“A Circular Council of People With Equal Ideas”

Abstract

Mentoring in music education programs is such a ubiquitous part of the process; it is sometimes overlooked or subsumed under other categories. The purpose of this article is to highlight mentoring relationships within an undergraduate music teacher education program. Formal, informal, vertical, and horizontal mentoring are examined from the perspectives of undergraduate preservice music teachers working in a community-university partnership. The data are culled from a 14 month, intrinsic case study of the University of South Carolina String Project, designed to examine the participant experience for all member groups within the string project—the undergraduate preservice teachers, the community students, and the faculty. Mentoring relationships are explored as a critical component of experience for the preservice teachers. Their voices are presented here to illustrate the value they placed on mentoring, as well as the challenges that emerged in construction of a mentoring mosaic as part of their preservice teaching experience.

Keywords

mentoring mentoring mosaic music teacher preparation preservice teachers

Mentoring relationships are the cornerstone of teacher education programs (Campbell & Brummett, 2007; Schmidt, 2010). Often, relationships are assigned, as when a supervising professor guides a preservice teacher through the student teaching practicum. Other relationships are forged out of necessity, out of situated emergent spaces and driven by inquiry, as when preservice teachers rely on peers to help them solve problems in a fieldwork space. As Schmidt has observed, preservice teachers appear “to be predisposed to viewing other teachers as mentors” (2010, p. 140). Preservice teachers making the transformational journey from student to teacher often search for individuals, such as professors and former teachers, who can guide them through the bumpy terrain of applying theory to practice in a classroom with a myriad individual student academic, musical, and life experiences. A hybrid of mentoring experiences—formal and informal, vertical and horizontal—may be beneficial during this critical and vulnerable time to cultivate preservice teacher knowledge, abilities, and dispositions.

Mentoring: The Literature

Mentoring has been most commonly employed in business models, nursing, and education (Darling, 2007; Stone, 2004; Strong, 2009). In education, mentoring has shown promise for curbing teacher attrition (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Smith & Ingersoll, 2004), for developing more effective teachers (Evertson & Smithey, 2000; Humphrey et al., 2000), and for nurturing creative practices (Keinänen & Gardner, 2004). A strong base of research literature on mentoring and induction with novice music teachers is beginning to develop (Conway, 2002; Conway, Eros, Pellegrino & West, 2010; Jacobs, 2008), but there is still a need for investigation of preservice music teacher experience concerning mentorship. The evolution of mentoring styles is beyond the scope of this study, but I will briefly contextualize the roles of formal and informal, vertical and horizontal mentoring as they pertained to this investigation.

Formal mentoring in an organization involves matching mentors and mentees who work together to achieve designated objectives over time (Ragins & Cotton, 1999). A typical formal mentoring experience for a preservice teacher is an arranged partnership with a cooperating teacher in the public schools. The cooperating teacher acts as mentor supporting the preservice student teacher as she or he navigates designing lesson plans, facilitating student learning, assessing student achievement, and negotiating policy and practices within the public school setting. While many preservice student teachers and their cooperating teachers highly value this experience, the mentoring practice is formal and compulsory. Vertical mentoring, sometimes referred to as traditional mentoring (Byrne & Keefe, 2002), is always formal and typical of an organizational context. In this top-down style of mentoring, a master in the field is assigned apprentice workers who glean knowledge and social capital from the master teacher, and the power relationship is naturally uneven. The mentor holds the secrets to success, wisdom and insight while the mentee is a novice, reliant on the advanced insight and experience of the mentor. Vertical mentoring is evident in many disciplined lineages within the arts (Keinänen & Gardner, 2004).

Horizontal mentoring, sometimes referred to as peer mentoring (Byrne & Keefe, 2002) or alternative mentoring (Mullen, 2005), is focused on peer relationships with an egalitarian distribution of knowledge and power. Horizontal mentoring relationships are often motivational (Draves & Koops, 2010), more collegial, and have been shown to encourage creativity and innovation (Keinänen & Gardner, 2004). Student teacher cohorts exemplify horizontal mentoring in a teacher education program. Informal mentoring, in contrast to all of the above, is entirely emergent. Some say that it “just happens.” Fletcher and Mullen (2012) describe informal mentoring relationships as “usually psychosocial in nature, formed to enhance the protégé’s self-esteem through the interpersonal dynamics” (p. 370). Informal mentoring experiences can happen when two student teachers meet for lunch and share about their placements, or when a preservice teacher visits a former teacher to reminisce and share personal revelations about education. Psychosocial support may materialize through these informal encounters, although it is not likely the primary motivation for meeting. In spite of the casual appearance, preservice teachers find informal mentoring experiences to be valuable and useful. The mutual career concerns and unrestricted nature of such informal relationships allows for open dialogue, sharing of resources, collaborative problem solving, and increased confidence through the reinforcement of common experiences (Draves & Koops, 2010; Fletcher & Mullen, 2012).

