To Challenge or Not To Challenge: The Mentor's Dilemma

This paper focuses upon open and distance learning initial teacher education in both primary and secondary sectors and explores the ways in which mentors challenge PGCE students in their professional thinking and classroom practice. It draws upon ethnographic research on mentors and student teachers during one presentation of the course. The data are based on observations of mentors working with students on final student placement, conversations with specialist subject mentor trainers as well as questionnaire and other source material. An analysis of how mentors articulate their knowledge base; the dialogue between mentor and student and the challenge of moving from novice to expert for the student teacher are all considered. Our conclusions have implications for all ITT and will also be a source of valuable practical help for student teachers and mentors.     

Design,implementation, and evaluation of a multi-disciplinary professional development program for research mentors

ABSTRACT

Undergraduate research experience has been shown to enhance student learning and improve persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Researchers studying undergraduate research experiences have largely focused on student outcomes and have seldom investigated the outcomes of graduate and postdoctoral mentors. Here, we report a non-credit, year-long mentor professional development program designed for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff in STEM. Mentors attended a series of six interactive and discussion-based workshops and mentored first-year undergraduate students in independent summer research projects. We report evaluation findings for three mentor cohorts using a combination of qualitative analysis of mentoring philosophies and quantitative assessment of pre- and post-surveys about mentoring objectives and skills. Results indicate that mentors gained self-efficacy in some objectives and skills. However, many other objectives and skills remained unchanged. We explore possible explanations for the lack of more broad-scale gains across survey items and present ideas for program improvement.     

Mentors’ personal growth and development in a college access mentorship program

As the prevalence of mentoring programs in higher education institutions continues to grow, there remains little research on the growth and development that comes from serving as a mentor. In this phenomenological study, the researchers examined college students’ personal and educational gains through serving as mentors to high school students in a work-study mentoring program for increasing college access. Drawing on interviews with 14 mentors and other program staff, the researchers examined the following research question: In what ways did student mentors in the G-Force Mentoring Program grow and develop as a result of their mentor experience? Findings included mentor growth in three key categories: (a) self-development and awareness, (b) skill development, and (c) career development. Implications for practice and future research are offered.     

Mentoring empowers gifted/Learning disabled students to soar!

The Wings Mentor Program, established by the Division of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction of Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools, was developed to provide additional support to students with gifts who also have learning disabilities (GAD) and highly able students who were not succeeding in the classroom. Students realize their creative and intellectual potential when paired with mentors who nurture them by increasing their knowledge and skills in an area of interest. The mentors, who have a background in education and/or experience working with children, are carefully screened and selected based on their knowledge in a specific field, and their ability to share their skills with young people. Mentors communicate with the classroom teachers so that the successful strategies can be transferred and applied to the classroom setting. The article includes an analysis of the program's components, the mentor/student/teacher partnership, and training practices.     

Roles,Risks, and Benefits of Peer Mentoring Relationships in Higher Education

Successful peer mentoring in university settings is the result of relationships among students, mentors, and instructors. Findings from this study indicate that even in programs where training is ongoing and established, assumptions cannot be made about the understanding of the roles, risks, and benefits involved in such relationships. This study demonstrates that students, instructors, and mentors all have different perspectives about a mentor’s role and how that role should be enacted. Connecting link, peer leader, learning coach, student advocate, and trusted friend were identified as predominant roles enacted by mentors. Also described are risks and benefits for being or having a peer mentor.     

Work-integrated learning skills: A comparison of teachers’ perceptions about the PGCE with those of student teachers in the Nelson Mandela Metropole

Abstract

The purpose of the Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) is to accredit a generalist educator's qualification that caps an undergraduate qualification. As an access requirement, student teachers are required to have appropriate prior learning which leads to general foundational and reflexive competencies. The PGCE qualification focuses mainly on developing practical competencies reflexively grounded in educational theory. Hence, the objective of this study was to investigate the perceptions of student teachers with those of their school mentors about the PGCE as a qualification to develop the students’ work-integrated learning (WIL) skills. The quantitative research method was used in this study. The target population comprised of student teachers who qualified with the PGCE at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) and their school-based mentors in the Nelson Mandela Metropole (NMM). Data was obtained by means of two structured questionnaires: one for the student teachers and the other for the mentors. The research design compared the perceptions of student teachers and their mentors regarding the classroom practice and performance of these students. The findings of this study based on these perceptions support the hypothesis that the PGCE at the NMMU contributes to the development of the WIL skills of student teachers in the NMM.     

