EXPLORING MENTORSHIP EXPERIENCES OF BACHELOR OF EDUCATION STUDENT TEACHERS DURING TEACHING PRACTICE: PERSPECTIVES ON CONFLICT OF MENTOR AND MENTEE ROLES

Lack of understanding of the roles in a mentorship process can be detrimental.During their teaching practice, student teachers are assigned mentors for guidance.Both the mentor teacher and the student teacher have specific mandatory responsibilities that make this relationship work.There is however a pertinent conflict of roles that usually results in the collapse of the relationship.This empirical study aimed to delve into the lived experiences of student teachers and explore these students' perspectives on their understanding of the roles of both the mentor teacher and the student teacher during teaching practice.This study is couched in Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory which emphasizes learning by doing.The study adopted a qualitative approach, employing interviews and focus group discussions to gather data from 20 purposively selected student teachers.The results highlight the critical issues of poor communication and misunderstanding of the role of the mentor.Identifying these as key factors in the breakdown of the mentor-mentee relationship provides useful ideas for teacher training programmes.In light of the findings the study argues for a more intense training of both mentors and mentees on their roles in the mentorship process.