Student Teachers' Perceptions of School-based Mentoring in Initial Teacher Training (ITT)

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Student Teachers' Perceptionsof School-based Mentoring inInitial Teacher Training (ITT)Andrew J. HobsonPublished online: 19 Aug 2010.

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Mentoring & Tutoring, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2002

Student Teachers’ Perceptions ofSchool-based Mentoring in Initial TeacherTraining (ITT)ANDREW J. HOBSONNational Foundation for Educational Research, The Mere, Upton Park, Slough,SL1 2DQ, UK

ABSTRACT In recent years school-based mentoring has become an increasingly importantaspect of the process by which student teachers begin to learn how to teach. This articlereports secondary PGCE students’ evaluations of their school-based mentoring experiences.The data were collected via in-depth interviews with 16 student teachers and self-completequestionnaires completed by 224 student teachers from four different training courses incentral and northern England in 1999. The main � ndings are that: (1) student teachersconsider mentoring to be a, if not the, key aspect of school-based ITT; whilst (2) studentteachers’ accounts of their school-based experiences suggest that teacher-mentors are notalways successful in creating conditions for effective student teacher learning.

Background: the increased importance of mentoring in ITT

The term mentoring describes ‘the support given by one (usually more experienced)person for the growth and learning of another, and for their integration into andacceptance by a speci� c community’ (Malderez, 2001, p. 57). In the context ofmodern-day initial teacher training (ITT) Tomlinson (1995) de� nes mentoring as‘assisting student-teachers to learn how to teach in school-based settings’ (Tomlin-son, 1995, p. 7). According to such a de� nition, ‘mentoring’ in ITT is undertakennot merely by teachers holding the formal title of ‘mentor’ or (as they are sometimescalled) ‘teacher-tutor’ but also by other teachers whose advice and support may besought or whose teaching and interactions with pupils may be witnessed by studentteachers or trainees.1 It might thus be argued that all teachers in schools whichparticipate in ITT should be aware of the importance of mentoring and should havesome ideas about how to perform such a role effectively.

Three main factors point to the major importance of mentoring in ITT in latetwentieth century and early twenty-� rst century England and Wales. First, the placeof mentoring in ITT has become pivotal given recent legislative changes, mostnotably DFE Circular 9/92 (DFE, 1992), which directed that student teachers onpostgraduate training courses must spend two-thirds of their courses in schools.

ISSN 1361-1267 print; 1469-9745 online/02/010005–16 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/13611260220133117

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6 A. J. Hobson

Secondly, a number of in� uential theories of professional learning also point tothe learning potential of having trainee professionals work closely with experiencedpractitioners or ‘mentors’, and such theories provide insights into the different formsthat effective ‘mentoring’ might take. For example, work conducted in the � eld ofcognitive skill psychology has emphasised how skill acquisition can be assistedthrough various forms of ‘coaching’. Sloboda (1986) told us that ‘[r]eal lifeskills … are usually learnt with the aid of some form of coaching’, and argued thatappropriate feedback on practice, which he characterised as ‘knowledge of what youractions achieved’, is ‘essential to skill acquisition’ (Sloboda, 1986, pp. 32–33).Developing the point and also drawing on the work of Norman (1978), Tomlinsonstates that:

the acquisition of practical capability requires cycles of plan–attempt–feed-back–replan, a process which when done with the same action unit tendsto produce a gradual tuning … that makes it more accurate, economicaland intuitive. (Tomlinson, 1998, p. 13)

Support for the learning potential of school-based mentoring can also be found inVygotskian and ‘socio-cultural’ perspectives, which tell us that human activities arerooted in social participation and learned not in isolation but with the assistance ofothers (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988; Wertsch, 1991; Rogoff, 1995). Drawing on theseapproaches, Edwards and Collison (1996) suggest various ways in which teacher-mentors might support or ‘scaffold’ student teachers, including:

listening to students; modeling teaching and general classroom manage-ment; analyzing and discussing [their] own practice; observing students;negotiating with students, their own learning goals; supporting studentswhile they teach; [and] … providing constructive criticism … (Edwards &Collison, 1996, pp. 27–28)

