What Mentorship? Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers’ Experiences of a Teaching Practice Mentorship Programme

Mentoring during teaching practice plays a crucial role in teacher training as it exposes pre-service teachers to an authentic teaching and learning environment, under the guidance of qualified in-service teachers. Although mentoring has the potential to enhance the preparation of pre-service teachers and to improve the development of in-service teachers, the experiences are not always positive. The present study seeks to explore pre-service teachers’ and in-service teachers’ experiences of one university’s teaching practice mentorship programme. This single case study employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from one in-service and pre-service teacher in one suburban school. The collected data indicate that the in-service teachers are not thoroughly prepared for their roles as mentors, and equally, the pre-service teachers are unsatisfied with the service rendered to them by the mentors and the university. The findings call for formal training on the teaching practice mentorship programme for both pre-service teachers and in-service teachers.