Book Review: Mentoring Student Teachers and Interns by Logan Rutten

Mentoring Student Teachers and Interns: Strategies for Engaging, Relating, Supporting, and Challenging Future Educators by Lyman, Foyle, Morehead, Schwerdtfeger, & Lyman (2017) provides a broad orientation to mentoring pre-service teachers. The book is appropriate for AJE Forum readers interested in practices and policies related to pre-service teacher education or teacher pipeline issues. In ten chapters the authors condense their years of experience as academics and practitioners as they explore their recommendations for mentoring. First, the authors establish a context for mentoring by surveying approaches to the formation of partnerships between K-12 schools and institutions of higher education, commonly known as school-university partnerships. Second, they explore practices for mentoring pre-service teachers during the internship or student teaching period, sometimes called a practicum or clinical experience. Finally, the book provides recommendations for the ongoing professional learning of principals and other school-based mentors. In this review, I highlight the strengths of the text. I then critique the alignment of the authors’ recommended practices with their use of terminology and their commitment to partnerships.

A primary strength of this text is that it attends carefully to the unique contexts in which the mentoring of pre-service teachers takes place. Although the authors provide recommendations for mentoring that would be helpful in a variety of settings, they emphasize the affordances of school-university partnerships as sites for teacher preparation. This attention to context is valuable because it invites readers into a critical examination of the ways in which mentoring, expertise, and authority can be conceptualized differently within various relationships between universities and schools.

The authors advance the professional development school (PDS) model as an exemplary form of school-university partnership for clinical experiences. A PDS is a partnership designed to support the growth of all participants: pre- and in-service educators, professors, and, most importantly, students. The authors explain that their commitment to PDSs has led them to adopt the PDS-associated term “intern” to refer to the pre-service teacher and “mentor teacher” instead of the traditional “cooperating teacher” (p. xi). These terms signal a new relationship between the school and the university. In particular, a PDS mentor assumes an active role in co-constructing field experiences, not merely“cooperating” with the university’s agenda. In a powerful example, the authors suggest that a PDS-based course in elementary mathematics methods be co-planned by university instructors and mentor teachers, with opportunities for interns to observe lessons and reflect with the mentor teacher afterward. This shift in terminology challenges traditional notions of expertise and mentoring, better positioning stakeholders to leverage the collective knowledge of the entire PDS.

While the authors’ focus on PDSs is primarily related to the model’s widespread recognition as an exemplary approach to preparing teachers, Lyman et al. (2017) strengthen their case for school-university partnerships by discussing the possibilities they hold for recruiting teacher candidates. For instance, they describe their work with the Kansas Future Teacher Academy, which introduces high school students to the teaching profession through conversations with master teachers, university visits, and the planning of high school coursework in anticipation of pursuing teacher licensure. The authors conclude that the partnership helps build a more robust and diverse pipeline of teachers. On balance, they make a convincing argument for continued investment in partnered pathways to clinical preparation. AJE Forum readers interested in teacher recruitment and retention will find these introductory chapters especially relevant in thinking about the various ways in which contexts for teacher preparation may influence teachers’ longevity in the classroom.

Mentoring Student Teachers and Interns makes the case for the importance of sustained, quality mentoring in pre-service teachers’ growth. The implication is clear: there are no shortcuts in the preparation of teachers who have a real impact on student learning.

Another major strength of the text is the inclusion of practical resources for sustaining strong mentoring within a PDS. For instance, Appendix 1 includes links to YouTube videos of mentoring conversations along with prompts for individual reflection or group discussion. Appendix 3 (pp. 145-148) offers a sample memorandum of understanding between a school district and a university. These textual features are also scattered throughout the book. They could provide a helpful starting point for conversation among teacher educators interested in strengthening or even reconceptualizing their existing connections between universities and schools.

