Teacher candidates, while completing their student teaching internship, are part of an important teaching-and-learning triad. The other members of the triad, mentor teachers and university field instructors, provide essential support to teacher candidates throughout the student teaching internship experience (Yee, 1968). Recent research has…

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused many adaptations to preservice teacher preparation, especially supporting completion of field-based internship experiences. This mixed methods research project utilized surveys to analyze the impact of virtual settings on (1) intern (n=14) and mentor teacher (n=5) experiences and relationships; and (2) the…

This study examined the implementation of seven co-teaching strategies as self-reported by experienced middle and secondary mentor teachers in a large suburban school district. Seven case studies, three middle school and four high school mentor teachers, were analyzed. Findings reveal that mentor teachers supported the use of co-teaching in…

Use these practical recommendations to mentor, guide, and support teacher candidates you are hosting in your classroom through four stages of clinical practice.

Many pre-service teachers (PSTs) face a common dilemma when completing their internships: they seek to display their own strengths and competencies in teaching while also adhering to the guidance of their mentor teachers and avoiding instructional risks. The underlying structure of the internship promotes a hierarchy which positions mentoring…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is comprised of knowledge of pedagogy, students, content, and environmental context. Physical education preservice teachers (PTs) initially develop knowledge of pedagogy followed by concurrent emergence of knowledge of students and content. Development of environmental contextual knowledge (e.g., political,…

At a time when there is great emphasis on teacher quality and the preparation of excellent teachers, this portrait explores the process of one such aspiring teacher, Katie, in the fall of her full-year student-teaching internship. Her mentoring teacher, Kristen, is a veteran fifth-grade teacher at a small elementary school in New Hampshire who…

The clinical internship--also called student teaching--represents one of the most important experiences of teacher preparation programs nationwide yet remains not well understood. This article focuses on the experiences of teacher candidates who have struggled in their schools. Here we present data from a survey administered to 107 undergraduate…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of adaptive leadership on pre-service teacher's efficacious beliefs in the learning organizations of professional development schools during the internship practicum. Teacher efficacy was based upon Tschannen-Moran and Hoy's (2001) Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale which included three sub-scales:…

Purpose: Within any vocational university degree, a placement in a workplace normally forms an integral part of developing professional skills and provides an opportunity for students to put into practice theoretical knowledge they have acquired through academic courses. For student mothers, keeping up with their studies whilst juggling their…

The purpose of this study was to reveal how K-12 music teachers who mentor preservice music teachers during the student teaching internship (i.e., cooperating teachers) perceive their experiences of working with higher education institutions. The questions of the study are: 1) what are cooperating teachers' (CTs') experiences of working with…

Four individual studies investigated the effect of mentor teacher leadership characteristics on student intern efficacious beliefs. The leadership characteristics embodied four separate leadership related theories: transformational leadership, authentic leadership, leader-member exchange theory, and servant leadership. Teacher efficacy was based…

The impetus for this study occurred when the principal of a secondary Professional Development School (PDS) questioned the traditional teacher education model utilized by the university partner. This principal asked the university to consider a model that better utilized both the teacher candidate and supervising teacher collaboratively to promote…

"Adaptive Mentorship"© (AM) is a mentoring model the authors have developed over a 21-year period. Mentor-protégé pairs originally applied it in teacher-education internship programs; however, the authors have subsequently witnessed its adoption by other mentorship/coaching practitioners/researchers across the professions. In this…

We investigate interpersonal difficulties that student teachers and cooperating teachers may experience during the teaching internship by exploring the tension between one high school mathematics student teacher and his cooperating teacher. We identified seven causes of this tension, which included different ideas about what mathematics should be…