher (Maldrez et al., 2007 p239).

The second perspective they draw on is that of ‘robust reasoning’ within an investigation-articulation approach to teacher education. In this approach, revisiting questions about identity at regular intervals helps the student teacher to articulate their developing sense of self. The questions might include ‘who am I as a teacher?’ and ‘who is my professional community?’ (Maldrez et al., 2007 p 239).

The final perspective is that of developing a personal narrative, suggesting that ‘beginning teachers moved significantly towards establishing their own identities as teachers through creating their own stories’ (Maldrez et al., 2007 p239).

These three perspectives can be supported by the following practical strategies for mentoring.

• nurturing and modelling
• questioning and reflecting
• exploring and facilitating the development of narratives.

The strategies you develop and draw on are likely to reflect your underlying beliefs about teacher education but may also reflect the nature of the student teacher you are working with and their own beliefs. Being aware of these different perspectives gives you access to a range of tools to support you.

3.2 Pastoral support

Although we have separated identity and pastoral support for the benefit of this section, it can be argued that they are inextricably bound together (Timostsuk and Ugaste, 2012). Some authors suggest that the expression of emotions are external expressions of ‘self’ (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009).

Sutton and Wheatley (2003), suggest that emotions affect learning in a number of ways. Firstly, ‘negative emotions attract attention and focus… Emotional occurrences are remembered more than neutral ones [and] intense emotion…overshadows background information’ (Timostsuk and Ugaste, 2012). Secondly, ‘a person’s mood at the time of receiving information influences its memorization… high anxiety, for example, can reduce the resources for working memory’ and finally ‘teachers who experience more positive emotions may generate more ideas and strategies … and [generate] … different ways to solve problems’ (Timostsuk and Ugaste, 2012).

This linking of a person's emotional state to their ability to learn is reflected in Stephenson’s findings (1995). He found that ‘the quality of trainees’ school-based experience depended principally on their emotional condition, which was itself related to the quality of the mentoring process.’ (Stephenson, 1995). This relationship between mentoring and emotional state suggests that the pastoral role of the mentor should involve interpreting the student teachers’ emotional state, providing opportunities for the student teacher to face, reflect on, step back from and ultimately change their emotional state and thereby support them to learn as effectively as they can.

4 Challenging the student

Providing appropriate challenge for student teachers requires understanding their individual needs and progress. It involves having a range of mentoring strategies that can challenge student teacher’s thinking and understanding of issues. The next few sections will consider some commonly used strategies to do this.

4.1 Sharing practice

Learning to interpret classrooms from the teacher’s perspective, and understanding the actions that lie behind what teachers do is the first – and most difficult – task that student teachers have to undertake. The teaching of an experienced teacher is often so fluent that it looks easy. Important decisions and processing of information about the pupils is hidden from the inexperienced observer. Observers only see what they understand and, in the early days of learning to teach, student teachers may have little understanding of the complexities of teaching.

Student teachers need a great deal of help when observing lesson, even when they are mature candidates with a wide range of other life and career experiences. The mentor has a key role in helping the student teacher to examine critically the strengths and weaknesses of lessons through carrying out an analysis of their own teaching: evaluating and sharing practice with their student teacher and modelling the process of critically reflecting on practice.

This process involves:

• the student teacher observing the mentor
• the mentor talking about what the student saw during the observation.

It is valuable for mentors to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of their own practice, for several reasons:

• being open about weaknesses in the lesson can help to establish a relationship based on mutual trust in which areas of practice are seen to be available for discussion and analysis
• it shows the student teacher that things do go wrong in lessons, even for experienced practitioners, but that professional teachers will evaluate and adapt their planning in the light of that analysis
• it reveals that experienced teachers continue to evaluate their own practice in order to improve it, emphasising that professional development is a commitment that runs throughout the teacher’s career
• it provides the student teacher with a model of how the experienced teacher does that analysis.

