Designs for Curriculum-Based Telementoring

Telementoring for K-12 students is done primarily outside of school, typically addressing topics that are extrinsic to school curricula. As beneficial as extracurricular telementoring can be, bringing mentors virtually into classrooms to interact with students and teachers over time holds great potential—and considerable challenge—for both. How can telementoring be integrated effectively into content-based curricula taught in face-to-face educational contexts like classrooms? What is key to the success of this type of curriculum-based telementoring? Answers to these questions appear below, illustrated by examples from an informal taxonomy of curriculum-based telementoring projects that were facilitated by the Electronic Emissary (http://Emissary.wm.edu/), the longest-running formal telementoring program for K-12 students and their teachers.

Web 2.0 for Tele-Mentoring

Web 2.0 technologies are designed to be open, flexible, and collaborative offering many tools to support traditional or non-traditional tele-mentoring activities. The benefit of effortless sharing and connectivity comes with challenges in how we view such things as ownership, privacy, and duplicity. The Web 2.0 toolkit includes applications for web-based note-taking, shared documents, feedback, reflection, informal discussion, and presentation. The collaborative opportunities provided by mashable, social networking platforms allow users to flex time, geography, and projects. Professional educators continue to inform their practice and explore new ways to meet the needs of students. Web 2.0 technologies can support educational professionals by opening doors and classrooms world-wide. The chapter makes a comparison between online and mentoring instructional practice and highlights models for educational use of and aids in identification of tools for mentors and mentees.

Telementoring and Virtual Professional Development

In science, examining how teachers can effectively learn content and inquiry-based pedagogy can often be nothing short of an intellectual, cognitive, and motivational maze. Professional development (PD) programs constructed specifically to aid teacher learning may fall short of their goals due to the high background variability of the participants, especially when mixing novice and master-level teachers. Only through conscious reorganization of instructional approaches can PD programs effectively address specific content and pedagogical needs while concurrently aiding the transition from novice to master-level teachers. It is time for a shift in how PD providers think about how teachers learn. Utilizing a theoretical perspective from Science Education, this chapter will demonstrate the benefits of moving to more of a contextual-based discourse that is accomplished through a virtual telementoring-based professional learning community (PLC) in order to enhance content, pedagogy, leadership skills, and positively impact teaching self-efficacy.

Virtual Mentoring

In this chapter mentoring is defined as a sustained relationship between reflective practitioners. The purpose of this relationship is to build capacity to manage the complex classroom environment in ways that bring about instructional improvements. Where there is a difference in experience between these practitioners, what matters for the mentor’s effectiveness is expertise with applying reflective practices. Reflective practices within a virtual (distance) mentoring setting are identified and explored. Developing trust from a distance and understanding representational preferences are essential virtual mentoring practices. These practices were developed as ways to provide ongoing support to field-based instructional coaches charged with improving mathematics and science instruction in South Carolina middle schools. They are applicable in any P-12 classroom mentoring setting.

Telementoring in Teacher Education

This research study involved the telementoring of pre-service teachers by practicing teachers in the fall semester of 2005 and arose out of a need expressed by education students for more contact with practicing teachers that would not require large time and financial commitments. Twelve pre-service education students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) and 17 practicing K-12 teachers from four states participated. Pre- and post- reflections completed by student participants, email dialogues between pre- and in-service teacher participants, and pre-service student participant email reflections following each dialogue exchange were analyzed to gather project effectiveness data. Results revealed highly positive experiences that provided student participants a unique and practical glimpse of the daily lives of teachers and what teaching is “really like.”

Telementoring and Project-Based Learning

While common models of telementoring (ask-an-expert services, tutoring, and academic and career telementoring) can serve a variety of learning objectives, these models are limited with respect to sustained inquiry learning such as project-based learning (PBL). To reach the full potential of PBL with telementoring, this chapter proposes a telementoring model that integrates inquiry learning, information literacy, and digital media literacy and is implemented by a team of experts – subject matter experts as telementors, classroom teachers, school librarians, and instructional technology specialists. The model provides for multifaceted learning experiences for students that involve disciplinary knowledge and habits of mind, critical thinking, collaborative problem solving, and information, media, and technology skills. Brief overviews of inquiry learning approaches, information literacy, and digital media literacy are described in relation to telementoring. Design considerations, the benefits and challenges of the model, and broader implications for educational change are also discussed. Using the integrated telementoring model, the PBL team exemplifies the interdisciplinary collaboration and new literacy skills that students need in today’s workplaces and communities.

Fully Including Students, Teachers, and Administrators with Disabilities in Telementoring

The authors of this chapter discuss challenges that must be addressed to ensure the full inclusion of teachers, administrators, and students with disabilities in telementoring activities in elementary and secondary school environments. Potential barriers to participation relate to the physical environment, the technology used to support a telementoring program, and communication strategies within that environment. Solutions presented to address access challenges employ both universal design and accommodation approaches. The content of this chapter may be useful to administrators, teachers, and technology specialists as they integrate telementoring into elementary and secondary classroom practices; to professionals who seek to promote telementoring in formal and informal settings; and to researchers who wish to identify telementoring topics for further study.

Electronic Mentoring in the Classroom

In recent years, we have witnessed a process of growing awareness and increased activity among persons with disabilities toward improvements in their living conditions and their full inclusion into society. Still, persons with disabilities experience difficulty in achieving the interpersonal competencies needed to develop adaptive social behaviors, to achieve and maintain close relationships, and to fulfill their potential. Mentoring appears to promote interpersonal development when it is conducted via traditional face-to-face methods or via electronic means. In particular, electronic mentoring programs that nurture relationships between persons with disabilities appear to have considerable potential for their empowerment. In this chapter we discuss the relevance, feasibility and utility of e-mentoring intervention programs designed especially for young people with disabilities.

You Had to be There

This chapter makes the case that to fully realize the potential of telementoring for supporting student learning in P-12 schools, teachers and program developers should invest effort in a practice that they traditionally have not – routine observations of how telementoring programs play out in classrooms. Using observational data from a pilot program for secondary social studies called “Compassionate Canada?” we illustrate how classroom observations can enable program designers to ask better questions about how a program is working, and why. We also discuss contributions that classroom observations may enable teacher to make to program refinement and professional development.

The Transformative Capacity of Telementoring on Self-efficacy Beliefs

This chapter focuses on the intentional design of telementoring projects to enhance self-efficacy beliefs. The emphasis is on a pragmatic approach to design. Self-efficacy is defined and its importance is detailed. Intentional design which focuses upon addressing the four influences on efficacy of mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological state is advocated. A design-based drama telementoring research study which employed the best practices of self-efficacy and telementoring research is examined. Capacity, illustrative vignettes, and design implications for each of the four influences on self-efficacy are discussed.