One-On-One Technology Mentoring for In-Service Teachers: The Experiences of Future ICT Coordinators

Abstract

With the increasing demands of technology integration by the institutions, educators felt the need to develop themselves professionally. In this study, as a way of professional development, we focused on one-on-one technology mentoring for in-service teachers because the experiences of mentors would shed light on professional development programs in the context of both mentors’ progress and mentoring in-service teachers. Mentors for teachers were assigned to facilitate teachers’ ICT usage and ICT integration skills. The mentorship implementation lasted two semesters with 42 mentors’ participation. The determination of the content of the mentoring process was completely based on the needs and interests of the teachers. After the implementation, the perceptions and experiences of the mentors were asked and coded through content analysis. According to the analysis, the responses of the mentors were grouped into five main categories; (a) affordances of the technology mentoring process, (b) the contribution of the project to the teachers, (c) the contribution of the project to the mentors, (d) the challenges experienced by the mentors, and (e) the weaknesses of and the suggestions for the mentoring process. The findings of this study indicated that future ICT coordinators believed that one-on-one technology mentoring in real school settings is an effective way not only for training in-service teachers but also for creating awareness of being an ICT coordinator and developing ICT mentoring skills.