Learning to be a teacher: mentoring, collaboration and professional practice

Abstract

[Excerpt] Learning to be a teacher has been described as a complex, contextual and idiosyncratic process (Flores 2001, 2006; Feiman-Nemser 2012). It entails a diversity of learning contexts (Livingston and Shiach 2010) and activities (for instance university course work and field work) and it is dependent on a wide array of factors such as opportunities for developing professional knowledge, support, facilitation of different forms of reflection, classroom observation and modelling by teacher educators. The papers included in this issue address some of these key issues. They illustrate, in one way or another, aspects associated with mentoring, collaboration and professional practice in teacher education in various countries. The first paper ‘Student teachers’ self-dialogues, peer dialogues, and supervisory dialogues in placement learning’, by Dubravka Knezic, Paulien Meijer, Auli Toom,, Äli Leijen, Juanjo Mena and Jukka Husu, reports on findings from a study carried out in the Netherlands. It focuses on three types of dialogues as reflective tools in placement learning, namely supervisory dialogues (mentor to student teacher), peer dialogues (student teacher to student teacher) and self-dialogues (student teachers to themselves). Data collection was obtained through the use of guided reflection according to which student teachers talked about their teaching experience. The authors conclude that supervisory and peer dialogues seemed to point to similar reflective power in terms of student teacher’s practical knowledge and richness of argumentation for appraisals. Knezic et al. argue for the use of more frequent peer dialogues and they suggest that self-dialogues may be employed for student teachers to consolidate their own knowledge and manage their learning behaviour. The authors discuss the use of the three types of dialogues and their contribution in terms of practical knowledge and support for reflection. [...]