Sashelle Thomas-Alexander, Cleveland State University OCTEO Conference Fall, 2010 Examining Interns’ Perceptions of Their Mentor Teachers: A Critical Component of Establishing Professional Development Schools

Introduction Student teaching is the capstone experience for teacher candidates Successful field experiences are established through careful planning between faculty, supervisors, mentors, and interns Turner (2008) suggested several strategies for providing successful experiences including: – Selecting quality mentors – Opportunities for faculty and mentors to work together

Professional Development Schools(PDS) In response, teacher preparation programs began to explore district/school partnerships Concept of Professional Development Schools (PDS) is the brainchild of the Holmes Group (1990)- consortium of more than 100 U.S. research institutions PDS partnerships include a K-12 school paired with a university to develop and implement communities of learning for diverse students

Problem Student teaching interns are expected to: process information connect the theory to the practice interpret school realities internalize the field experience Reported frustrations: learning to teach Incongruence between university theory and what is expected at the field site Huang, S., & Waxman, H. (2009). The association of school environment to student teachers’ satisfaction and teaching commitment. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25,

Problem Continued Multiple Truths Faculty accuse teachers of not being current on best practices Teachers accuse faculty of being too far removed from the classroom (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) Some teacher preparation programs attempt to bridge this gap by adopting the PDS model Quality Mentors The quality of the site is examined often ignoring the quality of the teachers’ abilities to be good mentors Sands, D., & Goodwin, L. (2005). Shared responsibility for teacher preparation: An exploratory study of the match between skills of clinical teachers and those required of their teacher candidates. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21,

Literature Review Smith (2001) David Kolb’s experiential learning theory Adopted theory of many PDS Knight, Wiseman, & Cooner (2000) Noted gains in students’ (K-12) achievement when the school participated in the PDS model Hudson (2007) Found that primary teachers are not being poised to sufficiently mentor in all subject areas

Literature Review Cont. Sands & Goodwin (2005) Mentors have high perceptions of themselves as mentors overall, but realize there is room for their professional growth Grisham et al. (2004) Mentors benefit from working with interns: Students receive more individualized attention; mentors improve their own practice Ferguson and Brink (2004) Mentors not wanting to host interns due to time commitments

Literature Review Cont. Davis & Waite (2007) Preservice participants indicated that the PDS experience positively impacted their experience as a novice teacher Respondents noted receiving support in: Developing relationships, content knowledge, attitudes, dispositions, and leadership skills Five participants responded negatively unanimously attributing the negative response to the poor relationships with mentor teachers

Research Questions 1. To what extent do interns’ ratings of their mentor teachers classroom management strategies, opportunities for reflection and rapport with mentor teachers significantly predict their overall satisfaction with their mentor teacher? 2. What is the best predictor of preservice teachers’ overall satisfaction with their mentor teacher?

Methodology Participants 273 preservice interns from one university Research Design Correlational (Survey Research) Instrument Overall Satisfaction Measure (Yusko & Moss, 2008) Procedures Students completing any field experience were invited to complete the minute on-line evaluation

Findings Table 5 Model Summary ModelRR SquareAdjusted R SquareStd. Error of the Estimate a a.Predictors: (Constant), Classroom management, reflection and rapport Strong positive correlation between all variables and overall satisfaction, indicating a statistically significant linear relationship Standard linear multiple regression indicated that approximately 87% of the interns’ overall satisfaction with mentor teachers is predicted by their perceptions of their mentors’: - Classroom management - Reflection -Rapport

Findings Rapport between mentor and intern was the best predictor in determining interns’ overall satisfaction. Coefficients ModelUnstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients tSig. BStd. ErrorBeta 1 (Constant) Rapport Reflection Classroom Management Table 6 Coefficients

Discussion One of the goals of teacher education programs is to prepare effective educators (Selwyn, 2007) PDS model is becoming more popular Mentoring component is one of the key components to a successful field experience Faculty should support mentors in areas strong areas, but also in areas in need of improvement Mentors must allow reflection opportunities (Mesler, 2004; Smith, 2001)

Limitations and Recommendations Limitations IVs were correlated; provides only suggestive evidence Positively skewed results Non-normal distribution of scores Response rate low (19%) Recommendations for Future Research Triangulate data with supervisor’s/faculty evaluations (Clark & Creswell, 2010) Add a qualitative component to find out why interns assign specific ratings to mentors