Mentor Teaching In Saskatchewan: A Community of Practice Approach
Researchers: Dr. Cristyne Hébert, Camille Hounjet, Trina Crawford (Regina Public), Stephanie Rincker (Regina Public), Mick Rissling (Regina Public), Scott Mills (Saskatoon Catholic), Jennifer Busby (Saskatoon Public, and Kelli White (Prairie Spirit).
Project Summary:
Cooperating or collaborating teachers play a vital role in helping pre-service teachers develop the competencies, attitudes, and beliefs required to be an effective teacher (Clarke et al., 2012). Mentors can assume a variety of roles during the field experience, inclusive of instructional coach, emotional support provider, and socializing agent (Butler & Cuenca, 2012), trainer, assessor and advisor (Jones, 2001). That said, these roles are rarely explicitly defined by teacher preparation programs (Davis & Fantozzi, 2016). As mentor teachers are typically given little training with respect to mentorship, many rely on their own experiences with student teaching or preconceived ideas about how student teachers learn to guide their practice (Abrosetti, 2014; Matsko et al., 2024). Research has demonstrated that mentorship in fieldexperiences can be enhanced by way communities of practice, wherein teacher mentors gather to review research, discuss mentoring strategies, and develop their identities as teacher mentors (Buysse et al., 2003; Valentine, 2013)
In this project, project leaders from the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan work with six lead cooperating teachers to create and facilitate community of practice. Working with these mentor teachers provides them with the opportunity to enhance their practices as mentors. It also allows both universities to hear and learn of the needs of mentor teachers as they strive to create more placement opportunities for teacher candidates.