Some Insights into the Mentoring Role of High School English Teachers: F1ve Secondary Schools in Focus
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Date
2001-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was mainly designed to investigate the extent to which the cooperating
teachers are aware of th eir mentoring role, the extent to which they discharge their
mentoring duties and factors that affect of the teachers' mentoring activities.
The subj ects of th e study were English teachers in five cooperating secondary
schools in Addis Ababa who have served as 'mentors' in the last five yea rs, student
school directors and English department heads, the teaching practice supervisor,
head of the university's teaching practice coord inating unit and teachers in the
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Addis Ababa University (AAU).
The data collecting tools used were questionnaire, interview and the student
teachers' diaries. Some of the data are quantitative while others are qual itative in
nature. Therefore , both quanti tative and qualitative data analysis methods were
used. For th e analysis of the quantitative data, descriptive stati stics like, frequency,
percentage and mean were used, whereas, the qualita tive data were described and
explained.
The study has general ly shown th at the cooperating teachers are aware that they are
supposed to serve as 'mentors' and that then are ready to work with the student
teachers. However, there are pieces of evidence in the data that show that thecooperating teachers do not seem to be successfu lly discharging their mentoring
duties.
For example, the study has noted the following as factors that affect the cooperating
teachers successful discharg ing of their mentoring duties shortage of the teaching
practice time, weaker liaison between the university and the coopera ting schools, the
university's failure to give due attention to the student teaching practice program and
lack of enthu siasm and under performance in the teaching practice on the part of the
stud ent teachers.
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Keywords
Mentoring Role