Abstract:
Preservice teacher education has long relied on mentor teachers to support and guide preservice teachers’ learning during practicum. Much has been written about who these mentor teachers should be and what they should know and be able to do. Becoming a mentor teacher is a shift from being a teacher of school students to being a teacher of school students and a mentor of adult learning. A professional and a personal transition occurs: the teacher is developing a new sense of them-self. Even though mentor teachers are recognised as important in preservice teacher education, and teachers are often asked to take on the mentor role, little is known about what it is like for teachers to experience this transition from teacher to teacher and mentor teacher for preservice teachers.
This thesis presents the lived experiences of six teachers who were becoming mentor teachers for preservice teachers.
A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was taken to gathering and analysing data from a series of semistructured interviews during a longitudinal study. As the researcher, I took a cyclic, reflexive approach to interpreting the descriptions of the participants’ experiences. Initially my focus was on details, however as I grew as a phenomenological researcher, I began to move from knowing to interpreting and being in each experience with the participants. In line with the hermeneutic phenomenological approach, I have found meaning in these experiences and presented my interpretations as stories and allegories in this thesis.
My interpretations indicate that there is much to be known about what it is like for teachers to experience the transition from teacher to teacher and mentor teacher for preservice teachers. It is important to understand the way that new mentor teachers interpret and navigate familiar and unfamiliar expectations, emotions and circumstances, and manage tensions between their teaching and mentoring roles. These understandings are necessary in order to provide appropriately targeted support and professional development for teachers who are becoming mentor teachers for preservice teachers in the context of their work.
I invite each person who reads this thesis to reflexively develop their own understanding of what they read so that all of our understandings can be added to a shared and dynamic body of knowledge of becoming a mentor teacher for preservice teachers.