Abstract
THE PRE-SERVICE PRESCHOOL TEACHERS' PERCEPTION OF MENTOR TEACHER
School practices are extremely important for the professional development of pre-service teachers in the process of developing qualified teachers. Pre-service teachers are in need of mentor teachers who can provide consultancy toward improving their teaching skills in the process of preparation to the profession. Mentor teacher is a person who teaches, consults and guides in order to improve inexperienced teachers in the profession. Mentor teacher guides pre-service or in-service teachers toward knowing themselves and setting a goal for areas that they need to improve themselves in. Moreover, mentor teachers help inexperienced teachers to gain professional experience and develop a sense of professional liability. This study aims to evaluate mentoring skills of practice teachers from pre-service preschool teachers’ point of views. The sample of the study consists of 200 pre-service preschool teachers who completed the teaching practice courses at the Akdeniz University, Faculty of Education, Department of Preschool Education. In this study, Supervising Teacher Competency Scale-STCS developed by Kiraz (2003) is used as data collection tool. According to the findings of the study, mentoring skills of practice teachers in terms of planning instruction and preparation for practice are at a moderate level; however, mentoring skills of practice teachers in terms of vocational guidance are unsatisfactory.
Keywords
Mentor, mentorship, practice teacher
