Print

Print
Dear Peter, Sarah, Diane and everyone,
 
I see a common theme in the mentoring of student teachers with the mentoring of practitioners in that we are all learning but start from different points of understanding and 'knowing'. I think it is critical to begin with the positives as Peter indicates - what are you proud of? (most pleased with or similar). Too often criticism is taken to mean negative criticism and the positives can slip by. This is equally true of the Early Years leaders I mentor. Developing the opening by questioning and allowing the mentee opportunity to own their inner thoughts and express them starts the exploration and establishes their own starting points and concerns, which can then be explored together.
 
I would be interested to know more of how Peter tackles difficult issues where perhaps students (mentees) do not recognise a more serious area which needs to be recognised and explored.
 
Mike gasper
Early Years Consultant
 
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 12:58:26 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SIG E-seminar with Peter Stopp; Mentoring as Dialogue (6 - 10 July)
To: [log in to unmask]

Dear Peter and Everyone,

That's great to see you online - and many thanks in advance for convening this e-seminar.  What I wondered (after I wrote actually) is whether asking the mentors and students would
be a useful source of questions. What kinds of questions would they like to ask/be asked? Why I'm asking this, is that it occurs to me there could be a generative element to explore as mentees frequently become mentors. Mentors asking questions they own is useful too.

Thanks for your very detailed and helpful reply to my questions,

All the best,

Sarah

--- On Mon, 7/6/09, Peter Stopp <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Sarah,
I am back now and able to take up discussions from here on.

The structure of the questions is in the section on Dialogic Review at http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=74890611949275&id=59664372130916, but the relevant part is copied below. As you can see, the questions are very open and general, and I have found that the student teachers generally raise issues that I am happy to focus upon anyway. I believe that if an issue is in their mind then we ought to explore it, even if it is to reassure the student teacher that in my judgement - quoting the evidence from the observed lesson and/or file - it is not a significant issue. More often the student teacher needs help with strategies to address the issue, but even there very often they come up with sensible suggestions - and again I believe that if they have thought through an approach that might work it would be better than an approach which I suggest, which they might try to implement with less understanding, and therefore less likelihood of success. However, if the mentor has observed an issue which is important to be addressed (and that is based upon the experience of the mentor) then that would be raised more directly as a question drawing upon the evidence within the lesson - e.g. "When you asked  ..... the children's response was ........... Can we discuss that further? How would you interpret that?"

As I say on the web pages, I believe that actually the questions are only a trigger, what seems to me to matter more in facilitating reflective discussion is the nature of the 'uptake'  by the mentor of the student teacher's responses - waiting for them; respecting them, exploring the thinking behind them .... Questions might be open, but if the responses are treated in a closed way that closes up the dicussion.

I hope that identifies relevant responses to your questions. I wonder if other's have had similar or different experiences?
Peter

Structure of questions:

The main section of the session is in parts, each beginning with a KEY question, starting with the most open, and followed by exploratory questions. Following each set of responses to a KEY question and its follow-up exploratory questions, it is repeated e.g. by asking 'Anything else?' 2 or 3 times before moving on to the next KEY question.nb the first two questions shown here might have already been established in a prior meeting

Examples of KEY questions Purpose of each question:

What do you feel pleased about in terms of your development so far? ( e.g. not just in the lesson, but also over the previous several days): to identify where they felt to have made progress.

What are you currently trying to focus upon getting better at?: to identify their current targets.

In that lesson what were you pleased with?: to locate specifics within the observed lesson.

If you were doing it again, what might you do differently?: to identify aspects less successful and see if they could articulate strategies for addressing them.

Have you had any surprises/ anything unexpected, positive or negative?:surprises are indicators of learning points

With each KEY question, there might be EXPLORATORY QUESTIONS such as :

What makes you think that? why?This is to diagnose understanding and perceptions, and to develop them, if incomplete, on the premise that teaching is likely to be better if done with fuller understanding. Aim to broaden examples of strategies and contexts where they can be applied, i.e. to generalise.

How might you do that?Again, aim to broaden examples of strategies and contexts where they can be applied, i.e. to generalise.

When do you plan to manage that? And, what would tell you that it was successful? I.e. to make each target SMART.

