Developmental relationships in schools: pre-service teachers’ perceptions of mentors’ effort, self-development orientation, and use of theory

ABSTRACT

For the last two decades mentoring as a developmental relationship has been investigated and elaborated on by several researchers. In our study, 382 pre-service teachers answered questions about aspects of developmental mentoring relationships. Using structural equational modelling, we investigated relations between mentors’ effort, self-development orientation and theory-use as possible predictors of perceived developmental support. Our findings indicated that pre-service teachers’ perceptions of school mentors’ effort and self-development orientation were positively associated to their perceptions of developmental support in mentoring. Mentors’ emphasis on theory in mentoring discussions was negatively, although weakly, related to pre-service teachers’ perceptions of receiving developmental support.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental relationships in mentoring
• mentor effort
• mentor’s self-development orientation
• theory-use in mentoring
• practicum in teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sample item: ‘I am enthusiastic about the mentor role’.

2. This article is part of a study where mentoring of pre-service teachers was studied based on responses from both mentors and mentees (Lejonberg et al., 2018; Sandvik, Solhaug, Lejonberg, Elstad, & Christophersen, submitted-a; Sandvik et al., submitted-b). Data in this project was gathered from the two largest university-based teacher education programs for secondary and upper-secondary teachers in Norway.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eli Lejonberg

Eli Lejonberg is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at UiO. She has worked as a teacher in both secondary and secondary school and as a mentor for graduates. Her research interests are mentoring of pre-service teachers and teacher professionalism.

Eyvind Elstad

Eyvind Elstad is Professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at UiO. His research interests are professional development, educational management, school reforms, teacher education, teachers' labour and trade unions, educational policy, evaluation of teachers' work, ICT and education.

Lise Vikan Sandvik

Lise Vikan Sandvik is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education, NTNU. She has experience as teacher in primary and secondary schools, and served as deputy head of Department of Teacher Education from (2013 – 2016). Her professional field of interest is mainly revolved around issues of writing in foreign languages, educational assessment, teacher professionalism, teacher education, and mentoring of preservice teachers.

Trond Solhaug

Trond Solhaug is a professor of social studies and pedagogy. His research follows the themes: Democracy, Citizenship in Education and Teacher Education. Recent research focuses on citizens' participation, political identity and intercultural competence. Solhaug teaches democracy and citizenship in education, identity and quantitative methodology.

Knut-Andreas Christophersen

Knut-Andreas Christophersen is a lecturer at the Department of Political Science at UiO. His research interests are measurement theory, methodology, data processing and statistical analysis.