7801 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Mark Windschitl
  2. https://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/
  3. Dr.
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. University of Washington
  1. Caroline Hadley
  2. Doctoral student, researcher
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Washington
  1. Karin Lohwasser
  2. Lecturer
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of California, Santa Barbara UC Santa...
  1. Jen Richards
  2. Research Assistant Professor
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Northwestern University
  1. Soo-Yean Shim
  2. Doctoral Student
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of Washington

Effective Novice Teachers: How Systems of Support Can Transform the Clinical ...

NSF Awards: 1758264, 1540678

2019 (see original presentation & discussion)

Undergraduate, Graduate, Adult learners

What makes mentoring effective for preservice teachers just learning to teach? Can mentoring for ambitious teaching be learned? In this video, we share how we're developing a system of tools, practices, and resources that mentors and preservice teachers can use together over the course of student teaching. This system includes videos and protocols for six key mentoring practices — making thinking explicit, modeling the work of teaching, pre-briefing and debriefing, co-planning, co-teaching, and analyzing student work together. We invite our colleagues in the field to think with us about what's working so far and what tensions arise from efforts to influence how mentor teachers and preservice teachers collaborate.

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Discussion from the 2019 STEM for All Video Showcase (30 posts)
  • Icon for: Mark Windschitl

    Mark Windschitl

    Lead Presenter
    Dr.
    May 12, 2019 | 09:53 p.m.

    To all our colleagues out there trying to learn more about the clinical experience for beginning STEM educators, we welcome your thoughts and suggestions. The website is mentorteachers.org in case you are interested in seeing the actual resources we've created, including the newsletters which are archived on the site. We want to publicly thank our participants who gave so much of their time to this project!

     
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    Soo-Yean Shim
    Karin Lohwasser
  • Icon for: Karin Lohwasser

    Karin Lohwasser

    Co-Presenter
    Lecturer
    May 12, 2019 | 11:12 p.m.

    Welcome to our conversation about a system of resources in support of teacher candidates and their cooperating/mentoring teachers. You can find the resources on MentorTeachers.org. We are in our first year of implementation and are expanding to three other teacher education programs next year, so we are especially interested in hearing from cooperating/mentoring teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher educators. Here are some questions for you:

    • What does mentor training or support look like in your context?
    • Which of the resources are you  most interested in trying out?
    • How are you planning to use the materials?
    • What other resources would you wish to have?

    Please note, many of the resources on our website are pilots, and will be modified based on feedback and experiences of implementing them. Also, if you have resources you found productive in your work in teacher education, please let us know.

    We look forward to hearing from you!

    The NASCENT team

     
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    Soo-Yean Shim
  • Icon for: Brian Drayton

    Brian Drayton

    Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 12:14 p.m.

    I have looked at some of the resources, which seem accessible and interesting, and based on a lot of empirical wisdom.  

         Having haunted various resource sites for educators over the years, I have seen many such sites largely unused.  Do you have a strategy for encourging traffic to, and use of, these resources?  

  • Icon for: Caroline Hadley

    Caroline Hadley

    Co-Presenter
    Doctoral student, researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 06:21 p.m.

    Great question, Brian!

    Part of our work includes sending regular newsletters with timely tips and resources. Through these send-outs we have learned what mentors are finding useful and are able to direct them to the site with "just-in-time" supports. If you'd like to look at these newsletters, there is an archive that can be accessed in the upper-right hand corner of the website.

    We also are pointing pre-service teachers to the resources by coordinating efforts with the methods classes they are enrolled in. For example, the professional roommate conversation resource was required by the methods course as part of their initial experience in the clinical placement. We also are working with university supervisors to help mentors gain access to the tools that may be most helpful for them.

    Caroline Hadley, Karin Lohwasser, Soo-Yean Shim, & Mark Windschitl

  • Icon for: Jason Aloisio

    Jason Aloisio

    Researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 12:21 p.m.

    What a great set of resources. Mentoring is so critical for success in all fields. Are mentor training sessions being offered as teacher PDs?

  • Icon for: Caroline Hadley

    Caroline Hadley

    Co-Presenter
    Doctoral student, researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 06:24 p.m.

    Thanks, Jason! I believe Karin has replied below, but we also want to add that next year, 3 of our 4 university sites will be having mentor training and so we are excited to see how these resources can help shape and support that process!

