A closer look at practicum: Mentoring roles and student teachers' experience

This research comprised three studies. Study One aimed to develop and validate an instrument to operationalise the roles of mentor perceived by cooperating teachers (CTs) during practicum. To develop and validate the instrument, an initial pool of items was generated. The initial pool of items was gathered from the literature review. These items were then tested for the factor structure of the scores via Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). A reliability test was also conducted to ensure the items were reliable. The population of cooperating teachers who supervised student teachers for their Final Teaching Practice in January 2021 semester, and those who attended the Mentoring Workshop for Cooperating Teachers in 2021 were recruited for this study. The same population was also used in Study Two. Study Two aimed to examine the CTs’ perceptions of their roles and the extent of their satisfaction and thwarting of their mentees’ psychological needs. The validated instrument from Study 1 was used by the same group of cooperating teachers. Study Three aimed to examine student teachers’ practicum experience and how their experience affects their perceived affective outcomes and teaching competences during practicum. The study also aimed to find out unique clusters of student teachers’ experience with their mentors and how the clusters impact their needs satisfaction and needs thwarting, affective outcomes and perceived teaching competences. In addition, the study aims to examine if the student teachers’ needs satisfaction and needs thwarting mediate the relationships between roles of mentors and affective outcomes (i.e., enjoyment, effort, value and pressure) and perceived teaching competences (i.e., lesson preparation, lesson implementation, classroom management and feedback and evaluation) and the role clusters mediate the affective outcomes and perceived teaching competences. Study Three had three foci. Focus One looked at student teachers’ perceived roles of their CTs, student teachers’ perception of their levels of psychological needs, levels of affective outcomes (i.e., enjoyment, effort, value and pressure), and teaching competences (i.e., lesson preparation, lesson implementation, classroom management and feedback and evaluation). Focus Two aimed to find out if there are any unique clusters of student teacher’s experience with their mentors and examining if there were any significant differences amongst the clusters for need satisfaction and need thwarting, affective outcomes, as well as perceived teaching competences. Finally, Focus Three aimed to find out if needs satisfaction and needs thwarting mediate the relationships between roles of mentors and affective outcomes (i.e., enjoyment, effort, value and pressure) as well as to find out if needs satisfaction and needs thwarting mediate the relationships between roles of mentors and perceived teaching competences (i.e., lesson preparation, lesson implementation, classroom management and feedback and evaluation).