Inquiry-Oriented Mentoring in PDS

Yendol-Hoppey, D., & Dana, N. F. (2008). Inquiry-oriented mentoring in an elementary professional development school: The case of Claudia. In I. N. Guadarrama, J. M. Ramsey, and J. L. Nath (Eds.), University and school connections: Research studies in professional development schools, pp. 251-274. USA: Information Age Publishing, Inc.

Type of Study: Single Case Study, part of a larger study on mentoring

• Inquiry-Oriented Mentoring contains four components to its cycle: co-planning ==> co-teaching ==> co-reflecting ==> co-problem posing.
• Another key component to the success of inquiry-oriented mentoring is recognizing the complex nature of teaching and share that belief with the intern.
• Co-planning:
  • Common planning time together
  • Thinking aloud to make tacit knowledge explicit
  • Development of lesson collaboratively
  • Feedback
  • Sharing resources
• Co-teaching:
  • Simultaneously delivering instruction
• Co-reflecting:
  • Dialogic nature
  • Time and space to reflect independently as well as collaboratively
  • Re-positioning the intern as observer during later stages of internship
  • Encouraging and supporting problem solving by not always answering the intern's questions
• Co-problem posing:
  • Collaborative framing of questions
  • Exploring of alternatives
  • Systematically gathering and analyzing data
  • Being willing to take risks and fail
  • Constant reflection on practice
• Conclusions:
  • "Underpinning this stance (towards inquiry) is a recognition of the complexity of teaching, a context that supports risk-taking and experimentation, and a focus on construction of new knowledge (p. 269)."