A third indicator of the importance of mentoring in ITT is based on theconceptions of those who are seeking to become teachers. Many writers and muchprevious research has demonstrated that learners’ preconceptions and expectationsare a major in� uence on their subsequent learning (e.g. Ausubel, 1968; Duit, 1996;Feiman-Nemser et al., 1987), and data collected from the same student teacherswhose evaluations of mentoring are presented in this article indicated that, prior totheir actual experience of school-based training, they expected school-based mentoringto be pivotal to their learning of teaching (Hobson, 2001). For example, of 277secondary PGCE students from four training courses who completed questionnairesat the start of their courses in 1998, 92.4% indicated that they thought it would be‘very valuable’ or ‘essential’ to ‘plan lessons with a school teacher/mentor’, whilst95.3% of respondents stated that it would be ‘very valuable’ or ‘essential’ to haveteachers/mentors observe their teaching and give feedback. Such expectations of thepotential value of working with school-based mentors were signi� cantly higher thantheir expectations of the potential value of other aspects of ITT provision, such as‘reading books on educational theory/research’ and ‘planning lessons with’ and‘gaining feedback from’ university tutors.

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Perceptions of Mentoring in ITT 7

The � ndings reported below tell us whether student teachers continue to attributesuch importance to school-based mentoring at the end of their ITT courses. They alsoreport trainees’ evaluations of their school-based mentoring experiences. This is notto suggest that a focus on student teachers’ perceptions and evaluations can tell thewhole story about school-based mentoring and it is not to suggest that school-basedmentors’ main priority should be to satisfy student teachers. Indeed, research hasshown that trainees often have attitudes and approaches that can provide obstaclesto their effective learning of teaching skill, such as a primary concern to be seen as‘competent’ in the classroom and not to see themselves as learners (Edwards, 1998).Such attitudes and approaches will inevitably impact upon their (student teachers’)evaluations of the work of their teacher-mentors in school.

It is nevertheless bene� cial for school-based mentors to gain insights into theperceptions and evaluations of student teachers—for three main reasons.

The � rst is to provide a form of feedback on their own (or other mentors’)practice, which provides teacher-mentors with more information with which tore� ect on their practice and inform their future planning and interactions withstudent teachers (cf. Schon, 1983, 1991).

Secondly, it is bene� cial for teachers of any kind (and school-based mentors areteachers/facilitators of the learning of student teachers as well as of their own pupils)to have an understanding not merely of what their learners know and understand interms of the subject matter of their learning, but also in terms of how they perceivethe learning process itself. As Duit (1996) points out, learning will be in� uenced by‘students’ conceptions about the aims of instruction … and the purpose of a particu-lar teaching event’ (Duit, 1996, p. 457).

Thirdly, teacher-mentors might enjoy more success in challenging student teach-ers’ attitudes and approaches, with a view to removing obstacles and enabling theirmore effective learning of teaching skill, where they (mentors) have a fuller under-standing of student teachers’ conceptions. As von Glaserfeld (1996) put it:

[S]tudents perceive their environment in ways that may be very differentfrom those intended by the educators … This emphasizes the teacher’sneed to construct a hypothetical model of the particular conceptual worldsof the students they are facing. One can hope to induce changes in theirways of thinking only if one has some inkling as to the domains ofexperience, the concepts, and the conceptual relations the students possessat the moment. (von Glaserfeld, 1996, p. 7)

Methodology

The � ndings reported in this article are drawn from data gathered via two methodsof data-collection. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with a small group ofsecondary PGCE students in the � nal few weeks of their ITT courses. For reasonsof comparability the interviewees were drawn from trainees specialising in theteaching of a single subject area (History) in four different institutions—two univer-sity-based ‘Partnership’ courses and two ‘school-centred’ or SCITT courses.2

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8 A. J. Hobson

Limited � nancial resources necessitated that the four institutions were selected onthe basis of their proximity to the research base of the researcher/author. Twentytrainees from the four programmes were invited to be interviewed (13 Partnershipand 7 SCITT trainees) from which 16 interviews were carried out (10 Partnership,6 SCITT).3 The speci� c method of interviewing, which is called ‘hierarchicalfocusing’, is a particular version of a part-structured interview which seeks toin� uence informants to the minimum extent necessary, consistent with achieving theinterviewer’s goals and gaining in-depth accounts (Tomlinson, 1989; Hobson,1998). The interviews were conducted in an informal setting and participants wereassured of con� dentiality and anonymity.

