Page 116 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

100 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Findings suggest that participants’ self-image as teachers and as learners and collaboration and
support from mentors, supervisors and peers, seem to have an impact on the way student-teachers
deal with anxiety and tension and on the way their professional identity is shaped and re-shaped,
influencing their desire to stay in the profession.

Tension, identity and mentoring in student-teachers

Due to their lack of experience, student-teachers might struggle to put into practice the theory they
learned at school when they become teachers. In addition, they usually have an idealistic image of
what teaching is like, and when they are faced with an unsupportive, high risk environment, anxiety
and tension may occur. This is caused by what Warin, Maddock, Pell & Hargreave (2006) call identity
dissonance, that is, the “psychological discomfort that can be felt when a person is aware of disha-
rmonious experiences of self” (p.237). In the classroom this can occur when student-teachers have
to behave in ways that go against their teaching beliefs or the way they see themselves as teachers,
as a result of having to follow the regulations of the institutions they work with, the class syllabus, or
any other factor that is out of their control.

In order to avoid or to attempt to control these feelings of anxiety and tension, Reis (2015) states
that “individuals require assistance from others in learning to regulate their emotions by appropria-
ting emotional support” (p.34). This support can be provided by a mentor or by their peers and, as
Reis (2015) claims, it is important as it provides student-teachers with both academic and emotional
support. Therefore, mentoring apparently could have an impact in the shaping and re-shaping of the
identity of student teachers and it could encourage them to stay in the profession (Harrison et al,
2005; Walkington, 2005; Mullen, 2012).

Methodology

In order to see how identity, collaboration and support affect the way student-teachers deal with their
expectations and reality when teaching a real class, an exploratory qualitative study was conduc-
ted at a Northern Mexican university that offers a B.A. in English. Participants in this study were 10
student teachers from 9th semester enrolled in a TESOL: Practicum class and from 6th and 7th se-
mesters doing their social service teaching high-school students during the spring semester of 2018.
During this term, participants had to go to a school and work with their mentors who were the English
class teachers in these schools or their university supervisors. Information was gathered from weekly
class observation and journal entries and was analyzed by categorizing it using NVIVO. To protect the
identity of participants, they were given a pseudonym and data was anonymised.

Preliminary results

Findings suggest that inexperienced student-teachers felt tension and anxiety at the beginning of their
practicum and social service, but that with the guidance and help of their mentors, supervisors and
peers they seemed to be able to overcome these difficulties and to strengthen their teacher identity.
Tension occurred mainly because student-teachers realized that they had difficulties explaining and
understanding the topics they were teaching, because they felt they were not getting their students’
attention and thus students were not learning, and because of classroom management problems.