4.4. SECTION TWO: Mentor learning through mentoring practice
4.4.3. Mentor learning from professional role performance
83
Edison is a senior maths teacher. His student teachers used mathematical games on the computer to teach Maths. This generated excitement and interest among the learners and encouraged him to use more innovative ways to teach.
7878 The student teacher use mathematical games to teach the learners. I found that this is a
creative and innovative resource. The students injected an element of fun and interest in lessons which in turn helped with discipline. This has made me rethink the way I teach Maths.
Within mentoring opportunities, Jo learnt creative methods of teaching Maths whilst Jae, Edison and Shastri learnt how to use computers in teaching. Using computers as part of the lessons and teaching has changed the landscape of the teacher‟s practice. The mentor developed a changed mindset and is open to make a shift in how they approach their teaching. The data indicate that mentor learning about mentoring includes being open to learning from student teachers as they were able to gain effective methods for teaching.
84
Teachers see themselves as expert teachers and not expert mentors; as such mentoring has taught them to draw from teaching to learn to mentor (Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2005).
Jo has over 40 years of teaching experience but limited experience and training as a mentor.
She accepted her position as expert in the classroom and that mentoring was new to her professional context. As a mentor she feeds on her experience as a teacher, which helped her mentoring practices, as the student teacher was able to learn from her expertise as a classroom teacher. Jo‟s vignette revealed two ways of drawing on her experiences in her professional role as teacher. She also sees the need to allow her student teachers access to her experiences as teacher with the hope that the student teacher is able to learn from her expertise as a classroom teacher.
As a teacher I have built up decade‟s worth of experience which has to be opened up for the student in my class. As a mentor I have few years of experience, insufficient to have built such a set of skills. So I mentor the student teachers to become teachers based on what I do as a teacher. Being a teacher and teaching was natural and comforting and this helped me to adapt teaching to mentoring.
Edison indicated that his lack of mentor training and experiences shifted him to draw on his teaching practice to inform his mentoring practices. This signals then that the same skills used for teaching are put to use as a mentor.
I have no training in mentoring. I have a few years of mentoring experiences. Therefore I mentor as I would teach, by bringing clarity of the curriculum to the student teacher.
Jae adds that teaching gives a strong foundation to mentoring practices. She believes that an effective teacher has developed the skills to pass on knowledge and skills to the learner irrespective of the type of learner (child or adult). She also highlighted that teaching gave her the skills to determine the needs of the learner and focus on supporting such needs. In the case of the student teacher such needs entail developing their content knowledge.
A teacher who teaches effectively will draw from this source for the student. The teacher has to understand that not all teaching experiences can be used to mentor the student. Mentors
85
are required to draw the relevant aspects of teaching to suit the varying contexts of the student teacher. The student teacher most often needs support in content knowledge yet in the delivery and presentation they excel. In this instance I have learnt to spend time on content knowledge for the student teacher.
Shastri on the other hand declares that the number of years one teaches or mentors does not make one an expert. This signals a view that a mentor needs specific skills in mentoring such as being able to transfer information to the student about decisions that underpin teaching.
In most cases I found that experience does not equate to expertise. One can teach for many years but fail when it comes to putting across that information to the student teacher.
In the role as teacher, the teacher is the expert by virtue of their qualifications, experience and expertise. The above vignettes reveal two views. Firstly, the participants see a link between experience and expertise in teaching as a source to draw from for the practice of mentoring.
This is in keeping with Orland-Barak & Yinon (2005, p. 574) who maintain that “in the passage from teaching to mentoring, mentors draw on their expertise as teachers”. The opposing view is presented by Berliner (2001, p.467) who contends that “the acquisition of experience does not automatically denote expertise”. Shastri, who maintain that experiences and expertise do not necessarily equate to each other is in line with this view. However, the limitations in mentor training and mentor experiences shift the teacher to draw on their role as teacher to inform their role as mentor.
The void which exists between mentoring and teaching is revealed to me in the teacher‟s experiences of anguish. In my opinion this void can be filled when mentors start a dialogue about what constitutes learning and quality mentoring. Fraser, Kennedy, Reid & McKinney (2007) conclude that teaching, and in terms of this study, mentor learning, is regarded as personal and professional change and an understanding of self and the role of the educator.
Mentoring places teachers in a different context to teaching. This theme explores the fluctuating nature of the participants‟ expert position as a classroom teacher to mentor teacher, which is relatively new to their repertoire of skills. Jo had to reinvent herself as mentor whom she initially understood as originating from the practice but when she started mentoring she realised that it required an investment from her as well.
86
The participants who came across unfamiliar situations during mentoring, not having encountered them during teaching, positioned themselves as learners (Berliner, 2001;
Orland–Barak & Yinon, 2005). Learning took place when the mentor encountered new situations and automatically drew on their role as teacher to support their role as mentor.