The second research method involved self-complete questionnaires, which werecarried out at the end of their courses by History specialists in all four trainingprogrammes and by trainees across all (14) subject areas in two of the programmes(one Partnership and one SCITT). A total of 224 questionnaires were returned (208from Partnership trainees, 16 from SCITT trainees), which represented an overallresponse rate of 63% (a 62% response from Partnership trainees and 76% responsefrom the relatively small SCITT sample).

Findings

Trainees’ Perceptions of the Value of Mentoring to their ITT: questionnaire data

Data gathered from the end-of-course questionnaires provide further indications ofthe importance of mentoring in ITT. Respondents were asked, for example, to statehow valuable they found the assistance of different course personnel (including theirschool mentors, whole-school ITT coordinators, subject ‘method’ tutors and Pro-fessional Studies tutors) in assisting them to develop various forms of capability andknowledge. Table I shows that mentors were regarded by trainees as effective, andas more effective than other ITT course personnel, in assisting them to develop theability to manage pupils and maintain discipline, which other studies have shown to betrainees’ major concern (e.g. Tomlinson et al., 1996). For example, 92% of respon-dents perceived their teacher-mentors to be ‘very’ or ‘quite’ effective in this area,compared with corresponding ratings of 68% for subject method tutors, 48% forwhole-school coordinators and 36% for Professional Studies tutors. Similarly, TableII shows that school-based mentors were also perceived to be most effective inassisting trainees to develop the ability to use a range of teaching methods effectively,whilst Table III shows that trainees rated teacher-mentors and subject methodtutors as more or less equally valuable in assisting them to develop their subjectknowledge.

Whilst the � ndings reported above suggest that mentors were seen by studentteachers as effective in assisting them to develop relevant and important capabilitiesand knowledge, the questionnaire data also provide insights into which aspects oftheir work with teacher-mentors that trainees found most valuable. Respondents tothe end-of-course questionnaire were asked to state how valuable they found various

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TABLE I. Perceived effectiveness of different course personnel in assisting traineesto develop the ability to manage pupils/maintain discipline

Totally Not very Quite Veryineffective effective effective effective

School teacher-mentors 1 7 30 62Whole-school coordinators 17 35 41 7Subject method tutors 5 26 52 16Professional Studies tutors 21 43 32 4

TABLE II. Perceived effectiveness of different course personnel in assisting traineesto develop the ability to use a range of teaching methods effectively



aspects of course provision to their development as teachers. The percentageresponses are summarised in Table IV.

From the 12 aspects of course provision which the student teachers were askedabout, four aspects were regarded as ‘very valuable’ by 60% or more of respondentsand three of these involve working with teacher-mentors—observing students’ les-sons and providing feedback (item i), assisting with trainees’ planning of lessons(item h), and modelling teaching practice for trainees (item d). We shall see belowthat data collected from the end-of-course interviews provide further evidence thatstudent teachers’ perceive these activities to be centrally important in the process oflearning teaching, and also that they (student teachers) can be mentored well andless well in these areas. Before examining such data, I brie� y present the responsesof the relatively large questionnaire sample on the question of their mentors’ generaleffectiveness in assisting them to develop as teachers. The percentage responses aregiven in Table V.

TABLE III. Perceived effectiveness of different course personnel in assistingtrainees to develop subject knowledge



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10 A. J. Hobson

TABLE IV. Percentage responses to end-of-course questionnaire question 4: ‘How valuable did you� nd the following in training to be a teacher?’