Although in the first two chapters the authors espouse their commitment to partnerships and flattening traditional hierarchies, evidence of this stance is inconsistent in the remainder of the text. In particular, the chapters addressing the sequencing of the internship curriculum and the assessment of interns’ progress to propose what appears to be a fairly traditional, non-partnered approach to the student teaching experience. In this arrangement, the university holds responsibility for designing and evaluating the experience. Practitioners’ expertise is peripheral to this kind of internship. For instance, Lyman et al. (2017) identify the university handbook for interns as a primary guide to the experience. Interns and mentors are told that they “should always be aware that the university supervisor is available for assistance as needed” (p. 44). The authors advocate what is sometimes known in teacher education as a takeover model: the intern gradually assumes responsibility for teaching the mentor’s classes, with the university supervisor regularly observing. Instead of a co-teaching approach germane to the notion of partnership, this approach assigns a secondary role to the mentor’s knowledge compared to that of the university supervisor.

The question of the alignment of the authors’ commitment to partnership with their recommendations for practice also surfaces within the terminology used in chapters 5-8. In this part of the book, Lyman et al. (2017) provide a how-to for supervising interns that seems to emphasize supervisor-driven strategies for monitoring individual interns’ progress rather than promoting collegial reflection. This can be seen through the authors’ use of the term “supervision” in ways that seem indistinguishable from “evaluation.” For example, the authors define congruent models of supervision as involving a supervisor identifying strengths in an intern’s teaching; discrepant models identify weaknesses (pp. 57-58). In either case, it appears that the authors envision the supervisor more as an expert evaluator than as a trusted facilitator of interns’ reflections or inquiries into their own work. As with the choice between “cooperating teacher” and “mentor teacher,” the terms “supervision” and “evaluation” come from distinct discourse communities. They indicate substantively different stances toward practice, and the authors could do more to differentiate them.

This question about clarity of terminology extends to the terms “mentor” and “supervisor.” For instance, within the space of a single paragraph Lyman et al. (2017) write, “Supervisors use two basic types of conferences with interns…Mentors should plan at least one formative conference per week…” (p. 58). By switching terms without explanation, it is challenging to tell whether the authors are conceptualizing supervision and mentoring distinctly.

Lyman et al. (2017) devote a chapter to mentoring for interns’ success in “diverse classrooms” (p. 73). They note the importance of instructing interns to learn about their students’ backgrounds and any cultural taboos that may exist in the school. They also encourage mentors to gather data on the frequency and tone of interns’ interactions with their students for discussion during formative conferences. Like the authors’ suggestions for supervision, there are many helpful and pragmatic ideas within this chapter. However, the treatment of issues of classroom diversity is some what misaligned with the notion of a partnership. Lyman et al. cover theories of multiple intelligence, “ethnically diverse students” (p. 80), biased curriculum materials, and varied forms of assessment within just twelve pages. As a result, diversity seems to consist of a list of issues to be addressed rather than a complex set of assets essential to the work of a strong school-university partnership. Addressing “diverse classrooms” may be preferable to silence on diversity. However, a future edition might consider making diversity an integrating frame for the entire text instead of confining it to a single chapter.

Mentoring Student Teachers and Interns makes the case for the importance of sustained, quality mentoring in pre-service teachers’ growth. The implication is clear: there are no shortcuts in the preparation of teachers who have a real impact on student learning. The book’s thoughtful consideration of contexts for pre-service teacher preparation successfully argues for the importance of rich, partnered settings for field experiences.This text would be a strong starting point for thinking about the mentoring of pre-service teachers, and those who read it may find themselves inspired to seek out other texts that both extend and problematize the stances and practices espoused within the text. Whether interested in pre-service teacher recruitment, retention, or preparation, AJE Forum readers will find that this text has much that is worthy of consideration.

Lyman, L., Foyle, H. C., Morehead, M. A., Schwerdtfeger, S., & Lyman, A. L. (2017). Mentoring student teachers and interns: Strategies for engaging, relating, supporting, and challenging future educators (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 182 pp.: ISBN 9781475833706, $60 (hardcover), $30 (paperback), $28.50 (eBook).

Logan Rutten is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Supervision at Penn State University. A classicist and musician, he has taught grades K-12 in public, charter, and cyber schools. Logan’s current research examines the pedagogy of teacher inquiry, preservice teachers’ motivations, shared expertise and teacher learning in school-university partnerships, and the democratic context for schooling. He earned a B.A. at Concordia College and an M.Ed. from Penn State.