Learning beyond professional experience: Coaching and mentoring pre-service teachers

Elizabeth Wheeley; Helen Klieve; Eunjae Park

The Learning beyond professional experience: Coaching and mentoring pre-service teachers project aims to extend existing knowledge about how pre-service teachers can be supported in their learning during their professional experience placements in primary and secondary schools. The research is framed in understanding the complexities of teaching in 21st Century schools which require strong connections between academic learning and understanding of education; professional practice and application of evidence-based pedagogies in classroom contexts; and pre-service teachers’ development of resilient professional identities as educators. This research focuses on identifying what and how pre-service teachers learn beyond the formal curriculum of their professional experience placements. Currently, Australia is experiencing a teacher shortage and workforce challenges with between 8% and 50% of teachers leaving the profession within the first five years with some not completing their initial teacher education programs. Mentoring is recognised as a strategy to support early career teachers transitioning into the profession and forms part of pre-service teachers’ professional experience relationship with their supervising teacher. Rather than focus solely on this mentor/mentee relationship, this study extents current understanding to focus on pre-service teachers’ learning beyond the formal components of their professional experience placements. The project is underpinned by social constructivism imputing that pre-service teachers learn through social interaction and dialogue. Further, reflective practices support the cognitive process of constructing new knowledge from pre-service teachers’ practical experiences to make sense of these in relation to their prior knowledge. There are two challenges in understanding the sources of pre-service teachers’ learning: First, formal assessments of learning, for example, the pre-service teacher’s practicum report do not identify the source of the pre-service teacher’s learning beyond the formal requirements, only the sufficiency of their observed classroom practice. Second, from these assessments, we cannot attribute evidence of learning to a particular source or set of interactions the pre-service teacher had that supported, challenged, or extended their existing knowledge and capabilities. Qualitative methods allowed pre-service teachers to identify their learnings and the sources of that learning. Interview data from pre- service teachers in the final year of the Master of Teaching program were analysed thematically. Ethical approval was gained and the balance of power between the participants and researcher was managed by having the interviews after students’ program completion and researcher reflexivity and collaboration with a co-researcher to examine potential biases. Findings support that coaching and mentoring experienced by pre-service teachers on placement extended beyond their interactions with their supervising teacher. Participants valued a range of coaching and mentoring experiences including interactions peers, school staff other than the supervising teaching as well as university academics and liaisons and understood the impact these experiences had on their professional learning. Future research is needed to broaden the conceptualisation of learning beyond professional placement. A next step is to survey a broader sample to map pre-service teachers’ learning beyond professional experience in different programs and at different stages in their initial teacher education programs.

Learning beyond professional experience: Coaching and mentoring pre-service teachers

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