Browsing by Subject "Mentoring in education--Texas"
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Item An examination of email-based novice teacher mentoring: proposing a practitioner-oriented model of online reflection(2004) French, Karen Dorothy; Williams, Susan M.; Maloch, BethThis qualitative study examined how mentoring and reflection were enacted in the discourse between novice teacher protégés and their experienced teacher mentors in an online new teacher support program Participants were members of six mentoring teams in WINGS (Welcoming Interns and Novices with Guidance and Support) Online sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin, a program designed. to offer graduates of the university's teacher preparation programs protégé-driven just-in-time support. Novices who chose to participate were offered the opportunity to select an experienced teacher mentor with whom they could communicate via a facilitated private email list. The teams participating in this study had each communicated for at least one semester. Data consisted of the email exchanges between mentors and protégés and the applications submitted at the beginning of the match. Qualitative analysis of the data proceeded inductively. Methods of constant comparative analysis and microanalysis of discourse revealed the content, structure and patterns of the teachers' talk. Findings indicated that the teachers, who discussed many of the same issues previously identified with face-to-face mentoring pairs, focused much of their talk on storytelling. Although text-based, their stories did not assume the formal structure traditionally associated with written discourse. Instead, the teachers utilized an electronic equivalent of spoken conversational narratives. Narratives were fluid and reflective of the purposes they served, including: relating, illustrating, venting and reflecting. Reflective exchanges, a focus of the study, were initiated almost exclusively by the protégés and grounded in the problems they faced in their teaching. Analysis generated a practitioner-oriented model of reflection categorized according to which aspect of the problem the teacher foregrounded. This model suggested a typical sequence in which new teachers told a story and examined one or more aspects of the problem posed. When these reflective bids received a response, the mentors' messages extended the reflection in a fluid process, shifting back and forth between different aspects of issues. Implications include recommendations for online teacher mentoring programs and a theoretical understanding of how teachers reflect on issues they consider important.Item Novice teachers' experiences with telemonitoring as learner-centered professional development(2003) Abbott, Lynda Daisy; Harris, JudiThis multiple-case study examines the experiences of ten novice teachers using telementoring services sponsored by the University of Texas’ WINGS (Welcoming Interns and Novices with Guidance and Support) program for its recently certified new teachers. This protégé-driven service allows new teachers to address self-perceived induction needs by selecting their own mentors from an online database of profiles submitted by experienced-teacher volunteers. The novice teachers in this study exchanged e-mail with their telementors regularly during a period of 15 to 24 months, typically sending or receiving at least one email message per week. E-mail exchanges were facilitated by WINGS staff and were automatically archived on the WINGS server with participants’ fully informed consent. Data gathered and generated for this interpretivist study included interviews with the novice teachers; their archived e-mail exchanges with their mentors and facilitators; information submitted by the protégés as they selected their mentors, plus professional profiles written by the mentors they selected; and interviews with WINGS facilitators. These data were analyzed using a constant comparison method, leading to the emergence of themes, which formed the basis for the study’s findings. Key findings were threefold. First, the participating novice teachers sought induction support online largely because they felt vulnerable when asking for assistance or support in their own school environments, perceiving such requests as possibly exposing them to negative judgment from on-campus colleagues, assigned mentors, or supervisors. Second, these protégé teachers generally felt that their telementors helped them by providing profession-related developmental assistance, ranging from practical teaching suggestions the new teachers could immediately apply in their classrooms to general suggestions that helped them assimilate into the social and professional cultures of teaching. The majority of these novice teachers also felt that their telementors provided them with valuable personal and emotional support, characterized by qualities that included caring, attentiveness, and positivity. The most successful of these telementoring relationships – seven of the ten examined – grew into collaboratively reflective professional-development exchanges. Third, facilitation provided by WINGS staff members was important in preventing telementoring teams’ correspondence from faltering and in resolving technological problems that disrupted telecommunications connections, which occurred more frequently than expected.