Mentoring during teaching practicum: Perceptions of teacher mentors and student teacher trainees

This is a preliminary report on an ongoing research study. Mentoring plays an important component in the area of teacher education particularly during teaching practicum. The purpose of this study is to develop and implement an alternative program for teacher trainee mentoring at a local university in Malaysia. This research will be divided into two phases. The first part of the study involves examining existing mentoring models in order to develop an alternative model for the specific cultural and educational context. The second part of the study involves the implementation of the alternative program and evaluating its impact on teacher preparedness. This study will be looking at the first phase. Preliminary data were collected using questionnaires and interviews from various schools where practicum were conducted. The purpose of this preliminary data is to get teacher mentors' and teacher trainees' perceptions of the current mentoring system. Mentoring workshops were conducted for teacher mentors and student teacher trainees before the teaching practicum started. Evaluation of the workshops was also done during the first phase of this study.

Keywords: Doctoral Education Research