Article Preview
TopIntroduction
The Bologna process has introduced a university reform in European Union countries that highlights the importance of teacher training programmes and thus strengthen the Practicum as the cornerstone of the teacher education programs (Plazaola, Ruiz & Iriondo, 2018; Rosselló, Ferrer & Pinya, 2018). The Practicum, as part of the academic training for preservice teachers, enables the acquisition of the necessary skills and abilities to perform the teaching work within a given set of quality criteria (Criado, Marcos, García & Martínez, 2009).
As part of their internship period preservice teachers must prepare a portfolio in which the most significant events of their practice are described, providing personal evaluations and reflections. Thus, developing critical thinking typically helps to analyse and solve problems that arise during the teaching-learning process, especially if they can transfer knowledge of practice to future teaching situations (Rico, 2010).
Reflection is usually a natural and spontaneous process, but the reflective practice ‘is a learned activity that requires a methodical, regular, instrumented, serene, effective analysis and that is acquired with a voluntary and intensive training.’ (Domingo, 2013, p. 139). Therefore, preservice teachers are encouraged to reflect critically and analytically to resolve the most significant events about their own practice. In addition, reflective practice helps to improve practice by making results more effective (Reich, 2017).
This reflexive process integrates theory into practice, allowing preservice teachers to elaborate and reconstruct their practical knowledge and connect their school practices with theoretical concepts (Neira & Hernández, 2012). We can consider explaining significant events for practice and eliciting practical knowledge the main aim of teacher reflection (Bereiter, 2013). Sonmark, Révai, Gottschalk, Deligiannidi, and Burns (2017) show that practical knowledge is a key factor for quality teaching.
Preservice teachers usually can rely on a mentor to accompany, guide, and advise them in their teaching work as individual reflection alone seems to be insufficient (Government of Castile and Leon, 2017). Mentoring can be defined as ‘a developmentally oriented interpersonal relationship that usually takes place between an individual with more experience (i.e., the mentor) and a person with less experience (i.e. the apprentice)’ (Eby, 2010, p. 505). Bejar (2018) adds that this mentoring ‘helps students maintain a personal, intellectual, community and social balance.’ (p. 53).
A mentor’s role relies on being a facilitator who reflects on significant events of preservice teachers’ practices and maintains a positive relationship in the teaching-learning process (Bjuland & Helgevold, 2018; Hudson & Hudson, 2018; Mena, Hennissen, & Loughran, 2017). Therefore, for preservice teachers to acquire practical knowledge during their practicum, critical reflection and mentoring interactions are necessary. In this study, we aim to determine which condition (reflection or mentoring interactions) is better for acquiring practical knowledge and to identify the main differences between the two.