Theory and practice relationship in mentoring in Initial Teacher Education

Theory and practice relationship in mentoring in Initial Teacher Education

Mentors can be described as advisers and are rather common in teacher education for the last three decades. They mostly work with beginning teachers to support them during transition from university to the profession. Mentorship has been reported to be beneficial to the novice teacher in finding identity and roles in the profession by relating practice to theory. It has also been found to contribute to the teachers staying in the profession longer. Having noted benefits from such a support system, this research project describes a strategy for closing the gap between theory and practice by exemplifying a different version of Swedish model for faculty-school collaboration. Ethnographically designed, the project portrays the mentorship model implemented at University College of Borås. The findings are interpreted using the data sources of interviews, observations, feedback forms from mentors, mentorship coordinators and administrators, and mentees (teacher students). Findings are categorized with reference to the structure of model implemented and professional benefits gained from the model. A further step to put the findings in is to illustrate the model in the framework of EU teacher education. Finally the model will be evaluated for its opportunity of implementation within Turkish Initial Teacher Education (ITE) system.