Mentoring mosaics are an amalgamation of the above, characterized by hybrid formal and informal, vertical and horizontal experiences where “individuals interchange roles as mentors and protégés, optimizing the sharing of cultural knowledge, learning of new skills, and conditions for identity transformation” (Mullen, 1999, p. 4). In addition, mentoring mosaics allow for self-mentoring experiences (Darling, 2007) that shape an individual’s thinking and practice as she reflects-on-action and reflects-in-action (Schön, 1987). Darling (2007) explains that “each of us has a unique mentoring process . . . a one-of-a-kind design as unique as a fingerprint. Although many similarities exist from one person to another, the overall pattern is never repeated precisely” (p. 12). Mentoring mosaics, therefore, offer each individual the opportunity to construct a personal and unique constellation of relationships (Higgins & Kram, 2001) and experiences. The individual draws on multiple and sometimes seemingly disparate places and people to construct his or her own learning, resultant in a mosaic that evinces knowledge, skill, resources, dispositions, stories, and histories. In this article, I will consider the University of South Carolina String Project as one model for conceptualization of the development of mentoring mosaics.

The University of South Carolina String Project: A Case Study

During the fall of 2009, I commenced with a case study of the University of South Carolina String Project (USCSP) because of the program’s prominence in string teacher education. Undergraduate teachers within the program gain practical supervised teaching experience under the mentorship of a master teacher and graduate assistants, while community children and adults learn stringed instruments for a nominal cost (Barnes, 2013; Davis, 2011) gaining access to broad cultural involvements, community and musical experiences that, over time, nurture their self-growth, self-knowledge, enjoyment, and self-esteem (Elliott & Silverman, 2015). While most preservice teacher education programs offer some fieldwork experience (e.g., 100 supervised observation hours in New York State) with a capstone student teaching placement during the final semester, the USCSP offers preservice teachers upward of 500 hours of fieldwork observations and string project teaching prior to student teaching (Davis, 2011). Freshmen typically observe group classes and assist, sophomores begin to teach private lessons, juniors teach small group classes, and seniors generally teach the large heterogeneous beginner groups. All the work is supervised. The extensive nature of firsthand teaching and mentoring experiences within the USCSP, make it a compelling site for research of preservice teacher education practices.

To elicit a multidimensional understanding of the complex, situated participant experience within the USCSP, I used naturalistic inquiry through an intrinsic case study (Stake, 1995). Data collected included artifacts (e.g., archival documents, a student teaching handbook, lesson plans, parent letters), field notes from over 60 hours of participant observation, transcriptions and analyses of interviews with 33 participants, select video-recordings, photographs, e-mail communication, and preservice teacher journal entries. I designed an interview questionnaire to probe participant experience about the benefits and challenges of participation in the string project. Due to the subjective nature of qualitative research, I employed strategies to increase the validity and trustworthiness of the study. Following Creswell (2007), I used prolonged engagement in the field (14 months of visits), triangulation (multiple and varied sources of data), peer review (sharing of findings with a peer cohort and advisors), member checks (asking participants to review field notes, transcripts, and analyses), and rich, thick description to strengthen and substantiate suggested findings. Data analysis for this study followed a spiral beginning with “data collection,” and looping through “data managing,” then “reading, memoing,” “describing, classifying, interpreting,” and finally, “representing, visualizing” (p. 151). Through the use of HyperRESEARCH software, I was able to read, review, and mine the raw data on multiple occasions to draw out recurrent ideas and deeper layers of interpretation. Salient themes that emerged from this analysis included teacher identity, mentoring relationships, musician identity, time commitment, opportunity, access, university mission, and teacher education.

The USCSP Mentoring Mosaic

[A large] benefit of the string project for undergraduates is the value of the mentoring design within the program. Much in the way that they say it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entire string project to raise a string teacher. . . . One undergraduate [Cameron] described the atmosphere this way, “It’s very democratic around here. You know it’s not the head string department leader saying, ‘Do this, do that.’ It’s like a circular council of people who have equal ideas.” (Field notes, February 13, 2010)

Field note reflections from my visit on February 13, 2010 revealed the theme of mentoring as it was emerging from the preservice teacher discourse. Every preservice teacher I interviewed (there were 11 willing participants out of 20 undergraduates) spoke about initiating with several, if not multiple, people in the USCSP community to grow personally as musicians and music teachers. The imagery of Cameron’s language, “a circular council of people who have equal ideas,” demonstrated an awareness of the mutuality within the USCSP, of the shared power and shared influence. Often in strict formal and vertical mentoring programs, “what is shared is not equally distributed across the partners” (Mullen, 1999, p. xii) and is limiting to the participants involved. While it is not likely that all preservice teachers valued all ideas, advice, and input equally, the openness to consideration of all perspectives nurtured within the USCSP was distributed across the participants. In that sense, the key descriptors of the USCSP for Cameron: democratic, circular, council, equal, and ideas, served to illuminate his mentoring mosaic—one that empowered preservice teachers and provided them with choices and opportunities for independent, creative, and critical thinking.