导生制在义务馆员管理中的实践探索及成效

导生制是一种教学组织形式,其主要做法是将学生按能力分成小组,每组选一名优秀学生为导生,先由教师对导生授课,再由导生分别传授给其他学生,以链条相扣的形式,减少损耗,提高工作效率.本文介绍了贵州师范学院图书馆采用导生制培养和管理学生义务馆员的相关探索与实践,研究表明,根据学生义务馆员个体特征和图书馆的工作特点,在学生义务馆员管理中合理引入导生制,是促进学生个人成长、凝聚团队精神和实现规范管理的一条有效途径.     

Mentoring in Action on a Primary PGCE Course

Abstract

School‐based mentors are taking increased responsibility for the initial training of student teachers as a result of government policy to lengthen the proportion of time students spend in school during their training. The role of the mentor is critical in the development of a partnership model of initial teacher education (ITE), involving close collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) and schools. This article draws on our research into the practice of mentoring on the one‐year Primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute. Through observations of mentoring sessions at school we analyse the process of mentoring in action. Drawing on mentor observations and interviews with mentors, students and college (link) tutors we examine the diverse nature of mentoring and identify some of the common qualities of good mentoring practice.     

The influence of teacher education on mentor teachers’ role perception in professional development schools

Apprenticeship and professional development schools (PDSs) are two models for teacher education. The mentors that are the focus for this research completed their initial teacher training through one of these models and now mentor in PDSs. The paper reports on how the way in which they were trained as student teachers influenced their role perceptions. The findings suggest that mentor teachers who were trained via the PDSs model have a broader conceptual understanding of their role perception.     

Mentoring and Student Persistence in College: A Study of the Washington State Achievers Program

Using survey data on the third cohort of scholarship recipients in the Washington State Achievers (WSA) program, this study first examined how the assignment of college mentor and student engagement in mentoring vary based on student and institutional characteristics and then examined the relationship between mentor assignment and different mentoring aspects of the WSA program and student persistence in college. The results from this project indicated that Asian American students were more likely to have an assigned college mentor and that Hispanic students were more likely than White students to turn to their college mentors for support and encouragement and had a higher level of perceived importance of their overall experiences with mentors. Among all WSA recipients, having an assigned college mentor was positively related to the probability of persisting in college; among those who had an assigned college mentor, the probability of persisting was positively associated with the extent to which the recipients turn to mentors for support and encouragement and with their perceived importance of experiences with mentors.     

Forming the Mentor-Mentee Relationship

A positive mentor–mentee relationship is essential for the mentee’s development of teaching practices. As mentors can hold the balance of power in the relationship with preservice teachers, how do mentors develop positive mentor–mentee relationships? This multi-case study involved: (a) written responses from over 200 teachers involved in a mentoring professional development program, (b) nineteen mentor teachers with written responses and audio-recorded focus groups, and (c) two pairs of mentors and mentees with audio-recorded interviews. Findings revealed that positive relationships required the achievement of trust and respect by sharing information, resources, and expectations and by being professional, enthusiastic, and supportive with collaborative problem-solving. A model is presented that outlines ways in which mentors can form positive mentor–mentee relationships.     

Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institutes: meeting modern challenges in undergraduate summer research

Summer undergraduate research programs in science and engineering facilitate research progress for faculty and provide a close-ended research experience for students, which can prepare them for careers in industry, medicine, and academia. However, ensuring these outcomes is a challenge when the students arrive ill-prepared for substantive research or if projects are ill-defined or impractical for a typical 10-wk summer. We describe how the new Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institutes (BBSI), developed in response to a call for proposals by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), provide an impetus for the enhancement of traditional undergraduate research experiences with intense didactic training in particular skills and technologies. Such didactic components provide highly focused and qualified students for summer research with the goal of ensuring increased student satisfaction with research and mentor satisfaction with student productivity. As an example, we focus on our experiences with the Penn State Biomaterials and Bionanotechnology Summer Institute (PSU-BBSI), which trains undergraduates in core technologies in surface characterization, computational modeling, cell biology, and fabrication to prepare them for student-centered research projects in the role of materials in guiding cell biology.     

Experiences of Mentors Training Underrepresented Undergraduates in the Research Laboratory

Successfully recruiting students from underrepresented groups to pursue biomedical science research careers continues to be a challenge. Early exposure to scientific research is often cited as a powerful means to attract research scholars with the research mentor being critical in facilitating the development of an individual''s science identity and career; however, most mentors in the biological sciences have had little formal training in working with research mentees. To better understand mentors’ experiences working with undergraduates in the laboratory, we conducted semistructured interviews with 15 research mentors at a public university in the Midwest. The interviewed mentors were part of a program designed to increase the number of American Indians pursuing biomedical/biobehavioral research careers and represented a broad array of perspectives, including equal representation of male and female mentors, mentors from underrepresented groups, mentors at different levels of their careers, and mentors from undergraduate and professional school departments. The mentors identified benefits and challenges in being an effective mentor. We also explored what the term underrepresented means to the mentors and discovered that most of the mentors had an incomplete understanding about how differences in culture could contribute to underrepresented students’ experience in the laboratory. Our interviews identify issues relevant to designing programs and courses focused on undergraduate student research.     

