Exploring the roles and responsibilities of mentors during teaching practice session

Abstract

The role and responsibilities of mentors is extremely important to the student teachers. Mentors are to provide student teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to allow them to learn and use them in their teaching practice. The study sought to explore the roles and responsibilities of mentors during teaching practice sessions. The study adopted a qualitative case study design in which a purposeful sample of ten mentor teachers participated. Open ended questionnaires were used as the main and sole data collection tool. Content analysis was used to analyse data thematically after coding. The study found that schoolbased mentors were generally helpful to student teachers in numerous areas ranging from teaching and learning, assessment of learners as well as classroom management. The study concluded that attaching trainee teachers to mentors is a good approach which could be further enhanced by adequately preparing mentors for their roles. Recommendations are made.