The mentor, therefore, is seen as a role model for the student teacher, in their development of a self-evaluative and reflective approach to teaching.

4.2 Collaborative planning and teaching

Planning and evaluation are essential aspects of teaching, but very difficult to observe. Through working together and collaboratively planning, teaching and evaluating lessons, the student teacher can learn how experienced teachers carry these out. Involving student teachers in the minutiae of lesson planning is an important part of helping them to develop competence in this key area of teaching. In particular, it will help them to understand how the parts of a lesson fit together. This is a worthwhile activity at any level of a course, as different issues (e.g. differentiation or assessment for learning) come into focus for the student teachers.

In terms of the challenge this approach affords, working together involves the mentor and the student teacher in making decisions, which in turn creates a dialogue about pupil learning and teaching approaches. In this dialogue it is important that the student and mentor have an equitable relationship including justifying and explaining their intentions and challenging each other to ensure that the outcome is best suited to the class, year group and curriculum demands. The mentor as questioner or challenger is an essential part of the role.

4.3 Co-analysis of practice

A common situation in which mentors challenge student teachers is through the process of observing lessons. Carrying out observations of the student teacher is an important part of mentor activity and one of the major ways that mentors gather evidence to improve practice.

Observations are most useful as a learning tool when they are followed by an opportunity for the mentor and student teacher to debrief the session, consider the implications of what happened and set targets for further development. This process of observation and debriefing is called co-analysis of practice and provides opportunity for formative assessment and for critical self-reflection.

5 Tutoring role

Being a tutor to a student teacher requires many of the same approaches as that of a mentor, but in subtly different ways. This section will explore the role of the tutor and the particular pedagogy that is associated with it.

The ITE tutor takes a holistic overview of the student teacher’s development. It involves:

• liaising with school based mentors to provide consistency of support and challenge both within the placement and at points of transition
• developing a student teacher’s individual training plan, including the setting of appropriate developmental targets to support their holistic development across the different contexts or sections of the course
• monitoring a student progress and providing interventions to support progress where necessary
• observing a student teacher in school contexts, and in discussion with the mentor, agreeing future targets and, as appropriate, the current level of achievement in order to moderate assessment across different school contexts
• provide academic support and guidance on assessment, as appropriate
• developing student teachers ability to critically reflect.

Although this list outlines the difference in tasks between tutors and mentors, it doesn’t necessarily capture the differences in pedagogy between the roles, which we will explore in the next section.

5.1 Pedagogy for tutoring

Activity 4: Tutors important functions

Timing: Time: 20 minutes

Listen to ‘What’s in a name: Mentoring and Tutoring’, where Dave and Sarah discuss how they see their role as tutors. (Please note that The Open University’s PGCE course mentioned in this audio has now been discontinued but is typical of many university-run PGCE courses.)

Download this audio clip.Audio player: 28921_whats_in_a_name_mentoring_and_tutoring_explained.mp3

Show transcript|Hide transcript

Transcript

SARAH VAUGHN:

I’m Sarah Vaughn, I’m the PGCE tutor for the Open University.

HANNAH WATSON:

I’m Hannah Watson, I am a mentor at South Nottinghamshire Academy.

SIMON BLAND:

Hi, I’m Simon Bland – I am the student teacher here.

HANNAH WATSON:

Okay, well done. It’s always very difficult when you’re under pressure and you’ve got people observing and stuff. We’ve picked out some really positive points from the observation and some stuff-- Sarah’s got some really good targets that we’ve discussed for you to work on. The starter activity was good, for them to have a think about relating a bit to literacy, key words and stuff as well. A lot of the question and answering was quite good, maybe thinking a bit more about how you can scaffold it, so how you can push the more able to give more explanations, so, going into a bit more depth with some of the more able, especially the instrumentalists.

The difference between a tutor and a mentor is the mentor is school-based, whereas the tutor is based with the university. So, they’ll come in and do observations every now and then, but the mentor is the person who is there day-to-day to observe lessons and give feedback and give as much support as possible.

