Balbay, Seher

Dayioglu Ocal, Secil

Yapar, Damla  Pinar

Yelbay Yilmaz, Yasemin

Online education, especially in higher level education has become the norm with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, it was not invented and implemented with the pandemic. Even in teacher training there had already been online courses which equipped the teacher candidates with practical information. One such English language teacher training course is offered by an American university but has an audience from all over the world. The present study set out with the assumption that, the generic content that is not culture-specific, and delivered through an interaction pattern that does not require virtual video conferencing can be supplemented and can benefit from the support of the experienced teachers of English from the local context of the teacher candidates. The course in the present study had two rounds with different participants, and the same local mentors employed different strategies in the first round offered before the pandemic and the second one offered after the pandemic broke out. The present research is based on the reflections of the four local mentors who worked in collaboration with the main course offered to Turkish preservice teachers by an American University. The qualitative data collected from the local mentor journals, field notes and interviews were analyzed through content analysis, and the results revealed that the pandemic period was much more productive in that the regular video conferencing component was included which humanized the mentoring process. Another component that proved to be very productive was the student conferences held at the end of the two courses. The presenters will explore the reasons behind the local mentor practice that were both efficient and unproductive in this preservice teacher training support with an emphasis on the changes that took place in the longitudinal process

A Narrative Inquiry of Online with Local Mentor Support

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OpenMETU (Middle East Technical University)