Outcome Assessment of Mentorship Program

This paper reports results of a survey that studied the outcomes of a mentorship program. Students enrolled in a core course for the MA and certificate in gerontology programs were required to select either a long-term care service, a program in aging, or an agency providing services for senior adults, where they could spend a day interacting with a mentor. A wide range of sites were available and students could select one site for 8 hours or two sites for 4 hours each. The researchers were interested in assessing both the opinions of the students who participated and of the mentors themselves about this educational experience. A survey that had a series of open-ended and close-ended questions was administered to all graduate students who participated as well as to the mentors at their various sites. This paper discusses the implications of this program as a model for other gerontology programs. It delineates mentor and student suggestions about the strengths and weaknesses of the current set-up of the mentorship program. Suggestions are made for further study of this pedagogical tool.     

A new paradigm for mentored undergraduate research in molecular microbiology

Science educators agree that an undergraduate research experience is critical for students who are considering graduate school or research careers. The process of researching a topic in the primary literature, designing experiments, implementing those experiments, and analyzing the results is essential in developing the analytical skills necessary to become a true scientist. Because training undergraduates who will only be in the laboratory for a short period is time consuming for faculty mentors, many students are unable to find appropriate research opportunities. We hypothesized that we could effectively mentor several students simultaneously, using a method that is a hybrid of traditional undergraduate research and a traditional laboratory course. This article describes a paradigm for mentored undergraduate research in molecular microbiology where students have ownership of their individual projects, but the projects are done in parallel, enabling the faculty mentor to guide multiple students efficiently.     

Developing Mentors: An Analysis of Shared Mentoring Practices

Understanding how experienced teachers share and articulate effective mentoring practices can guide efforts to prepare quality mentors. This qualitative study focused on mentoring practices within a teacher-designed student-teaching program conceptualized while the mentor teachers within the program were students in a graduate-level mentoring course and implemented upon the mentors’ completion of their graduate studies. Data sources included interviews and field notes from meetings with mentors and student teachers. The results detail specific mentoring practices: explicit instruction through scaffolding, developing the whole teacher, student-teacher-directed learning, fostering student teachers’ individual practice, explicit mentoring of one another, and reflecting on mentoring. These practices were enabled by program structures such as mentor meetings, an online forum, and mentors’ observation of all student teachers in the program.     

Faculty Motivation to Mentor Students Through Undergraduate Research Programs: A Study of Enabling and Constraining Factors

Undergraduate research experiences are a “high impact” educational practice that confer benefits to students. However, little attention has been paid to understanding faculty motivation to mentor undergraduate students through research training programs, even as the number of programs has grown, requiring increasing numbers of faculty mentors. To address this, we introduce a conceptual model for understanding faculty motivation to mentor and test it by using empirical data to identify factors that enable and constrain faculty engagement in an undergraduate research program. Using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2013, we employed generalized linear modeling to analyze data from 536 faculty across 13 research institutions to examine how expected costs/benefits, dispositional factors, situational factors, previous experience, and demographic factors predicted faculty motivation to mentor. Results show that faculty who placed greater value on the opportunity to increase diversity in the academy through mentorship of underrepresented minorities were more likely to be interested in serving as mentors. Faculty who agreed more strongly that mentoring undergraduate students was time consuming and their institution’s reward structures were at odds with mentoring, or who had more constrained access to undergraduate students were less likely to be interested in serving as mentors. Mid-career faculty were more likely than late-career faculty to be interested in serving as mentors. Findings have implications for improving undergraduate research experiences, since the success of training programs hinges on engaging highly motivated faculty members as mentors.     

Enhancement of Mentor Selection Using the Ideal Mentor Scale

Doctoral students seeking faculty mentors have few tools available to assist them. The Ideal Mentor Scale (IMS) is a new measure designed to help graduate students consider the qualities they as individuals most value in a potential mentor. Ph.D. students at 3 different universities (Ns = 82, 250, 380) contributed to the development and cross-validation of the 34-item IMS. Item frequencies indicated that 2 universal qualities were central to graduate students' definitions of a mentor: communication skills and provision of feedback. Principal factor analysis of the IMS indicated that 3 individual differences dimensions reliably underlaid graduate students' importance ratings of mentor attributes: Integrity, Guidance, and Relationship. In one sample, Guidance and Relationship were significantly related to student satisfaction with their mentor. The IMS is an assessment tool that could individualize the initiation and maintenance of mentoring relationships, enhance communication, and ultimately improve the satisfaction of students with their doctoral education.