Democratic Teachers Mentoring Novice Teachers: Enacting Democratic Practices and Pedagogy in Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

Much like preservice teachers, who cite cooperating teachers as influential to the learning-to-teach process, this study and its findings center the work of cooperating teachers as essential to teacher education for democratic education. The mentoring practices of cooperating teachers often reflect their teaching practices with students in their classroom; as such, this study examines the mentoring practices of five democratic teachers who worked with six preservice teachers in a one-semester clinical experience. Democratic mentoring affords preservice teachers opportunities to observe democratic teaching practices, to attempt enacting democratic practices within a classroom context ready for progressive practices and curricula, and importantly, to experience democratic education in their own learning-to-teach process. Further, recognition of the democratic mentoring practices of cooperating teachers, as teacher educators, democratizes teacher education by attending to multiple spaces of knowledge about teaching and students.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• preservice teacher education
• democratic education
• elementary education

Notes

1. All names of people and places have been changed to pseudonyms.

2. Parenthetical markers delineate the multiple participants’ roles—CT for cooperating teacher, ST for student teacher, and PS for practicum student.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherina A. Payne

Katherina A. Payne, an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Texas at Austin, examines democratic education in elementary and teacher education settings.