No Little Quite Veryvalue value valuable valuable

a learning from trial and error in the classroom 0 0 9 91b reading books on educational theory/research 5 40 47 8c being given speci� c strategies for teaching different 0 4 49 47

subjects/topicsd watching school-teachers teach 0 5 36 60e watching video materials showing and explaining the 7 41 39 13

teaching of your subjectf planning lessons with your fellow students/trainees 5 19 44 33g planning lessons with a school-teacher/mentor 0 4 35 62h planning lessons with a university tutor 4 24 54 18i having school teachers/mentors observe your lessons 0 2 17 81

and give feedback afterwardsj having university tutors observe your lessons and give 1 7 40 51

feedback afterwardsk having your teaching video-recorded and then

watching/discussing this with a tutor or mentor 4 25 29 42l teaching alongside teachers or tutors and getting their 0 7 38 55

guidance and feedback

The � rst point to note is that the majority of respondents stated that their mentorshad been ‘very’ or ‘quite’ effective. In all 86% of respondents indicated that their� rst mentor had been ‘very’ (65%) or ‘quite’ (21%) effective, whilst 76% stated thattheir second mentor had been ‘very’ (50%) or ‘quite’ (26%) effective.4 More traineesthus tended to � nd their � rst teacher-mentor more effective than their second. Sincethe mentors involved were largely the same teachers (with trainees largely simplyswapping schools/mentors between their � rst and second block experiences), threepossible explanations may be offered for these � ndings:

1. In accord with the idea of ‘scaffolding’ (referred to in the background sectionabove), some teacher-mentors may have provided more assistance to trainees on

TABLE V. Respondents’ ratings of their � rst and second blockplacement mentors in helping them to develop as teachers (percent-

age responses)


First mentor 6 8 21 65Second mentor 8 16 26 50

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their � rst placement, where they may have been perceived to be in greater need,with trainees being generally more appreciative where they received more assist-ance.

2. Alternatively, some teacher-mentors may not have modi� ed their mentoringwork according to their mentees’ stages of development, so aspects of their workwhich were perceived to be helpful in the early stages of trainees’ learning wereperceived to be less so later on.

3. Some trainees may have become accustomed to the methods of working with theteacher-mentor in their � rst teaching placement and may have found it dif� cultto adapt to the different working methods and relationship associated with theteacher-mentor in their second placement school.

What Trainees Valued about their School-based and Mentoring Experiences: interviewdata

In the interviews conducted at the end of trainees’ ITT courses, all intervieweeswere asked to describe aspects of their school-based experience which they found tobe valuable to their development and aspects which they felt were not so valuable orwhich may have hindered their development. They were not prompted, beyond this,to comment on the value of speci� c aspects, activities or experiences. For example,they were not speci� cally asked to comment on the value of receiving feedback ontheir teaching attempts, so this was only discussed (and is thus only presented in thedata below) insofar as it was brought up by interviewees in response to the moregeneral question. Those school-based activities and experiences that the intervieweesstated were valuable are listed below. Four aspects were each mentioned by ten ormore of the 16 interviewees, and these are listed � rst with some illustrative quota-tions.

1. Fourteen of the 16 interviewees indicated that being observed teaching andsubsequently receiving feedback and constructive criticism from mentors/supervising teachers was valuable to their development as teachers.

They have all been very good at the constructive criticism. It has allbeen ‘well this didn’t go so well, have you thought about maybe tryingthis instead?’ And they have been very good in saying what you aregood at as well which boosts your self-con� dence: ‘this is really good,spot on, keep at it’ type of thing.

In XXXXX School my mentor observed me several times, alwaysreferring to the positive points � rst. For example, he had noted thatone corner of the class are given less attention by me due to the angleI generally stand at. They were very good and able pupils who wouldget on well whatever but because this was drawn to my attention I wasable to take this on board and change things. Worksheets that I hadproduced were also praised, but suggestions and friendly ‘challenges’to improve and develop were also offered.

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12 A. J. Hobson

He would come in and then he’d pick out the points that needed to beappraised and he would say ‘this is good, this is good, this is what youneed to improve on’, and … he’d set targets at the end of the lessonand say ‘I’ll come in next lesson to see if you’ve achieved these targets.’