SARAH VAUGHN:

We both felt that the pace of the lesson was very good for the first sort of two thirds of it. You gave them a task and said they'd got five minutes, but actually you gave them 12 minutes so then you'd lost time. And then you did your peer feedback and said 'you've got two minutes,' and I've just written down here 'how realistic is it?' If that's a valuable part of the lesson, two minutes is probably not long enough to do it in. And the knock-on effect of all of these little things was that the beginning of the lesson was so calm and focused and the end of the lesson felt more of a scramble, and your voice pitch went higher as your stress levels increased. And we all do it, and we all know having people observing you makes you much more sensitive to the fact that you haven’t done something that you've written in your lesson plan or you haven't got everything through that you need to get done.

A mentor’s focus is on coaching and education; although the tutor covers that too, I take more of the bulk of the summative assessment role for actually making sure the assessment levels are accurate. So I will ask a mentor what grade a student has reached in a particular lesson; we’ll discuss the grading in terms of the overall levels of attainment for qualified teacher status.

Diegetic.

SIMON BLAND:

So, should I have scrapped something at that point? ’Cause I knew I’d lost the time...

Non-diegetic.

SARAH VAUGHN:

I think being an effective tutor means that you’ve got to have really good, secure subject knowledge of your own. And I think it’s really useful to be a practitioner currently while you’re tutoring. I often refer to my own teaching experience while I’m talking to a student about the lessons that I’ve observed. Being a teacher has an impact on your knowledge of teaching to help coach your students.

Diegetic

HANNAH WATSON:

By giving them a few more minutes to go away and improve, and perhaps not doing the self-assessment when you’ve got that little time...

Non-diegetic

HANNAH WATSON:

A good mentor is somebody who knows themselves what good teaching is, so that when they’re watching somebody else they can see what they’re doing well and how they can improve, and being able to give good quality feedback to help the student improve as well. Also, somebody who’s generally quite approachable so that the student feels that they can go and talk to them about any ideas that they’ve got or anything that they’re struggling with so that they can then have the support that they need.

A good mentor is someone who is open to ideas as well, so not asking the student to do everything their way but happy for the student teacher to come and experiment with different ways of teaching, or different ways of doing things and not being afraid to let them have a go at doing that. Being able to sit and watch somebody teach and thinking ‘oh, actually, that was really good – maybe I’ll try that one time’ or watching something and thinking ‘yeah... I'm not sure about that, I would perhaps do it this way;’ it’s quite a nice thing to be able to do because there isn't a lot of opportunity to be watching lessons when you’re busy teaching all of the time. It was only a few years ago that I did my PGCE and it’s nice now, a few years later, to be able to be a mentor and realise how far that I’ve come in those few years to be in the position where I can give advice and feedback and support somebody else – it’s quite rewarding to have been through that cycle. It's good being a mentor

Diegetic

SARAH VAUGHN:

What I would like to see is you giving the task, the time-limit, checking that everybody has understood that, knows where they’re supposed to be going to do that--

HANNAH WATSON:

Yeah, you didn’t say ‘any questions, is everybody happy?’

SIMON BLAND:

I do that! I have a horrible habit of always thinking ‘oh, and just one more thing...’ It's like Columbo or something, but not in a particularly helpful way.

SARAH VAUGHN:

And they’ve gone. They’ve started to move. The chairs are making a noise. They’ve started to chat because they’re moving to the next stage. And you are going ‘hang on a minute, hang on a minute...’

Non-diegetic

SIMON BLAND:

Sarah knows completely what is required to pass this course and what are the common developmental needs of training teachers. She’s seen me from the start so she’s got a good idea of what my needs analysis was, where I’m going, what my blind-spots are likely to be. Hannah is obviously a lot closer to me, Hannah being my mentor – closer to me through this placement. They both guide me, they both make observations as to what I need, but Hannah obviously sees it closer. She sees the different relationships that I’ve built up with students and they’re students that she knows a lot better than I’m ever likely to get to know them.