    Karin Lohwasser, Mark Windschitl, Soo-Yean Shim, & Caroline Hadley

  • Icon for: Karin Lohwasser

    Karin Lohwasser

    Co-Presenter
    Lecturer
    May 13, 2019 | 01:27 p.m.

    While PD for cooperating teachers is not a core part of this project, the materials are already getting used in PD by other teacher education programs. We look forward to learning more from these programs about how the materials are used and to what effect.

     

  • Icon for: Molly Stuhlsatz

    Molly Stuhlsatz

    Facilitator
    Research Scientist
    May 13, 2019 | 01:40 p.m.

    Great video! Mentoring is such a fascinating and important area of study. Could you talk a bit about how you are measuring the impact of the processes/resources on preservice teachers or cooperating/mentor teachers? Will you be collecting data about whether the school districts see the value in the resources?

  • Icon for: Soo-Yean Shim

    Soo-Yean Shim

    Co-Presenter
    Doctoral Student
    May 13, 2019 | 06:39 p.m.

    Hi, Molly! Great question! We are conducting interviews with preservice teachers (4 times/year) and mentors (twice/year) about what resources they find as useful and how the resources are enhancing preservice teachers' opportunities to learn about planning, teaching, and assessment. We are also asking preservice teachers to fill out survey logs (once/three weeks). In our previous study (without intervention) we conducted similar interviews and as we collect more information we hope to see how the resources of the new study have impacted the frequency and quality of preservice teachers' opportunities to learn.


    Regarding your point about helping the school districts see the value of these resources, we haven't planned on collecting data on that, but that is a great suggestion. We'll think about ways to communicate with the school districts about these resources and how to study their views on those. Thanks for helpful feedback!


    Soo-Yean Shim, Caroline Hadley, Karin Lohwasser, & Mark Windschitl

     
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    Molly Stuhlsatz
  • Icon for: Molly Stuhlsatz

    Molly Stuhlsatz

    Facilitator
    Research Scientist
    May 15, 2019 | 10:45 a.m.

    Thanks Soo-Yean! I'm sure you will end up with really valuable information from the interviews. I think it would be fascinating if you were able to measure impact beyond the teachers/mentors, but if that's too big you could consider adding a question or two to your interview protocol for mentors about whether they think that there is a place for the resources beyond student teaching. 

  • Icon for: Irina Lyublinskaya

    Irina Lyublinskaya

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 13, 2019 | 05:44 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing your resources! Mentoring is critical, but very often the best teachers are overloaded with other projects and responsibilities in their schools. How do you make sure that your teacher-mentors are on board with your plans. What are ways to make sure that student-teachers have opportunity to co-plan, to lead classes, to collaboratively assess student work? How do you engage mentors? Would be very interested to learn about your ideas.

  • Icon for: Caroline Hadley

    Caroline Hadley

    Co-Presenter
    Doctoral student, researcher
    May 13, 2019 | 06:43 p.m.

    Thanks for sharing, Irina! We agree that mentor teachers are often extremely busy and we have had mentors and teacher candidates provide evidence for this in interviews! Our hope is that these resources alleviate some of the uncertainty that comes with mentoring a novice teacher and makes their work easier. For example, one of the tools, the professional roommate conversation, helps the pair set expectations for how the novice and mentor will interact, give and receive feedback, and communicate in general. This should save them both time and frustrations in the long term.

    We also work to keep the newsletter very brief so that the mentor only receives information that is relevant at that time. Through this year’s work with mentors we are discovering which parts of the newsletter they actually benefit from and we are planning to re-shape some of the ways information is provided next year so that it is most helpful to them.

    Karin Lohwasser, Mark Windschitl, Soo-Yean Shim, & Caroline Hadley

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Irina Lyublinskaya
  • Icon for: Irina Lyublinskaya

    Irina Lyublinskaya

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 13, 2019 | 06:49 p.m.

    Thank you! This is very important work! I forwarded link to your video to our Director of Fieldwork, you might help us to improve our mentoring practice.

  • Icon for: Daniel Capps

    Daniel Capps

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor
    May 14, 2019 | 12:34 p.m.

    Thanks for putting together the video and the website. Looking at the website I see a lot of great resources I could imagine using with my own students during their student teaching. Also, if the end goal is for mentor and student teachers using this site, I am wondering about the ways you have worked to educate administrators (and in the future education faculty) about these tools and the value of using them?

