Mentoring – The Strategy for Building Workplace Learning Success for Pre-Service Teachers

Elizabeth Toohey; Christopher Dann

Doing things differently will lead to something exceptional! This program has been designed to grow mentoring as a workplace learning strategy which will provide high quality training for preservice teachers. It is based on the following principles: 1. Workplace learning is critical to the career development continuum of pre-service teachers as it provides the context for alignment of theory and practice - the opportunity to think like a teacher and act as a teacher. 2. Mentoring is the workplace learning strategy which can support the pre-service teacher in realising their full potential. 3. Mentoring within the educational context requires aclearly defined structure to support the connectedness between schools and the university and between the pre-service teacher and their teacher mentor. Professional practice within the education context is complex and engages diverse stakeholders with diverse perspectives on what is effective performance management of the pre-service teacher. This explicit engagement which establishes clearly defined goals, expectations, role descriptions and actions will ensure the continuous improvement of the learner and the learning product and process. The mentoring framework which has been developed uses the following strategies: 1. Preparing the Partnership between the university, schools, workplace learning co-ordinators using a community of practice model. 2. Preparing the person - the pre-service teacher and the teacher mentor using induction workshops. 3. Preparing the product - the Web Based interface - An interactive Pre-service Teacher Tracking Tool. 4. Preparing the process - the pre-service teacher tracking tool which provides regular quality feedback throughout the placement and opportunities for critical conversation and identification of areas of need to help inform goal setting & action planning. The outcomes: 1. Quality Pre-service teacher performance - the individual dimension which is focused on being the best you can be. 2. Clearly defined Teacher Mentor guidelines - the systemic dimension which is focused on consistency, customisation and relationships that will grow potential. 3. Collection of data to inform program development - the university teaching and learning dimension which is grounded in the needs of the workplace. Partnerships are critical to an impactful workplace learning experience which effectively links the learning context with the workplace reality. It must be built around shared practices which will then provide the basis for consistent, sustained and valued interaction between teacher educators and professional teachers in the field.This process will grow quality teachers by ensuring a valid, reliable, flexible and fair approach to workplace learning which is transparent, accessible and owned by all stakeholders. This model of mentoring development has broad applicability to other disciplines, such as nursing, which rely on similar apprenticeship models of professional development for their practitioners. This model could be implemented in a range of contexts to grow the quality of student learning.

Mentoring – The Strategy for Building Workplace Learning Success for Pre-Service Teachers

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