Pre-service teachers as telementors: exploring the links between theory and practice

Abstract This article describes a case study in which pre-service teachers mentored students over the Internet as part of their teacher education program. The pre-service teachers used Knowledge Forum software to communicate with students engaged in collaborative on-line science investigations. Two reoccurring (and possibly related) problems were identified. First, the pre-service teachers had little previous experience facilitating student-led investigations, and often attempted to direct student research. Second, the messages they wrote sometimes closed down student threads. Despite these problems, interview data suggest that the pre-service teachers found the experience to be professionally valuable. Telementoring may offer schools of education a means of exposing new teachers to alternative instructional methodologies and forging tighter links between educational theory and educational practice.