Mentoring the Relationship Between Cooperating Primary School Teachers and Teacher Trainees During Teaching Practice

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Pedagogy - Common Didactics, Educational Objectives, Methods, grade: A, Moi University (Main campus), course: Education curriculum, language: English, abstract: Cooperating teachers provide the guidance sought by teacher trainees when they are away from college in the practicing schools and in the absence of the college tutors. This study sought to establish the extent to which this mentorship role is played by analyzing the mentoring relationship between cooperating primary school teachers and teacher trainees during teaching practice.

The objectives of the study were to find out how the cooperating primary school teachers mentored the teacher trainees on: schemes of work and lesson plans; selection and application of instructional methods; lesson presentation and on professional ethics. The theoretical frame work used was based on developmental supervision theory by Glickman (2003). The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. It targeted cooperating teachers from 26 public primary schools from Kakamega and Vihiga Counties in Western Kenya and the student teacher trainees of Eregi and Kaimosi Teachers College who had undertaken teaching practice in the targeted primary schools.

Two cooperating teachers who had handled teacher trainees during teaching practice for at least one year were selected from the schools through simple random sampling. For teacher trainees, focus was on approximately 1000 second year students who had done at least two teaching practice sessions. The teacher trainees were stratified into male and female from which 30% were selected from each gender through simple random sampling method. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collecting instruments.

The data collected was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Frequency tables were used to present the quantitative data, while qualitatively data was thematically analyzed as per the objectives. The analysis revealed that, majority of the cooperating teachers rarely did assist teacher trainees in preparation of schemes of work and lesson plans, selection and application of instructional methods and lesson presentation.

On professional ethics, it established that, majority of the cooperating teachers often guided teacher trainees in the maintenance of discipline in class. Consequently, the study recommended that, cooperating teachers should check the trainees' lesson preparation to confirm that, the topics allocated to them are effectively taught; that provision be made for both to regularly discuss the instructional methods before lesson presentation.