Diegetic

HANNAH WATSON:

...I’m thinking about other classes, maybe like the year 9s, that could become a bit off-task if they can see the time’s going... then it’s a reference for you and perhaps for them...

STUDENTS:

This is Royal Alexandra and Albert School

DAVE SMITH:

You could have very easily said: ‘Look, if you’ve done this already, just go straight to the second question. But if you haven’t got a note, complete the first one.’

Non-diegetic

DAVE SMITH:

I’m Dave Smith, Open University tutor on the PGCE course. Well, the mentor is hands-on on a day-to-day basis and so inevitably they’re working within the structure and ethos of the school, and they need to help the student to perform effectively within that particular ethos and that particular context. And so often their advice might well be quite clearly directed towards what is required in a certain situation. The tutor is coming in from outside, seeing the student on a much less frequent basis, and is actually unable to be in a position to give specific advice on specific contexts; so, their role is always to open out the discussion to think about what might be done in other circumstances, how else could things have been done – that’s a really key difference between the mentor and the tutor.

A tutor has got probably two main functions. One is trying to get the student to apply things they’ve read about to--theories and so on--to their own practice. And the other is getting them to realise that, while certain aspects of their practice might be very applicable in the context they’re in, that they might need to modify or adapt that practice for a different group of kids or a different school or what have you. So it’s that idea of, rather than focusing on the here-and-now (which I think is very much the mentor’s role), the tutor has got to try and take them away from the here-and-now as much as possible, and try to get them to project possible alternative situations and alternative contexts, and how they might need to change in those situations.

End transcript

Download

 

Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).

As you listen, note down the particular functions of tutoring that they think are important. Are there any you would add?

Discussion

Both Dave and Sarah emphasise the holistic nature of the tutor role. They are not there to offer solutions to all the questions or difficulties that the student has, rather to pose questions that will help the student to reflect on the issues.

There is much less in the way of research literature about the nature of tutor pedagogy compared to that of mentoring. What is clear is that tutoring requires different types of pedagogical knowledge and skills. Murray (2008) explains this difference using the idea of first order (practitioners in school) and second order (teachers of teachers) fields. She suggests that it is critical to:

So what might this professional knowledge and understanding and extended pedagogical skills look like? Murray (2008) identifies some key areas:

• producing and reproducing discourses and practices with and for their students
• producing and reproducing of academic discourses about education
• having an overt knowledge of how one teaches and why (i.e a self-consciousness of pedagogy)
• functioning simultaneously as both researcher and practitioner which may including engagement in the field of enquiry through sustained reading and reflection by:
  • systematic enquiries into personal practice, informed by research
  • involvement in individual practitioner research and action research
  • communal participation in small-scale studies
  • writing books and teaching materials for practitioners in the school sector, or involvement in large national research projects.

Across all of Murray’s points it is possible to identify the common thread of knowledge creation, dissemination and questioning. For her, a tutor is someone who is at all times aware of the assumptions, beliefs and values that underpins knowledge, and deliberately opens up this knowledge to discussion, debate and examination with their student teachers. Thus, she argues, it is not necessary for a tutor to necessarily be a published researcher, as it is the act of scholarship and research that provides the opportunity to develop professional knowledge and understanding and develop what she calls extended pedagogical skills.

5.2 Dialectical relationships and ZPD in ITE

Murray’s ideas articulate the need for a particular type of relationship between student teachers and tutors, where knowledge is viewed as dynamic, subject to interpretation and change by all those involved in the process.

This view of dynamic knowledge, as opposed to a fixed set of things to be learned, requires the tutor to engage in a dialectic relationship with the student teacher in which knowledge is developed collaboratively through experience, discussions and consideration of the literature.