It should be added that the kind of feedback that most trainees seemed to valuewas of a ‘concrete’ or procedural nature, relating to speci� city of action, ratherthan involving explanation or justi� cation, to which there were very few explicitreferences.

2. Thirteen interviewees indicated that they were appreciative of receiving adviceand ideas about teaching more generally from teachers/mentors. Again thisseemed to be valued most where it related to the ‘practicalities’ of teaching.

[T]he teachers in the school … have given me the most practicaladvice … just like how to be developed as a teacher … where I hadgone wrong and how I could improve … It’s been very like hands-onadvice they have given me … controlling classes, lesson planning andthings like that.

The second one [mentor] was … so much better at actually saying howto get the best out of the different ability range … he was able to offersuggestions on different ways of getting the information over … So if Ihad a big concern he was more able to offer an alternative way of goingabout it.

[H]e was always available to give advice; he helped if like I wasespecially stuck on source work, the sort I had not used before, he wasthere to explain it beforehand. He would give particular advice onclasses that he had taught or what actually worked discipline wise, andI suppose he was always there if I wanted last minute advice orwhatever.

3. Eleven interviewees stated that they appreciated having a supportive and reassur-ing mentor.

I think that [mentors] play like a key part in it [ITT]. If they are verysupportive then you are going to do a lot better and get on. I was luckythat both my tutors were very supportive and very helpful in every-thing … [A]t my second school I felt that the whole depart-ment … were all basically acting like tutors. It was a really supportivedepartment … You felt like you could go to anybody for anything andthey were very helpful.

My � rst school mentor … happened to be excellent, because that washis personality and he was very conscientious and very support-ive … [I]f you had a very bad lesson then he’d say ‘oh well nevermind’. It was con� dence more than anything. I think you needcon� dence when you go into a classroom.

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The mentor and the department were very supportive and I got a lotof encouragement there and they actually helped me a great deal … He[mentor] was never critical, all the feedback I was given was verypositive: ‘well that lesson didn’t go well but don’t knock your-self … you’re learning, you are here to learn, so what you made amistake? I make mistakes’. You know stuff like that, always encourage-ment, like ‘next time round do it this way’, or ‘next time round youknow what’s going on don’t you?’

4. Ten interviewees stated that it was bene� cial to have timetabled (e.g. weekly)meetings with their mentor and/or to have a mentor who was prepared and ableto make time to discuss matters of mutual interest and concern.

[T]hey [weekly meetings] always happened. It was in the timetable foran hour that you went … they were very valuable because it gave youthe chance to let off some steam if you were having a problem.

I thought they [the weekly ‘mentorial’ meetings] were useful, I neededthose … although I wasn’t observed a huge amount I could talk overthe lesson with them in the meetings and also plan for the next week,so it was useful from that point of view for planning and for coveringground that I had already covered with classes.

In my second practice I didn’t have like set times for my mentormeetings and generally we would get together at say times that we bothdidn’t have any lessons … if there was something that I wanted toraise, I would go and raise it … If it was something that I thought wasdeadly important I would go and say ‘I want you to make time for me’and he would do. It just wasn’t we’ll meet on Friday at 2.30 kind ofthing.

5. Seven interviewees indicated that it had been bene� cial to discuss lesson planningand/or to have provisional lesson plans checked by mentors/teachers.

6. Six interviewees referred to the perceived bene� t of learning through trial anderror or being able to ‘try it [teaching] out for yourself in the classroom’.

7. Five indicated that it was bene� cial (more broadly) to immerse themselves in theschool culture, to be given responsibility and to behave and be treated like a‘normal’ teacher.

8. Five interviewees stated that it was helpful to observe their mentor and differentteachers teach.

9. Four stated that they found it valuable where mentors/supervising teachers hadset them targets for improvement, with two of these adding that it had beenhelpful where the mentors/teachers had followed this up to check that thetargets were being achieved.

10. Finally, two interviewees stated that it was bene� cial to have contact with andsupport from the whole-school coordinator, in the event that trainees may have

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14 A. J. Hobson

problems with their mentors and in order that they don’t become ‘isolated’within a particular department.

