Determining effective mentor dispositions from the perspective of mentor teachers

Abstract

This project attempts to answer the question, what dispositions do effective mentor teachers possess? Although there is a plethora of information regarding the topic of effective mentors, it is primarily from the perspective of student teachers or university consultants. It is for this reason that current teacher mentors will be interviewed to examine the question from an alternative perspective. Ten teachers who currently teach at the high school level and have had a student teacher within the past five years will be subjected to an auditorily recorded one-on-one interview. The interviews will be analyzed through thematic analysis and the results will be mapped back to previously published research. The dispositions identified by mentor teachers during the interviews will be mapped to the dispositions previously identified in the literature. This project will demonstrate that mentor teachers do hold common beliefs and value similar dispositions when compared to student teachers and university consultants.