Learning to Teach Generatively: Mentor-Supported Professional Development and Research in Technology-and-Science

Abstract

In a year-long, school-based teacher education project, primary school teachers were given workshop- and classroom-based support, including sustained mentoring, as they appropriated a generative heuristic for teaching technology-and-science in their classrooms. The mentor participated in their lessons and recorded her frequent conversations with teachers. Extracts from 3 conversations (of many, spanning 5 months) between 1 teacher and the mentor illustrate this teacher's changing ideas and the mentor's role. The teacher realized that although she preferred to learn generatively, she had been using instructionist approaches in her technology-and-science teaching. These dialogues show how the mentor supported this teacher as she gradually aligned her technology-and-science teaching with the generative style of learning she already valued.