Perceived Limitations of Trainees’ Experiences of School-based Mentoring: interview data

The most frequent complaints of the interviewees, relating to their school-basedexperience, tended to relate to instances where the kinds of valuable or desirableaspects referred to above were lacking in one or both of their block school experi-ences. The things that the interviewees stated were ‘not so valuable’ about theirschool-based experiences are listed below.

1. Mentors not having or making time for them, e.g. by not having or regularlypostponing weekly meetings (six interviewees mentioned this).

2. A lack of feedback or constructive criticism about their teaching. Four intervie-wees mentioned this aspect, with two referring to a lack of feedback in general,and two stating that their mentors had only referred to positive aspects of theirteaching and had failed to point out their limitations/areas for improvement. Onthe other hand, three interviewees stated that they had experienced mentorsbeing too critical and failing to acknowledge any positive aspects relating to theirteaching attempts.

3. Four interviewees complained of a lack of advice, relating to classroom issues,from mentors or supervising teachers.

4. Four interviewees stated that one or more of their mentors had not beensuf� ciently supportive—e.g. because the onus had been on them to ‘go and ask’the mentor if and when they were experiencing problems.

5. Three interviewees reported ‘personality clashes’ with mentors.6. Two trainees complained that one of their mentors had been ‘out of date’ or ‘out

of touch’ (e.g. with curriculum developments).7. One of the 16 interviewees stated that one of her/his mentors had been ‘too

concerned with ticking boxes’, whilst another complained that one of her/hismentors had not kept a written record of lesson observations, progress or targets.

8. Finally, one interviewee felt that there had been a lack of support from the SchoolCoordinator, which exacerbated dif� culties that were experienced with theteacher-mentor (other Partnership trainees indicated that they felt that suchsupport was lacking from the university side of the course).

We have seen that most of the negative statements about trainees’ school-basedexperience relate to problems experienced with or criticisms of their teacher-mentors’ work. This, together with the fact that many of the interviewees’ positivecomments about their school-based experience also referred to their relationshipswith or to work conducted with their mentors, suggests that for trainees, thementor–mentee relationship is central to their ITT experience. In the light of this itis perhaps poignant that, whilst the questionnaire data reported above suggested thatthe majority of respondents rated their mentors as (very or quite) effective, ananalysis of the end-of-course interview transcripts reveals that 12 out of the 16interviewees reported some problems with at least one of their mentors.

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The excerpts below, from the end-of-course interviews with four trainees, providean insight into some of the more serious reported dif� culties that trainees experi-enced in their relationships with their school-based mentors.

‘Mike’

[H]e came to see me a couple of times and wrote some observation notesbut because of the fact that he was always going to meetings elsewherewhat I effectively ended up doing was teaching other classes that I hadn’toriginally been allocated because he would say ‘Can you teach my otherclasses?’ … I hardly ever saw him … [Time] was set aside [for a regular,weekly ‘mentorial’] and then invariably there’d be a meeting or he’d haveto take part in some sports event or he’d got some parent coming … so he’dsay ‘we’ll do it tomorrow morning’ and then he’d say ‘well I can’t do ittomorrow morning, let’s do it Monday’, and then he’d say ‘we might aswell leave it till our normal meeting on Thursday’. They just got cancelledtime after time … I can only recall three [meetings, in the whole term].

‘Susan’

Unfortunately I had a bad mentor in School … [she] was not support-ive … I don’t know how she was a mentor. The girl that was there � rstdidn’t get on with her either. I didn’t get on with her, nobody got on withher. That’s not the university’s fault particularly, it’s just unfortunate thatif you’re in that position where you are relying on that one person for halfof your course, it’s a bit dif� cult really … [S]he just knocked yourcon� dence from under you and you just would not want to walk into theclassroom. She would undermine you all the time … I didn’t have onemeeting. [You would have liked some?] Well I would have done but I wasscared of her so I didn’t ask … And I knew if I went to speak to her shewould just slate me and I didn’t feel like getting an ear bashing so I stayedout of the way … [W]hat she’d do, in the middle of a lesson she’d burstopen the door, shout at the kids, ‘I can hear you down the corridor’ andwalk out again. She would come to me and say ‘what happened? It didn’tseem like you were in control of that lesson’, and it was just a little bitnoisy. I just didn’t teach in the same way that she did.

