The United States continues to face a national shortage of teachers with large numbers of vacancies in districts creating crisis situations for many schools. Novice teachers often quit within five years, with highest attrition in schools serving minority and economically challenged students. Among the reasons teachers cite leaving the profession is lack of preparation. The most impactful teacher preparation experience is field placement with a mentor teacher during supervised student teaching. While research highlights its benefits, little is known about how mentor teachers are matched with pre-service teachers. This study sought to investigate the decision-making process of school leaders in this regard.
This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with 20 PreK-12 public school principals to investigate the following research questions: 1) What criteria do principals use to make decisions involving the matching of mentor and pre-service teachers within PreK-12 schools? 2) What are principals’ perceptions of matching mentor teachers with pre-service teachers? Regarding the first question, findings indicate that principals played a more pivotal role in the matching process than university partners, principals used similar criteria to select mentors as they use when hiring new teachers, and principals had little insight into pre-service teachers' backgrounds, experiences, and goals to inform the matching process. As for the second question, findings indicate that principals often struggle to find mentors, relationships forged between mentor and pre-service teachers were the primary contributor to positive outcomes from the matching process, and pre-service teachers were often blamed for negative outcomes from the matching process. Additionally, principals often regarded the matching process as a potential pipeline for recruiting and hiring prospective teachers and as a vehicle to meet the urgent need for effective teacher preparation, given teacher shortages. Principals noted the need to increase university involvement to improve the matching process. A framework for matching was created using the research in this study to inform future matching decisions. / Educational Leadership
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TEMPLE/oai:scholarshare.temple.edu:20.500.12613/10201 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Tilli, Jessica, 0009-0006-9377-0929 |
| Contributors | Estrada, Armando, McGinley, Christopher, Brooks, Wanda, Brandt, Carol |
| Publisher | Temple University. Libraries |
| Source Sets | Temple University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation, Text |
| Format | 151 pages |
| Rights | IN COPYRIGHT- This Rights Statement can be used for an Item that is in copyright. Using this statement implies that the organization making this Item available has determined that the Item is in copyright and either is the rights-holder, has obtained permission from the rights-holder(s) to make their Work(s) available, or makes the Item available under an exception or limitation to copyright (including Fair Use) that entitles it to make the Item available., http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/10163, Theses and Dissertations |
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