Mentor teachers are currently seen as a solution to
education's dilemma of how to orient beginners into the
profession and provide educational advancement for its most
capable, experienced teachers. One goal of Oregon's mentor
program is to have mentors provide their proteges with
instructional assistance through an observation process.
The purpose of this study was to explore the quantity and
types of observations being conducted by mentors and
discover what factors most affect their ability to complete
observations for instructional assistance. In order to
determine the possible need for differentiation in training,
comparisons were made between elementary and secondary level
mentors for the quantity and types of observations conducted
and for needs related to attitude, skills, and context.
A literature survey provided an initial list of needs
and attitudes previous researchers have found to be critical
to mentors' success. This list was refined through the work
of a Delphi Panel. The resulting survey gathered
observation-related information from a random sample of two
hundred and twenty-five Oregon mentors distributed
throughout the state. Data was analyzed using Analysis of
variance and Chi square tests at the .05 level to determine
if there were significant differences between elementary and
secondary level mentors and between twenty-four
observation-related factors.
A significant difference was found between
observation-related factors, the most important being trust
between the mentor and protege, availability of release
time, the mentor's teaching in the same building as his/her
protege, and the protege's willingness to be observed. No
significant differences were found between elementary and
secondary level mentors in either the quantity and types of
observations conducted or in the perceived importance of
various observation-related factors. / Graduation date: 1991
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/37371 |
| Date | 03 October 1990 |
| Creators | Hamlin, Karen DeShon |
| Contributors | Gathercoal, Forrest |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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