AN ANALYSIS OF THE MENTORING PRACTICE OF STUDENT TEACHER’S TEACHING PRACTICUM PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Mentoring has an essential role for the success of the student teachers’ teaching internship program, a fundamental period for every student taking an educational program. During the program the student teachers experience face real world of teaching (McDonald, 2009;Bonilla & Rivera, 2008; Wang & Odell, 2002) where they develop knowledge on the standard teaching, deep flexible understanding about the subject matters, and pedagogical knowledge on the real students’ context (Wang & Odell, 2002). Mentoring plays a significant role in bridging and smoothing the student teachers to face the real but complex world of being a professional teacher. Realizing the context of the crucial period of the program, this study intends to analyze the practice of mentoring for the student teachers taking the practice teaching program.  Management of learning, effectiveness of planning, knowledge and structuring of subject matter, coherence lesson, effectiveness of teaching strategies, students’ learning, personal qualities, quality of interaction, self-evaluation, extent of innovative teaching, and sense of professionalism ( Kelly & Tannehill , 2012) become the focus of the study . Interviews with student teachers as well classroom teachers become the main source of the qualitative data. Results of the study will give a broader insight of the mentoring world that will provide mentors with practical skills for mentoring to lead the student teachers entering the real educational context.