Development of Mentor Teacher Role Inventory

Source: European Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 34, No. 2, May 2011, 193–208.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

The main purpose of the present research is to investigate the perceptions of the student teachers regarding mentor roles and create a reliable Mentor Teacher Role Inventory (MTRI) for a distance English Teacher Training context.

Participants
The participants were 1843 fourth-year student teachers at the Distance English Teacher Training Program (DETTP) who completed the Mentor Teacher Role Inventory (MTRI).
These student teachers were in their final year and enrolled in the ‘School Experience II and teaching practice’ course in the DETTP at Anadolu University, Open Faculty in Turkey.

Instruments
The initial aim of this study was to develop a valid and reliable instrument that focused on the perceptions of the student teachers regarding their co-operating teachers’ mentoring roles.
It used a list constructed in an initial study of 58 items characterizing mentor behaviour (Koc 2008). The respondents were asked to indicate how often their co-operating teachers implemented these behaviours.

The analysis indicated that the Cronbach alpha value of the MTRI was 0.951.
Furthermore, the principal component analysis with nine factors and 49 indicators explained 52.971% of the total variance, which shows that the MTRI is a very valid and reliable instrument.

The author concludes that an imperative implication of the present study is that a reliable and valid Mentor Teacher Role Inventory is constructed.

The analysis of the MTRI yielded mentor dimensions similar to those reported in previous literature increasing the confidence in the stability of these mentor roles.

The study is important because it is the first attempt in Turkey to investigate the mentor roles during distance practicum from the perspective of the student teachers.
The study is also noteworthy in that it has provided the distance ELT student teachers with the opportunity to voice their thoughts about the mentor roles of the cooperating teachers.