Mentoring Structures and Processes
That Produce High Levels of
Performance in Teacher Candidates

SECTION I - CONTENT


Background - Context
The proposed symposium will feature presentations from teacher educators at four Renaissance Partnership institutions that together with seven other universities are in their fourth year of a Title II Improving Teacher Quality Project. All institutions are implementing teacher work samples as an instructional process and teaching performance assessment tool during student teaching. Also, all institutions are implementing some type of team mentoring configuration that involves teacher educators, arts and science faculty, and school practitioners. This symposium will feature team mentoring structures and processes that four institutions have found to work for them in mentoring teacher candidates to impact P-12 student learning. Teacher work samples require teacher candidates to plan, teach and evaluate a four- to six-week standards-based instructional unit and provide evidence of P-12 student learning. From the inception of the five-year Title II Renaissance Partnership Project, it has been assumed that intensive mentoring of teacher candidates is essential to enable them to facilitate learning of all the students they teach. This symposium features structures and strategies that have experienced success at four project site settings.

Conceptual Framework
Facilitating P-12 student learning has been the central focus of preparation programs in the eleven-institution Renaissance Partnership for Improving Teacher Quality. Facilitating learning of all P-12 students by a teacher candidate was a tall order and needed a much more effective process of assistance than existing teacher preparation programs provided. For a more effective strategy to develop candidates' abilities to facilitate learning, the Renaissance partners created field mentoring teams consisting of teacher educators, arts and science faculty, and school practitioners to assist teacher candidates in the challenging task of planning and teaching instructional units that resulted in documented student learning. Team mentoring was based on the concepts of "cognitive apprenticeship/guided participation" where, through active collaboration, the individual who is learning the "tools of the culture" interacts with a member who is more skilled and knowledgeable. Thus, the more knowledgeable member (the mentor) builds bridges from what the learner already understands about teaching and the school culture to new understandings and skills (Colton & Sparks-Langer, 1992). In the Partnership Project there are three areas of expertise or cultures that must be mastered in the teacher candidate: (1) the academic subject matter, (2) the pedagogy, and (3) the school culture. Thus, arts and science faculty, teacher educators and school practitioners working as a mentoring team were employed as a strategy over the traditional college supervisor/cooperating teacher model. 

Teacher educators in the Renaissance Partnership Project also have adopted the concepts of "cognitive coaching" advanced by Costa and Garmston (2002) that focus on the teacher candidate's cognitive development. Thus, mentoring involves mediating a practitioner's thinking, perceptions and beliefs and assumptions toward the goal of self-directed learning and increased complexity of cognitive processing. According to Costa and Garmsten:

Cognitive coaching strengthens professional performance by enhancing one's ability to examine familiar patterns of practice and reconsider underlying assumptions that guide and direct action. Cognitive coaching's unique contribution is that it influences another person's thought process. Cognitive coaching is systematic, rigorous and data based, p.5

While all eleven institutions have developed structures and processes of team mentoring that work for them in their unique setting, the concepts of "cognitive apprenticeship/guided participation" and "cognitive coaching" are employed to achieve high levels of performance in teacher candidates.

Content of the Symposium
The symposium will consist of four papers developed by faculty from four of the eleven Renaissance Partnership Project institutions. Each of the four presentations will feature a set of structures and strategies that institutions have found to better enable them to produce high levels of performance in teacher candidates. It should be remembered that all institutions define high levels of performance as high scores on teacher work samples which include evidence of P-12 student learning during student teaching.

Paper 1
Recruiting. Building and Supporting Mentoring Teams: Strategies and Processes that
Produce Highly Effective Teams of Teacher Educators. Arts and Science Faculty, and
School Practitioners
Building effective mentoring teams at most institutions presents insurmountable challenges of providing released time, scheduling meetings and supporting field-based efforts. Over the past three years, one institution has developed structures and processes to overcome some of these challenges and will share what they have learned about breaking down barriers between the three worlds of teacher education, arts and sciences, and public schools. The result is increased teacher candidate performance as demonstrated in teacher work samples.

Paper 2
Mentoring Centers: Efficient and Effective Strategies that Maximize the Time and
Talent of Teacher Educators. Arts and Science Faculty, and School Practitioners 
One of the largest teacher preparation institutions in the country has found mentoring centers to provide a structure that can deliver mentoring services to a large number of teacher candidates and at the same time efficiently utilize the time and expertise of teacher educators, arts and science faculty, and school practitioners. This paper will describe the process of developing mentoring centers, operating strategies and documented results to date. The performance of teacher candidates is measured by scores on teacher work samples. 

Paper 3
Partnering with Instructional Technology: Effective Strategies and Processes that Mentor Teacher Candidates to Use Technology in Assessing Student Learning and Analyzing Student Learning Results
Instructional technology and teacher education methods instructors are collaborating to mentor teacher education candidates to represent student learning documented through teacher work samples and the Idaho Technology Portfolio Assessment. Critical to the teaching processes are the abilities to organize assessment data, to determine the impact of instruction on student learning, and to accurately and clearly disseminate assessment information to others. The collaborative mentoring candidates receive from instructors of both courses improves their ability to plan, deliver, assess, and then present evidence of student learning. This unique partnership of faculty combines technology with field experience and teaching methodology. The result is a comprehensive teacher work sample that documents candidate impact on student learning and an electronic portfolio that serves as evidence of candidate ability to integrate technology into teaching and learning.

Paper 4
Partnering with Arts and Science Faculty: Successful Strategies to Recruit and Support
Arts and Science Faculty to Mentor Teacher Candidates and to Assist Them with Aligning Their Instruction with State Content Standards and State Assessments Finding the incentives and financial resources to attract and support arts and science faculty as field mentors for teacher candidates has been a number one challenge for all Renaissance Partnership institutions. One institution is meeting this challenge through innovative campus structures, new systems of rewards and innovative uses of technology to facilitate interaction between mentors and teacher candidates.

Significance of Symposium
The proposed symposium addresses a very essential component of preparing teacher candidates for high levels of performance especially when accountability for student learning is required. The four papers and presentations provide a variety of innovative strategies that can help other institutions meet the challenges of developing and establishing effective mentoring programs for teacher candidates.

Conclusions 
Mentoring of teacher candidates has been found to be absolutely essential for high performance on teacher candidates. Also, the involvement of teacher educators, arts and science faculty, and school practitioners is very important but very challenging. Innovative strategies, such as the ones developed by the four institutions represented, are needed to help teacher preparation programs meet these challenges.


SECTION II - PARTICIPANT OUTCOMES / METHODS


Participant Outcomes
As a result of interactions in this symposium, participants will have the opportunity to:

Methods of Presentation
After a brief introduction to the symposium and presenters, a faculty member from each of the four Renaissance Partnership institutions who authored or co-authored the paper will provide eight-minute PowerPoint presentations of the key features of their innovative structures and strategies. This will be followed by a ten-minute or less summary and analysis of the presentations by the discussant. Then at least 30 minutes will be devoted to questions and comments from the audience. Members of the audience will be asked to share mentoring strategies they have found to be successful and asked to critique the strategies presented in the four papers. Key summary questions that might be addressed in the discussion time are:


References

Colton, A., & Sparks-Langer, G. (1992). Restructuring Student Teaching Experiences in
       ASCD. 1992 Yearbook.
Costa, A., & Garmston, R. (2002). Cognitive coaching: A foundation for renaissance
       schools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.