‘Rachel’

XXXX [mentor] is about as much use as a bucket of sand in a desert … IfI do something good then he says ‘is that XXXXX’s [fellow trainee’s]idea?’ If XXXXX goes into a lesson without a lesson plan that’s goodbecause it shows she can work off the cuff; if I do it that’s bad planning onmy part. He … tells me that my lesson planning is awful but then will notshow me how I’m supposed to be doing it … I haven’t felt like I have hadany help from him, it’s very critical and not constructive.

One of the more telling illustrations of a trainee’s problematic relationshipwith her/his mentor can be seen in the experience of one trainee who decided to

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16 A. J. Hobson

withdraw from their course after 5–6 weeks. The trainee cited a number of factorsin her/his reason to withdraw but a lack of con� dence in the teacher-mentor was amajor consideration, as the following excerpts illustrate.

‘Sam’

I didn’t have con� dence in my mentor … For example in the second weekwe’d got assignments coming through and I wanted to talk about these butmy mentor was a very busy lady and she was � nishing a Master’s degreeherself as well as teaching. And I was preparing for a constructive mentormeeting every week but every time we sat down I felt that she had so manycommitments elsewhere and I didn’t have the time to say everything I hadto say … I really felt that the mentor’s role was pivotal but I didn’t feelcon� dent in her, I felt like I was wasting her time. I was worried about mysubject knowledge and asking for extra reading and she was saying ‘don’tworry about it, you’ll pick it up as you go along’, but I was worried aboutit.

Discussion

Data presented above suggest, � rst, that student teachers, the direct bene� ciaries ofcourses of pre-service teacher training, perceive school-based mentoring to be a, ifnot the, key element of the ITT experience. Secondly, the data also provideindications of what it is that student teachers value most highly about school-basedmentoring, most notably having supportive, reassuring mentors who are preparedand able to make time for them, to offer practical advice and ideas relating to theirteaching, and to provide constructive feedback on their teaching attempts (cf.Foster, 1999). Thirdly, whilst recognising that student teachers can only tell onepart of the story about school-based mentoring, the data also provide strongindications that the quality of mentoring is variable to say the least and that somementors did not appear to provide, for example, a ‘safe’ and supportive environmentwithin which their mentees could learn. If a student teacher perceives there to be alack of support then, even in the absence of the mentors’ perspective on this, therewould appear to be some problems with the student teacher’s working environment,such that this is not most conducive to the facilitation of effective student teacherlearning. (It is possible, of course, that some mentors would wish to question somestudent teachers’ willingness to learn.)

A number of possible explanations may be offered for the kind of variation in thequality of mentoring reported in this article. One possible reason is that, as the� ndings of a recent study suggest, teacher-mentors in schools regard mentoring as‘subordinate to what they perceived as their primary role of teaching’ (Evans et al.,1996, pp. 147–149). The role of mentoring of student teachers might thus farerelatively badly from school teachers’ inevitable ‘juggling of priorities’ in the face ofthe ‘overwhelming demands’ of school life (Maynard, 1996, p. 115) and the admin-istrative demands of ITT.

Secondly, as previous research has suggested, many school teacher-mentors might

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well be able to teach extremely effectively in their own classrooms but often � nd itdif� cult to articulate to student teachers how they do it or why it is more appropriateto do it in this way rather than that in one context or another (cf. Maynard, 1996,p. 113). Thirdly, this raises questions about the nature and extent of training for theITT mentoring role. In relation purely to its extent Earley (1993) found that 11LEAs had 90% of their secondary school mentors trained while nine LEAs had nonetrained for this role (Earley, 1993, p. 5).

Fourthly, there is arguably a lack of status or recognition, incentive or reward,whereby potentially capable mentors are not encouraged to develop their careers inthis area and/or existing mentors are not encouraged to undertake training todevelop their capabilities.