(20 mins)

3. Planning:

The mentor asks the trainee to summarise what s/he will now focus upon developing; which strategy s/he will use for that, and what will the success criteria be. (2/3 minutes).


________________________________

From: BERA-MENTORING-COACHING on behalf of Sarah Fletcher
Sent: Mon 06/07/2009 12:34
To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SIG E-seminar with Peter Stopp; Mentoring as Dialogue (6 - 10 July)


Dear Peter,

I'm interested in how you frame questions to stimulate reflection by a mentor and student
teacher.  How did you decide which questions to ask?  How do you advise the mentor to help a student teacher to offer answers especially if they might feel 'on trial'?  How does a mentor decide which sections of feedback to set aside and which to focus questions on?

Best wishes,

Sarah

Sarah Fletcher

Consultant Research Mentor

http://www.TeacherResearch.net
Convenor for BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG
Details at http://www.bera.ac.uk

--- On Mon, 7/6/09, Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> wrote:



    From: Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
    Subject: Re: SIG E-seminar with Peter Stopp; Mentoring as Dialogue (6 - 10 July)
    To: "MENTORING-COACHING" <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
    Date: Monday, July 6, 2009, 6:09 AM
   
   
Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the latest e-seminar for the BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG. I am sure I speak on behalf of us all when I say how grateful I am to Peter Stopp, who is convenor.

Full details were circulated to this list two days ago and can be found on the homepage of http://www.TeacherResearch.net Do circulate details to others, colleagues and students, who might be interested in joining what has become a (highly!) successful of e-seminars.
Peter sends apologies that he can't be online until tomorrow but I'm here, happy to help!

Warm regards,

Sarah

--- On Sat, 7/4/09, Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> wrote:



    From: Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
    Subject: SIG E-seminar with Peter Stopp; Mentoring as Dialogue (6 - 10 July)
    To: "MENTORING-COACHING" <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
    Cc: "TEACHER-RESEARCHER" <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
    Date: Saturday, July 4, 2009, 7:32 PM
   
   
Dear Everyone,

I am delighted to announce our next e-seminar starting on Monday with Peter Stopp.




Peter's Summary Paper, linked to his web-site:




My MA research had begun as a focus upon the use of assessment criteria in post lesson-observation feedback sessions. As practise, I recorded (with full permission) my own first feedback session with student A. Listening to it that evening, I realised a dilemma existed. I had overrun the time she had available and yet on listening to the recording it was clear to me that although I was asking open questions I gave little space for her to explain and develop her own ideas, e.g. as advocated in the 'critical' model forwarded as long ago as 1987 by Smyth and supported by the Vygotskian model of learning theory (Reiman, 1999), which has been much advocated in recent years in particular. I needed both to shorten the session, yet enable more dialogue. I therefore decided to experiment with omitting conventional lesson feedback, except for points directly relevant to any foci being discussed, beginning from the very next observation for all my trainees (n=7) on that placement. My log book notes from the next session record that I felt 'the balance was better'; and that by skimming over the lesson account the session could be managed in typically 15  minutes whilst containing more time for reflective discussion.

My rationale for this change was that there is an enormous amount written on the value of reflection to ITT (and teacher) development, especially in the 1990s (e.g.: Calderhead & Gates, 1993; Day, 1993; Furlong & Maynard, 1995;  Ghaye & Ghaye, 1998; Stones,1984; Tomlinson, 1995;  - see http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations <http://www.cfkleep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations>  for a fuller discussion of this). That appeared to support a relationship between reflection and performance, therefore it could follow that promotion of reflective dialogue on placements might actually help ITT trainees to progress even more effectively in their teaching capabilities. The core research question therefore became: could promotion of reflective dialogue in post lesson-observation reviews be effective in promoting performance on a final placement? If it proved to be so, could the study also identify processes involved, as a basis for developing resource guidance to other mentors? This then became the new focus for my research