Alternative perspectives that open up the student teacher are needed to develop a student teacher’s awareness of knowledge (and the world) as a dynamic phenomenon (including schools, curricula, pedagogy and education research). This could involve:

• drawing on literature that challenges the practice being observed
• ensuring the student is aware of developments within the subject
• challenging student teachers assumptions about learning in the subject.

Student teachers also need be aware that the knowledge that they are developing is constructed from a combination of the ‘personal’ (their experiences) and the ‘collective’ (the literature and the professional wisdom of experienced teachers). They need to understand the particular context they are in, how the personalities and backgrounds of the staff has informed the curriculum and pedagogy of the department and how working with different personalities and teams would lead to different approaches.

In thinking of approaches to developing a dialectical relationship, you may have considered the types of questions you may ask, the type of responses you may give and the manner in which you feed back to students. Underpinning any dialectical relationship is the need to recognise the value of the knowledge and understanding of the student teacher, and to appreciate the process of the co-creation of knowledge that results from such a relationship. Key to this is avoiding a power relationship of tutor knowing all the answers and the student teacher purely emulating the wishes of the tutor and mentor without critical consideration of their own knowledge, understanding and skills.

The idea of dialectical relationships resonate closely with the Vygotskyian idea of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). As Warford (2011) states, student teachers ‘take the facts and appropriate their own meanings by means of cultural tools ... This process ...grows in systematicity and complexity as teacher knowledge is continually re-shaped to accommodate the dynamic nature of schools and classrooms; consequently, a Vygotskyan approach to teacher development sees the education of teachers as situated learning’ (Warford, 2011 p252). Warford sees a Vygotskian approach to ITE as involving a three way conversation between:

• student teachers’ prior experiences as learners and often tacit beliefs about pedagogy
• pedagogical content of the teacher education program
• observations of teaching and learning in the field placements.

This three way conversation can lead to tensions, conflicts of beliefs or direct contradictions.

5.3 Tutoring in practice

In addition to Murray’s ideas, more practical and tangible elements of the tutor role (as opposed to the mentor role) can be identified as:

• broadening student teachers’ views beyond context specific experiences and thus developing a wider profession identity
• making explicit links between research, theory and practice to enable student teachers to consider alternative perspectives, best practice examples and underpinning assumptions about their practice.

In Section 3 Supporting the student, we discussed the development of student teacher identities. Within a mentoring context, this identity is likely to involve induction into the particular ethos of the school. While this is important, this is only a small part of their professional identity. The likelihood of a student teacher being employed in that school or staying there throughout their career is very small and therefore it is important that tutors support student teachers in developing a wider professional identity. This may be through exposure to different types of school contexts, different views of subject pedagogy, professional associations or just through discussion of alternative sources of opinion such as research or peer support groups. Much of this can be summarised by the identification of a professional community (Maldrez et al., 2007 p 239).

There is much literature to suggest that student teachers, in the early stages of their development, struggle to understand the relevance of theoretical or research perspectives (Maldrez et al., 2007, Warford, 2011). However, there is also evidence that student teachers, whether consciously or unconsciously, draw on theory and research, and that the use of research literature becomes more prominent as their careers develop (Richter et al., 2011). A tutor’s role is to mediate and model the links between research and theory to enable student teachers to draw on it more consciously and explicitly, thereby understanding and appreciating the potential for doing so.

Conclusion

Although the mentor and tutor role have distinctive functions, there are many aspects of the roles which are similar. Where the relationship between the two works best is where the similarities and differences are recognised and understood by tutor, mentor and student teacher. Successful initial teacher education relies on all partners working effectively together, to create an environment where student teachers can learn effectively by observing, questioning, discussing and critically reflecting on their experiences in a structured way to allow progress.

References

Acknowledgements

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Course image: © track5/istockphoto.com

Figure 1: adapted from Martin (1996), Daloz (1986) Effective teaching and Mentoring, San Francisco, Jossey Bass.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Don't miss out

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/ openlearn/ free-courses.