     

    Also, do you view this as "STEM" specific, or are these materials more general in that they would apply to any student teaching/mentor relationship?

  • Icon for: Jen Richards

    Jen Richards

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant Professor
    May 14, 2019 | 12:51 p.m.

    Hi Daniel!  We appreciate the idea of working with administrators, which is not an area we've tackled yet (as we're hoping to understand the impact of the tools for mentors and student teachers first).  Are there suggestions you would have about working with administrators from your work?

    And great question about whether these materials are "STEM specific"!  This has been an area of much discussion on our team — we have tried to design the materials to be broadly applicable to any student teaching/mentor relationship to enhance impact, but it's an ongoing productive tension in the work.

  • Icon for: Courtney Arthur

    Courtney Arthur

    Facilitator
    Senior Curriculum and Instruction Designer
    May 14, 2019 | 04:21 p.m.

    Could you speak to the background of the mentor teachers a bit? Were they a part of the district/sites already? I find that sometimes having a previous relationship with teachers is a great benefit so just curious about your experiences here.

  • Icon for: Mark Windschitl

    Mark Windschitl

    Lead Presenter
    Dr.
    May 15, 2019 | 01:25 p.m.

    Courtney, great question. Our program selects mentors, the group each year is about half new mentors and half experienced. We try to group our novices in schools, for example two or three in the same school so that they can do some informal mentoring of one another, more like peer support I should say. From our research, we could see that occasionally the best teachers do not make the best mentors, and sometimes teachers who have modest success in classrooms can be great mentors, they are just good at knowing how to provide emotional support, offer targeted feedback, and to allow novices to experiment a bit with their pedagogy. We did find in the previous research, that mentors who taught in responsive and equitable ways provided far more oppotunities to novices to learn about planning, teaching, and assessment. If a prep program can develop a stable relationship with a group of capable mentors, then it enhances the possibilites for the success of all novices.

  • Icon for: Julie Amador

    Julie Amador

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 14, 2019 | 10:52 p.m.

    Great video and I appreciate the work you are doing. It makes me think about the practices at my university and consider what more we could be doing to support novices. Thank you for the insight and for sharing your resources.

    I know this isn't the focus of the thread, but could you please share the name of the software you used to create your video? I've used Vyond and this looks similar, but just curious. Thanks!
    Julie

  • Icon for: Mark Windschitl

    Mark Windschitl

    Lead Presenter
    Dr.
    May 15, 2019 | 01:17 p.m.

    Julie, I knew that question would come up :) Yes, It was Vyond. We debated about whether we should have real cases of action (feedback, looking at student work) or perhaps actors playing a role or the last option was animation. We chose animation because of its flexibility--you can have the characters say and do things that would be hard to capture from real people on video. We are currently debating about whether to have real video about giving and receiving feedback because this is so central to the work of mentoring. 

  • Icon for: Aileen Huang-Saad

    Aileen Huang-Saad

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 14, 2019 | 11:14 p.m.

    Thanks for these great resources — I will definitely draw on them for the graduate student teaching apprenticeship program that I have been working on to change the way in which we teach in higher education.  Thanks!  

  • Icon for: Karin Lohwasser

    Karin Lohwasser

    Co-Presenter
    Lecturer
    May 14, 2019 | 11:53 p.m.

    Aileen, you have a very innovative project going on in the field of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan. Designing instructional segments in collaboration with graduate students and faculty is promising on so many levels. We would appreciate if you would keep us informed if and how you are going to use our materials in higher education. This could also be informative for others who are trying to change the way courses are taught in higher ed. Thank you!

     
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    Aileen Huang-Saad
  • Icon for: Aileen Huang-Saad

    Aileen Huang-Saad

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 15, 2019 | 01:55 p.m.

    Will definitely keep you all up to date!  Thanks again.

     

  • Icon for: Jennifer Stevens

    Jennifer Stevens

    President & CEO
    May 15, 2019 | 10:31 a.m.

    Your video was well-done and very easy to follow.  Thank you for sharing with us!

