The Impact of Training on Mentor and Student Teachers\u27 Self Efficacy in Physical Education

Providing support from an experienced teacher through mentoring has been as one way to reform teaching and teacher education. To keep talented beginning teachers in the profession, more than 30 states have implemented some form of mentoring program for novice teacher assistance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of formal training on mentor and student teachers\u27 self-efficacy in physical education. The study included eight mentors and seven student teachers in the experimental group receiving training. Three mentor and three student teachers were part of the control group and received no training. All results indicated the mentor training had an impact on mentor and student teachers self-efficacy, but there was no statistical significant. Mentor teachers ranked critical feedback, relationship, mentoring/modeling, and emotional support in the pre and post surveys as most important mentor characteristics. Some mentor teachers mentioned they became mentors because they were reminded of their mentors not helping them during their internship, while others became mentors because they wanted to provide student teachers with a background on how teaching is. The student teachers described the relationship with their mentors as positive, supportive, collegial, and even similar to a family member. The results of this study suggest that having a trained mentor can have a positive impact on the physical education student teachers\u27 experience, but so can an untrained mentor