The Relationship Between Personality Domains and Mentoring Content in the Context of Student Teaching in Music

Jocelyn Stevens Prendergast, Truman State University

jprend@truman.edu

Student teaching is arguably the most important part of a teacher-training program (Conway, 2002; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Groulx, 2015; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; Legette, 2013). During the student teaching experience, many student teachers consider the relationship with their cooperating teacher to be their most important relationship (Hoffman, Funk, Long, & Keithley, 1982; Karmos & Jacko, 1977) or the most important aspect of the student teaching experience (Harlin, Edwards, & Briers, 2002).  Further, the cooperating teacher has a tremendous influence on the student teacher in a variety of areas, including methodology (McAuley, 1960), attitudes towards young people (Yee, 1969), and reflection on practice (Stegman, 2007).

Although these findings underscore the importance of careful mentor selection, some teacher education programs place students in internships based solely on availability and/or convenience (Potthoff & Alley, 1995; Zeichner, 1996). Even when students are placed with teachers “with whom they are likely to feel comfortable,” (Potthoff & Alley, 1995, p. 90) this mentor-student matching is an imprecise guess by the individual making the match about how successful the relationship will be.

            Research conducted outside the field of education indicates that aspects of personality have implications for those in a mentoring relationship (Turban & Lee, 2007) and could even be a factor in leading one to choose to serve a mentor at the outset (Niehoff, 2006). These findings raise questions related to whether personality characteristics of cooperating teachers are associated with distinct mentoring behaviors. Beliefs of what constitutes the content of mentoring vary, but generally relate to career support, emotional support, socialization, and relationship quality (Butler & Cuenca, 2012; Eby et al., 2013). 

            Research into these areas may inform the processes and practices of placing student teachers in rewarding mentoring environments.  Increased understanding of how personality and mentoring style interact and contribute to the success of the student teaching experience is highly relevant and important to teacher educators (Koerner, Rust, & Baumgartner, 2002).

This presentation reports findings from a study that investigated the relationship between the personality traits of cooperating teachers and the kinds of mentoring behaviors in which they reported to engage. Participants included cooperating teachers (N = 30) mentoring student teachers from NASM-certified Southeastern Division schools.  Data were collected using the International Personality Inventory Pool NEO PI-R (Goldberg et al., 2006), the Mentoring Functions Scale (measuring career support and emotional support, Wilson, 2006), and the Allen and Eby relationship quality measure (Allen & Eby, 2003).  Socialization was not measured in this study. The findings indicate that the personality trait of Conscientiousness significantly predicts cooperating teachers’ provision of career support, emotional support, and the perception of overall quality of the relationship.

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