Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ATEE 2023 Annual Conference, Budapest, Macaristan, 27 - 30 Ağustos 2023, ss.86-87
Twenty-first century has witnessed a series of unplanned emerging crises such as
the war in the east, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, floods,
wildfires and recently the Turkey-Syria earthquake. A variety of stringent
measures were taken to heal the situation, including restrictions on individual
liberty and the suspension of economic, cultural, social and educational activities.
Schools and universities closed down each time, leaving institutions, educators
and student-teachers in search of new solutions or alternative pathways to sustain
teacher education. As a result, educators and student-teachers had to rapidly adapt
to remote teaching as happened in the emergency remote teaching in the
pandemic (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020). A bulk of studies (Ellis et al., 2020; Flores
& Gago, 2020) tried to understand and identify what was learnt about the “new
normal” immediately after the outbreak of pandemic. It is also rightly argued that
globalisation will continue to have significant effects and strong shaping
influence on ecological mutation, national cultures and histories (Menter, 2019).
Hence, emerging research into teacher education in unprecedented times will
contribute to our understanding and gaining insights into the changing landscape
of teacher education. We aim to understand and identify the nature of the
mentoring relationships between mentors and student-teachers in times of the
biggest earthquake of all times which took place in Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye on
February 6, 2023 when emergency remote teaching has just been re-adopted
across the nation. The research questions of this exploratory study are: a) how
have mentors addressed the challenges of mentoring in unprecedented times? b)
how do student-teachers characterize the mentoring in unprecedented times?
Tensions and challenges which mentors and student-teachers have been
experiencing in the new emergency are the focus of the study. These aspects will
be compared and contrasted with those of the participants in times of other global
crises such as the pandemic. Data for the study come from semi-structured interviews with mentors and student-teachers, reflective journals by student-
teachers, and researchers’ vignettes over a practicum term in 2023 spring. Participants are twelve student-teachers from seven socio-culturally different
cities in Türkiye and three mentors in a secondary state school in middle Anatolia.
The results of the study will be discussed in relation to potentially global
implications of mentoring and teacher education during the unplanned crises.