    While we do not work with pre-service teachers, your research might have some implications for us in supporting the collaboration of teachers already in the field and specifically helping them provide meaningful feedback to one another for improving their practices. Our project, the Rural Math Innovation Network, is a virtual networked improvement community of math teachers from 16 different rural school divisions, and they are videorecording their classroom instruction and sharing it with peers to get feedback.  We are finding that teachers really struggle giving effective feedback because they tend to want to say nice things like "Great job!" instead of offering thoughts on how the peer could improve.  So, in your project, are you providing training and support to the mentors on giving effective feedback?  If so, what resources do you have on this particular context and are these resources available to the public now?

    Thanks,

    Jennifer 

  • Icon for: Mark Windschitl

    Mark Windschitl

    Lead Presenter
    Dr.
    May 15, 2019 | 01:29 p.m.

    Jennifer this is what we are hearing in our current research from mentors, the desire to give adequate feedback. We are not sure they know the range of things about which they could give feedback either. We use the Lipton and Wellman materials to guide a lot of our thinking about feedback and about mentor-novice communication in general. These we feel are great resources. We are going to develop tools that will allow options for how a mentor could give feedback on particular dimensions of teaching, for example, on how the novice interacts with students working in small groups and then pushes their thinking. 

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Rachel Garrett
  • Icon for: Jen Richards

    Jen Richards

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant Professor
    May 16, 2019 | 01:51 p.m.

    Hi Jennifer and Mark,

    Very much agreed that providing effective feedback is a challenging task!  To build on Mark's response re: tools, we have a few prototypes in the Pre-Briefing and Debriefing area of the website that we'd love to continue to refine.  In particular, the "Goals/Feedback Index Cards" and "Check-In Protocols + Feedback Tips" are tools that some candidates have tried and that are informed by our research with candidates and mentors.  We'd love to hear if you try any of these out or improve them in any ways!

  • Icon for: Doug Ward

    Doug Ward

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 16, 2019 | 02:39 p.m.

    What are some of the barriers or challenges a novice teacher faces in getting effective mentoring? Time would seem the biggest challenge, but the materials you have developed suggest a need for better structure in the mentoring process. Is that right?

  • Icon for: Soo-Yean Shim

    Soo-Yean Shim

    Co-Presenter
    Doctoral Student
    May 16, 2019 | 03:33 p.m.

    Hi, Doug! Thanks for a great question!

    We found that the quality of learning opportunities that preservice teachers get in their field placements (facilitated by their mentors) vary a lot. We thought that one of the major challenges is the lack of support for mentor teachers to help them develop effective mentoring practices. We developed resources and tools to facilitate productive collaboration between mentors and preservice teachers. For example, we developed feedback tools to help mentors give helpful feedback to their mentees (preservice teachers).

    The supports are designed to enhance the content of their collaboration, and those might provide some implications for "structures" in the collaboration, too, as you said. For example, mentors and preservice teachers can discuss what structures work best for their feedback or debriefing processes using our protocols and tools. Is this answering your question? Or are you thinking of other kinds of "structures" in the mentoring process? Please let us know! Thank you.

  • Icon for: Cynthia Crockett

    Cynthia Crockett

    Researcher
    May 20, 2019 | 11:40 a.m.

     Hello Mark and colleagues,

    this is such a well-done video and a crucial topic! I was dismayed to find out that some pre-service teachers actually never get to be involved in planning the lessons or being more integrated into the classrooms. Given the approaches your team suggests and the very useful website/materials, I wonder if you have been able to follow any of the participating preservice teachers into their own classrooms (longitudinally) to see if this type of support for pre-service teachers contributes to them staying in the classroom longer as novice teachers and not leaving the profession within 3 years as several studies have reported. Thanks for your project!

  • Icon for: Jen Richards

    Jen Richards

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant Professor
    May 20, 2019 | 12:35 p.m.

    Hi Cynthia,

    You raise such an important question here about what the impact of differential learning opportunities are longer-term!  We have not yet been able to follow any of the preservice teachers into their own classrooms longitudinally as part of this study, but team, I'm wondering if we have any anecdotal sense of this?

    Thanks!

  • Icon for: Karin Lohwasser

    Karin Lohwasser

    Co-Presenter
    Lecturer
    May 20, 2019 | 07:39 p.m.

    Thank you all for your comments, questions, and suggestions. We truly enjoyed the discussion and appreciate your feedback. What a great way to share our experiences and our work!

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.