Teacher candidate perceptions of telementoring in Knowledge Forum

The success of traditional email-based telementoring rests on the ability and inclination of students to maintain open channels of communication with mentors. Telementoring in learning environments (specifically, Knowledge Forum) may offer strategic advantages by making the day-to-day evolution of student investigations more accessible. This paper describes an experiment in which University of Toronto teacher candidates worked as Knowledge Forum telementors in four elementary school classrooms. Two reoccurring (and possibly related) problems were identified: 1) Teacher candidates had little previous experience with student-directed investigations and were unsure how to best support learners; and 2) Teacher candidate messages sometimes appeared to close down student threads. Despite these findings, teacher candidates reported that they found the experience of electronically mentoring a Knowledge Forum class to be professionally valuable.