Explain The Three-Level Model Of Teacher Learning

According to Korthagen and Lagerwerf 's three-level model of teacher learning (Korthagen, 2010), teaching practice is vital for teacher professional development, as it helps the teacher to generate own teaching knowledge via the three-level process: “gestalt level”, “schema”, and “theory” (p. 410) (See Figure 2). The first level of this framework, “gestalt level” (Korthagen, 2010, p. 410), heavily hinges on practice and practical experience, and is usually unconscious. Dolk defines all the teachers’ actions, happened at the gestalt level, as “immediate behavior” (as cited in Korthagen, 2010, p. 411), or, actions which occur without reflection. Therefore, gestalt level helps the teacher to form a holistic, general perception regarding the teaching,

413). In this vein, a mentor can be regarded as a key figure who can demonstrate and teach the student teacher to reflect properly with fruitful outcomes in order to understand and see the existing schemas and form their own theories. Therefore, becoming a reflective practitioner is an imperative for mentors if they are aiming at honing their mentoring skills.

Figure 2

The three-level model of teacher learning and the accompanying learning processes by Korthagen (2010) Another framework of mentoring process was elaborated by Furlong and Maynard (1995), which explicitly demonstrates the stages of student teacher development and the role and functions of the mentor at each stage. According to Furlong and Maynard (1995), there are four main stages, which the student teacher needs to undergo during the practicum, which are: beginning teaching, supervised teaching, from teaching to learning, and autonomous teaching. In the begining teaching stage, the student teachers come as novices with skills and knowledge acquired during the theoretical courses at university before the practical experience. At this initial stage student teachers start developing their professional knowedlge via imitating and copying their mentors ' teaching styles and routines (Furlong & Maynard, 1995). Although student teachers copy the strategies, they do not necesserily understand them, moreover, at this stage it is