Vertical Mentoring in the USCSP

Like many music teacher education programs, the USCSP relied on a core of vertical mentoring relationships. Dr. Barnes, the String Project Director, mentored the graduate assistants and advised the preservice undergraduates in weekly string project meetings. Dr. Barnes worked closely with the graduate assistants to see that the USCSP functioned as efficiently as possible. She observed all aspects of the USCSP at various times. The graduate assistants mentored the preservice undergraduate teachers. They observed large and small group classes with the goal of solving pedagogical problems and classroom management issues. Private lessons with community students were often video-recorded so that the preservice teachers could reflect together with a mentor at a later time. In this way, the USCSP director and the graduate assistants acted as formal mentors helping the mentees grow in their teaching practices.

The preservice teachers were eager to receive critiques from the graduate assistants and the director. Crystal, a senior, noted “it’s good to have that type of environment where you know that you’re getting constructive feedback.” Additionally, Katie shared about how her relationship with Dylan, one of the graduate assistants, had shaped her perspective:

I also look to the GAs [graduate assistants], especially Dylan. The way Dylan handles things, like the way he handles people, that’s something I wish that I could do myself. He’s just so calm and easygoing, and you know, me at the beginning of the year, I would just let the smallest thing bother me. But, being around Dylan, it’s helped calm me down some and try to realize the larger picture.

Katie valued Dylan’s example and was able to learn from his composed teacher disposition. His calm demeanor was an example for her and ultimately helped her to be more realistic about expectations and her own teacher practice over time.

Jessica shared about her interactions with a graduate assistant. The combination of his observations, video-recorded lessons and follow-up conferencing helped her find a new direction with a student who was having trouble. She explained,

So, then, the GA videotaped like 16 minutes of one of my things, which was a lot. And, he watched it all. And, he wrote down all these really good in-depth comments about it, which was nice. And, he emailed them to me. And, I felt that was very helpful. So, I looked at the video; I looked at the comments, and I’d go, “Oh!” And, he was like, “Well, you meant to say short, off the string, but you played a martelé stroke.” And, I’m like, “Oh, no, I did. Thank you for putting that in perspective.”

As students like Jessica spoke about their experience receiving feedback, they made visible their processes of critical reflection. They were able to share encounters where their actions were informed and altered by the intervention of mentoring practices within the USCSP. As a result of the teaching successes that ensued from such encounters, the preservice teachers exhibited greater self-efficacy and an increased willingness to ask questions and get help.

In contrast with Killian’s (2011) observation that

the idea of asking questions seems to be a “hard sell” to our undergraduates because so many appear to believe that they should know everything and that it is perhaps a sign of weakness or incompetence to ask colleagues for assistance (pp. 7–8)

the USCSP undergraduates displayed tremendous eagerness for input. If anything, several students expressed that they desired even more feedback. Jessica explained,

We just don’t want one opinion. . . . We want to see what Dr. Barnes has to say [too], since she’s done this for so many years. We want to know exactly what she’s feeling about us teaching. And, what are the pros and what are the cons. I would love to know from her perspective.

As much as the preservice teachers valued the opinions of the graduate assistants and their peers, they were very concerned about hearing advice from a master teacher. Crystal explained that she valued the honest nature of Dr. Barnes’s critiques. She shared, “I learn a lot from Dr. Barnes. I love the fact that she’s so straightforward. That . . . she doesn’t handicap us and she doesn’t baby us either. She’s very forthright with what she’s observed.”

Vertical mentoring is sometimes criticized for its hierarchical nature and tendency toward unequal distribution of power (Mullen, 1999), however, in a program like the USCSP, power or authority is sometimes a necessity to create a safe space for preservice teachers. Whereas some parents may think nothing of disagreeing with or confronting the preservice teachers because of their limited experience, the USCSP director and graduate assistants, with their more authoritative positions, were available to support preservice teachers through any thorny situations. One sophomore, Corey, recounted an incident where he was grateful for the administrative support with a difficult parent:

My first year of teaching there was a parent who didn’t want to follow the guidelines that the teacher was giving in a beginning class. You’re not supposed to write down each of the note names in the music, but this girl had written down a couple pages in her book with her mother. And, we tried to tell her mother. . . . I told the teacher and the teacher told me that that had been going on. That wasn’t anything new. And, I think she pursued Dr. Barnes to deal with that-which is a good part of the string project. And, they do stress that if you’re having any problems with teaching in any aspect that you’re supposed to go to either a grad assistant or to Dr. Barnes to help you.

