Mentor teachers modeling: affordance or constraint for special education pre-service teachers in the practicum setting?

ABSTRACT Special education (SPED) teacher preparation programs are intended to help preservice teachers (PSTs) learn and adopt effective teaching practices to serve students with special needs. To help SPED-PSTs learn needed skills, SPED mentor teachers (MTs) must employ high-leverage practices (HLPs) such as performance feedback, conferencing, and modeling. Although most teacher preparation programs utilize modeling in preparing PSTs, little is known about how SPED-MTs use this mentoring tool. An interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted to explore how SPED-MTs engaged PSTs in modeling practices during a practicum experience. Data from semi-structured interviews were analyzed to describe SPED-PST and SPED-MT attitudes, experiences, and use of modeling over the course of a special education practicum, focusing on MTs’ modeling strategies and PSTs’ subsequent behaviors. The relative impacts of simple and cognitive modeling on the PST-MT relationship were compared. SPED-MTs’ modeling foci were compared to recommended HLPs. This preliminary study provides recommendations for SPED-MTs’ use of modeling with SPED-PSTs.