My unawareness that I was not promoting sufficient reflective talk seemed to me to relate to Schön's (1987) evidence that professionals' actual practice may often not match well to their espoused theories. This notion has been supported by later reading (e.g. Proctor, 1993:95) and also observations of other mentors (n=8) who claimed to be using the dialogic review approach, yet my observation of their approaches, confirmed by their mentees, was that they were using a more conventional 'feedback' approach still. Presumably they, too, were unaware themselves of any mismatch. It suggests that we need to capture aspects of our approach - through an observer or a recording - in order to see it for what it really is. There is some evidence that teachers under pressures of time do become more dialectic, rather than dialogic (Wegerif, 2008). I was certainly under time pressure, and so are most teachers when mentoring. At a TLA day on mentor training the qualified coach said that from her experience, 'teachers are more used to giving suggestions and find it hard to change to the coaching role' of asking questions and exploring understandings.  In addition, there is evidence that we all tend to continue teaching in the ways we are used to and find it hard to change at all. For example, Alexander (2006) found that teachers trying to change from a dialectic to a dialogic approach in the classroom, despite being willing, trained and supported, also found that difficult to achieve.



Following Drever's advice (Drever, 2003: 11) I drew up a schedule to structure the post-lesson observation discussion sessions. The key questions and their rationale were as follows:

·   What do you feel pleased about in terms of your development so far? - to identify where they felt to have made progress.

·   What are you currently trying to focus upon getting better at? - to identify their current targets.

·   In that lesson what were you pleased with? - to locate specifics within the observed lesson.

·   If you were doing it again, what might you do differently? To identify aspects less successful and see if they could articulate strategies for addressing them.

The sequence was quite important: to begin with the most open question and on a positive note (Fletcher, 2000: ch 6), to encourage the trainee to see the positives, too. Where appropriate in their development of responses I would explore their reasoning through 'probes' (Drever, 2003: 11) and, if needed, give strategies, confirmations, counterpoints, etc. Active listening prompts, such as nodding, saying Yes, or Mm, were to be used almost constantly to encourage responses, or continuation.

In brief, the results, albeit from a very small case study sample, were positive, showing enhanced performance of the mentees compared to their peers, and very positive feedback from them regarding the approach from their points of view. Some of the research processes and evidence of outcomes are published to the cfkeep website pages, as shown below in relation to each discussion question.




Questions re issues:




1.    How applicable/useful do you feel the adapted F&M stage model might be for mentors?  See http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations <http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations>  > 'stages of trainee teacher development'
2.    Is there a need, do you think,  for mentors to adjust their approaches - e.g. in the ways apparently signalled by the research - as mentees develop?  See http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations <http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations>  > The conventional 'feedback' approach and  From feedback to dialogic review
3.    Might mentors (including ourselves!) assume that they/we are accurately aware of how they/we are mentoring, or is there perhaps a widespread gap between espoused beliefs and actual performance? See discussion above.
4.    Why should the promotion of dialogue - e.g. in the dialogic review process - be apparently effective, compared to giving direct feedback? See http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations <http://www.cfkeep.org/users/peterstopp/mentoring%20conversations>  > Research on reflection



Peter's Personal background:




My working life has been in teaching - first in secondary, then primary schools and finally into teacher education, where most of my time has been spent at Bishop Grosseteste University College, Lincoln. There I have mostly worked in primary teacher education, first on the three and four degree programmes, but for last 12 years running the primary PGCE (full-time and flexi-route) and GT programmes. Throughout that time, of course, I mentored student teachers in schools and trained school-based mentors, developing and adapting support approaches and materials for that part of their courses. Since 'retiring' five years ago, I have continued to mentor student teaching placements - about 30-40 student placements per annum, and have taken the opportunity to 'research' the process, particularly of giving lesson 'feedback', for an M.A. (Ed) and Stage 4 TLA. The outcomes of that latter work is the focus of this discussion.



Email has been scanned for viruses by Altman Technologies' email management service <http://www.altman.co.uk/emailsystems>

Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln values people and promotes equal opportunity.
The information contained in this E-mail is confidential and may be subject to legal privilege. Access to this E-mail by anyone other than the intended recipient is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not use, copy, distribute or disclose the E-mail or any part of its contents or
take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this E-mail in error, please notify the Postmaster at [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask] or telephone the IT Services Department on 01522 583664.
As Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln cannot accept responsibility for loss or damage arising from the use of this E-mail or attachments, we recommend that you subject these to your virus checking procedures prior to use.

Email has been scanned for viruses by Altman Technologies' email management service - www.altman.co.uk/emailsystems