Supporting the Student:


-      Two areas:
u  Support in developing an identity within the school community
u  Emotional or pastoral support
-      Identity:
u  The development of a teacher identity is seen as a key part of the learning to teach.
u  Three perspectives:
l  First, within a socio-cultural perspective, the critical role of the mentor is in supporting student teachers development of a comfortable and congruent sense of self as a teacher.
l  Second perspective, robust reasoning within an investigation-articulation approach to teacher education – revisiting questions about identity at regular intervals helps the student teacher to articulate their developing sense of self, e.g. ‘who am I as a teacher?’ and ‘who is my professional community?’
l  Third, developing a personal narrative, suggesting that beginning teachers moved significantly towards establishing their own identities as teachers through creating their own stories.
-      These three perspectives can be supported by the following practical strategies for mentoring:
u  Nurturing and modelling
u  Questioning and reflecting
u  Exploring and facilitating the development of narratives
-      Pastoral Support:
u  Teaching practice is perceived as a particularly stressful and demanding period which involves considerable amounts of distress, changes in psycho-physiological patterns and an increasing sense of weariness and ‘vulnerability’.
u  Co-planned lessons can enable the student teacher to focus on specific parts of the lesson, planning thoroughly and feeling positive about the outcome.


Next page: Challenging the Student

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