| Title | A Case Study Exploring Preservice Teachers' Tension with Online Distance Mentoring in Simulations |
| Presenter(s) | Jennifer Killham |
| Session | Conference Reception, Game Exhibition, and Poster Session |
| Time | Thursday, October 16, 7:00p-10:00p |
| Location | Ballroom |
| Format | Poster Presentation |
| Description | The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to explore pre-service teachers' mentoring roles in an online educational simulation involving character roleplay. The aim of the online simulation was to enrich young people's ability to think historically through the use of distance mentoring. Preservice teacher/mentors adopted a historical figure to portray and mentored using this persona. The rational for focusing on the experience of the preservice teacher/mentor, as opposed to the experience of the middle school mentee, was that existing research pertaining to mentoring programs focuses almost exclusively on the benefits of mentoring for the mentee. Bullen et. al (2010) and Edwards et al. (2011) stress that little is known about the metamorphic nature of mentoring for the mentor. This poster presents an in-depth analysis of one of the preservice teacher/mentors in this study. Findings include tensions related to mentors' desire to stay in character while shaping student learning, and mentors' focus on attending to student learning while also attending to themselves as learners. |
