The Interplay of Mentoring and Practicum in Teacher Preparatory Programs

This study reports the usefulness of mentoring from the preservice teachers’ perspective who were engaged in an eight-week teaching practicum. The study was approached phenomenologically where semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from fourteen preservice teachers. Findings revealed that nearly all participants acknowledged the contribution of mentoring in preparing future teachers as well as their growth and professional development. However, top-down mentor-mentee relationships, inadequate interaction, and ineffective feedback emerged as challenges affecting teacher preparatory programmes in Tanzania. The paper concludes that unless schoolteachers are prepared to be effective mentors, mentoring will remain contributing little to quality teacher grooming.