Abstract

Globally, mentoring has been recognized as one of the effective approaches in professional training and development of teachers. Most importantly, in Zimbabwe, mentoring has been largely adopted as one of the Teaching Practice strategies by teacher training colleges and schools. Good quality mentoring in schools makes an important contribution to developing professional skills especially to the student teachers (mentees) as this will ultimately ensure good quality learning experiences of learners. The purpose of this study was to establish the extent to which effective dialogue between colleges and primary schools can enhance effectiveness of the mentoring strategies in training teachers on teaching practice. Interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions were adopted in this study to establish the importance of dialogue between colleges and schools in strengthening the effectiveness of mentoring as a training strategy. The study concluded that lack of mutual sharing of ideas, skills, knowledge and information on mentoring between training colleges and schools have a negative impact on the quality of graduate teacher. The study recommends the development of communication strategies that break the barriers between colleges and schools so as to enhance the effectiveness of the mentoring approach.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.