In addition it might be argued that some problems with mentor–mentee relationsresult not from mentors having insuf� cient time or being inadequately trained forthe role or from ‘bad mentoring practice’ but rather from what some traineesreferred to as ‘personality clashes’ between mentor and mentee.

It follows from the explanations offered above that schools and other ITTstakeholders might target a number of potential ways of improving student teachers’experience of school-based mentoring, including:

1. more effective selection of teachers who are likely to make good mentors2. more encouragement for effective teachers to become mentors to student teach-

ers3. providing mentors with more time to work with student teachers and to prepare

for such work4. providing training opportunities, or more effective training opportunities, for

teachers who are or who wish to become mentors to student teachers5. providing for more effective ‘matching’ of mentors and student teachers to avoid

potential clashes of personality or approach.

I conclude by making two points in relation to what the present study suggests aretwo of the main concerns of student teachers regarding their school-based experi-ences. First, it is imperative that schools and teacher-mentors acknowledge studentteachers’ need for personal support and a safe environment within which they canwork and learn. The issue is a particularly pertinent one in the current climate ofteacher shortage. Previous studies have shown that learning to teach can be astressful and threatening experience for student teachers (e.g. Tickle, 1991), and alack of support has been cited as one important reason why many student teachers’fail to complete their ITT courses (Chambers & Roper, 2000; Chambers et al.,2001).

Secondly, whilst it is important that mentors assist student teachers with whatthey crave most, namely practical assistance for classroom teaching, it is alsoimportant that teacher-mentors do not restrict their role to that of satisfying studentteachers. As noted above, trainees in schools are often too concerned with present-ing the appearance of competent teachers at the expense of a fuller understandingof teaching and learning (cf. John, 2001), and research has shown that after makingearly progress in developing con� dence and competence in the classroom, such

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18 A. J. Hobson

trainees often tend to ‘hit a plateau’ and struggle to develop their teaching beyondthis point (Maynard, 1996). In relation to the provision of ‘practical assistance andadvice’, it might thus be argued that it is not merely what mentors do, it is also theway that they do it. John Furlong illustrates the point in the context of assistingstudent teachers with their lesson planning:

[I]f student teachers are offered a model lesson plan, a simple framing mayinvolve understanding it as a concrete recipe or routine. The plan may havea beginning, middle, and end, which they copy and implement withoutfully appreciating why it takes that form.

Alternatively, the same lesson plan may be framed by experiencedteachers in rich and complex ways. They may bring to it a sophisticatedappreciation of how children learn and a � exible understanding of thesubstantive and syntactic structure of knowledge incorporated within it.They may well have a deeper appreciation of why it takes the form it doesand how it could be developed and adapted. (Furlong, 2000, p. 13)

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the � nancial support of the Economic andSocial Research Council (ESRC) and the professional assistance of Professor PeterTomlinson (University of Leeds) in the conduct of the research reported in thisarticle.

Notes

[1] The terms ‘student teacher’ and ‘trainee’ are used interchangeably in this article.[2] SCITT (School-centred initial teacher training) courses are run by consortia of (e.g. � ve or

six) schools as opposed to the traditional post-war model of university-administeredprogrammes. They may or may not ‘buy in’ university assistance in providing their courses.In the case of the two institutions in the present study, one of the programmes employedthe services of a local university to provide a ‘Professional Studies’ course whilst the otherprogramme was delivered wholly by practising schoolteachers.

[3] The 20 trainees invited to participate in the end-of-course interviews were the same traineeswho participated in start-of-course interviews, the � ndings from which are reported else-where (e.g. Hobson and Tomlinson, 2001).

[4] Whilst it is not the main concern of this article, it is interesting to note that SCITTrespondents rated their teacher-mentors more highly on this question, with 100% (all 16)rating their � rst mentor as ‘very’ (75%) or ‘quite’ (25%) effective, and 81% rating theirsecond mentor as ‘very’ (50%) or ‘quite’ (31%) effective. However, statistical analysiscannot con� rm the signi� cance of these � ndings, possibly because of the small nature of theSCITT sample.

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Documents

Student Teachers' Perceptions of School-based Mentoring in Initial Teacher Training (ITT)