Self-regulated professionalism : a Whole Brain® Participatory Action Research design in a pre-service teacher mentoring context

Abstract

During Work Integrated Learning, pre-service mentoring helps to prepare final-year education students for the workplace. For the purpose of this study, seven pre-service teachers and their mentor teachers formed scholarly communities of practice. Selfregulated professionalism was initiated by implementing the principles of self-regulated learning using a constructivist Whole Brain® Thinking mix as epistemological grounding. Participatory action research was enriched and a Whole Brain® Participatory Action Research Design was used to contribute to the scholarship of mentoring in the education context and the new meaning-making of our current understanding of what action research entails. A baseline study was conducted ten months prior to the commencement of the Whole Brain® Participatory Action Research study. The responses from the Senior and FET Phase pre-service teachers and their mentor teachers in the two online surveys provided an information base for the participatory action research process. The rationale for using Whole Brain® Participatory Action Research was that no scholars have examined a collaborative perspective on pre-teachers, mentor teachers and a university faculty. This particular research design has never before been used in the context of pre-service teacher education. The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument® was initially completed by the participants and myself as the principal researcher to inform reflective practice and to create awareness of our thinking preferences. Action research was conducted by the pre-service teachers in their classroom practice and executed by the mentor teachers in their mentorship practice. I employed action research during the scholarly communities of practice sessions with the participants. Peer mentoring, Whole Brain® Mentoring and blended mentoring were innovatively introduced in the mentor teachers’ and my own mentoring practice as an essential part of the self and the we becoming agent(s) of transformation. The development of a Comprehensive Whole Brain® Mentoring Model for the education context is shared as an outcome of this study.