Designing a complementary e-mentoring program for pre-service ELT teachers: online co-mentoring project

ABSTRACT

In this qualitative study, we designed an online mentoring program to complement school-based mentoring to enrich the quality of existing mentoring experiences and explored the impact of this project on the professional development of 12 EFL pre-service teachers in an English-medium university in Turkey and six qualified English teachers. Pre-service teachers were assigned online co-mentors and asked to send them their lesson plans and teaching videos and several questions regarding their practicum, lesson plan preparation, delivery, assessment issues, as well as career-related concerns via e-mail to receive feedback. The data collected via semi-structured interviews before and after the project were analyzed through content analysis. The findings indicated a relatively high level of satisfaction among pre-service teachers regarding detailed feedback provision, the development of alternative viewpoints into teaching, enhanced teaching self-efficacy, reduced teaching anxiety, new insights into their career choices, and some challenges concerning the online nature of the study.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentoring
• e-mentoring
• pre-service teacher education
• online teacher learning
• professional development
• coaching

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Middle East Technical University Scientific Research Projects Coordination Unit under Grant GAP-503-2018-2732.