Peer Group Mentoring For Teacher Development

Supporting new teachers is a common challenge globally and the European Commission has recently emphasised the need to promote a lifelong continuum of teachers professional development by building bridges between pre-service and in-service teacher education.Peer-Group Mentoring for Teacher Development introduces and contextualises for an internati

This volume examines the theoretical and practical issues related to mentoring/peer mentoring as a support and development strategy for both pre-service and in-service language teachers, and thereby offers a practical and empirical introduction to the field. A stimulating and thorough examination of mentoring and peer mentoring, integrating theory and practice as applied in language teacher education in an Asian specific context. The author discusses findings from a variety of qualitative and quantitative research studies in the light of previous research and in the context of teacher learning theories. Teachers, teacher educators, teacher trainers, supervisory coordinators and administrators will find practical advice, while the volume will be a valuable source of research information for researchers in teacher education and EFL teacher education, in particular for those who wish to employ mentoring or peer mentoring as an approach to teachers’ professional development.

This book addresses how peer group mentoring in higher education can contribute to the development of supportive and collaborative working environments for faculty staff. It draws on an extensive empirical study examining how group based peer-mentoring methods are implemented and experimented within four different academic communities at one university, and documents how these environments and their participants experience peer group mentoring as a collaborative measure in the development of teaching and supervision practices. The book presents a literature review of research on peer group mentoring in higher education and provides the conceptual grounding for the book, placing peer group mentoring within the field of faculty development. The work presents analyses of the enactment of peer group mentoring in different environments and of faculty peers’ engagement and collaboration with colleagues within the same teacher community, across teaching and supervision communities and across institutional boundaries. It also discusses the significance of trust in these peer group mentoring settings, summarises the implications of the reported findings and addresses the role this peer based approach might play in developing supportive collegiality in higher education as a working environment.

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) sits at the nexus of constant change, which makes it vitally important for language teachers to engage in continuous development and keep abreast of the sociopolitical milieu in which they are embedded. However, most teacher education activities are often associated with what is perceived as best practices that are expected to be adopted (often uncritically) for classroom application and practice, with the intention of training teachers to become technicians in their respective classrooms. In reality, TESOL practitioners often find themselves in situations that require them to be reflexive practitioners and to negotiate sites of political struggles and social injustice. Given that a socially situated understanding of TESOL teacher education is often overlooked, this volume highlights the sociopolitical dimensions of TESOL teacher education. In Part 1, the authors introduce the theoretical underpinnings of the sociopolitical agenda proposed by this volume. Building on these theories, Part 2 realizes the proposed agenda by situating it within actual TESOL teacher education contexts that are characterized by power imbalances and neoliberally inflected educational injustices.

The book fills a gaping hole in the teacher education literature. Nowhere is there a volume that globally surveys teacher education pedagogies and invites international scholars to describe the most productive ones in their home countries.

With the future of education being disrupted and the onset of day-to-day uncertainties and challenges that have to be solved quickly, teachers are now turning to professional development communities/support communities where they can share and learn about effective practices to use in the classroom. While transitioning to blended or online learning and keeping up with the technological advances in education, these communities provide an essential backbone for teachers to rely on for support and updated knowledge on what educational practices are being utilized, how they are working, and what solutions have been found for the ever-changing climate of education. Research on the benefits and use of these communities, as well as on the latest educational practices, is essential in teacher development and student learning in the current culture of a rapidly changing educational environment. The Research Anthology on Facilitating New Educational Practices Through Communities of Learning contains hand-selected, previously published research that provides information on the communities of learning that teachers are currently involved in to seek the latest educational practices. The chapters cover the context of these communities, the benefits, and an overview of how this support is a necessary tool in today’s practices of teaching and learning. While highlighting topics such as learning communities, teacher development, mentoring, and virtual communities, this book is essential for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in how communities of practice tie into professional development, teacher learning, and the online shift in teaching.

This state-of-the-art Companion assembles and assesses the extant research available on teacher education and provides clear guidelines on future directions. It addresses an important need in a collection that will be of value for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers and politicians. There has been little sustained, long-term or systematic research to provide empirical support for the broad aspects of teacher education policy, largely because such research has been chronically underfunded and based on traditional practitioner knowledge. Many of the changes to teacher education are contentious and yet are occurring in rapid succession. These policies and movements have important consequences for education, teacher quality and the future of the teaching profession. At the same time, the policies and initiatives that support these changes seem to be based more on ideology, business interests and tradition than on research and empirical findings. The nature, quality and effectiveness of teacher preparation have increasingly become a central focus for education policy worldwide in a fiercely argued debate among governments, think-tanks, world policy agencies, education researchers and teacher organisations.

This book explores the partnership between Finnish universities and the university-affiliated teacher training schools known as 'normal schools'. It examines the benefits of school-based learning combined with Master’s-level teacher education, uncovering the advantages of this unique school-university partnership. This book also explores the possibility of Finnish teacher education, and more specifically, the normaalikoulu, and its potential as an international export product. Although policy borrowing theory has long warned about the difficulties in successful transfer, interest in Finnish teacher education continues to rise. Therefore, this book investigates, in depth, the historical, cultural, and current context of Finnish teacher education and the normal schools, and the potential to move this policy abroad.