Real-world teaching comes with high-stakes situations such as these: parents who may disagree with a teaching method; students who act disrespectfully and disrupt the learning process; or students who are apathetic and unwilling to participate. While the preservice teachers within the USCSP were encouraged to handle as much as they could, in extreme circumstances the hierarchical nature of the program meant that there was always a powerful support system to assist. Crystal described it as “the life experience, but with the bubble.”

Horizontal Mentoring in the USCSP

In addition to the core vertical mentoring relationships within the USCSP, horizontal mentoring was fostered through weekly preservice teacher meetings and peer collaboration. The peer mentoring relationships within the USCSP were not assigned, but developed organically from the preservice teacher interactions, needs, and questions. The undergraduates explained to me that their relationships grew out of the “weekly meetings,” “free time between lessons,” “over dinner,” and even via “Facebook.”

From the first meeting of the year, the tone was set that the director of the string project was not the “be-all and end-all” authority. While Dr. Barnes opened up the orientation meeting, it was the junior and senior preservice undergraduates who led the group in agenda items related to conduct, dress code, safety, communication, lesson planning, and organization. Freshmen were immediately immersed into peer partnerships as they planned school recruitment sessions and prepared to assist the veteran string project teachers. Jessica shared about how the community dynamic shaped her thinking as a freshman. After having seen the USCSP preservice teachers in action during her first semester she expressed that,

These are the people I need to get to know. I can ask them questions because they’re also string teachers or hoping to be string teachers. We can discuss things together—we can just go eat pizza together, whatever it is. And, we’re just kind of like sounding boards for each other sometimes.

Jessica communicated that she was grateful for the relationships she had developed in the string project; she was happy that she had “someone to be with” and had established what she considered to be enduring friendships.

Responsibility and ownership were shared among all members of the USCSP teaching cohort leading to a greater awareness of the contributions of each participant within the community. One preservice teacher described the way she valued her “cello friends”:

I learn from my peers everyday. I’m not strong at cello at all . . . will never be a cello teacher—I will say that now. I can’t do it. But, it’s nice to have them [cello friends] and they always give me good ideas . . . we always talk about it at dinner. It’s so funny. Every time at dinner, we always have, like, a cello-violin conversation.

Similarly, Corey compared the open and collaborative nature of relationships within the USCSP to a community of learners.

We don’t have to go to grad assistants and Dr. Barnes if we have questions. Sometimes you can go to another student, or another student teacher who’s in the string project. I feel like we do have a community at the string project, really. If not in a social aspect, then definitely in a professional way. When I’m at string project, we’re all on the same level. We’re all there learning.

This shared ownership of learning and growth was visible throughout the program, including at the weekly preservice teacher meetings. After one such meeting where the preservice teachers shared video clips of their private lesson teaching, I reflected,

The director is, once again, not the center of the wheel. She does not give all the critique of the string project teachers, nor does she introduce their video clips and point out [remarkable] moments for the undergraduates in this meeting. Except for the introduction, the meeting is primarily run by the students.

While the junior and senior undergraduates took stronger leadership roles in these weekly meetings, all of the preservice teachers took responsibility for advising and guiding one another through teacher discussions and problem-solving situations. The USCSP director interjected as necessary but the group dynamic and group power superseded her role in this context.

Hooker, Nakamura, and Csikszentmihalyi (2003) asserted that “peers serve as sources of emotional support and expertise; they provide one another knowledge and intellectual inspiration; they model effective skills and behavior, and thereby supplement many of the roles traditionally thought to belong to mentors alone” (p. 242). Cameron’s perception of the USCSP community seemed consonant with this. He described the community to me by saying,

Being a democratic setting, that means I can approach one of the other teachers, one of my peers, and say, “Hey, my student’s not understanding this, can you give me some advice?” And, I like learning different ways—I have my own way of learning, but I like seeing how other teachers interact with their students. It’s almost this eclectic teaching style.

And, later he reiterated, “It’s just this type of community that really emphasizes, you know, ‘Hey, you have your way. Let’s see if you can develop it. But, at the same time, look around you and see what everybody else is doing.’” In the time I observed the USCSP, I saw Cameron, Crystal, Jessica, Katie, and other preservice teachers actively consult one another in search of knowledge, intellectual inspiration and solutions to classroom or musical problems. For many of the preservice teachers in the USCSP, the peer relationships also provided opportunities for emotional and intellectual support. As one undergraduate explained it, “The string project definitely helped me figure out that this is where I belong.”

In addition to the access to multiple perspectives and creative thinking, peer mentoring relationships offered undergraduates a less intimidating context to be open and vulnerable with their concerns. Instead of feeling the constant pressure of judgment from a teacher-mentor, the undergraduates felt free to ask questions of one another. Katie explained how the incoming freshmen in the USCSP relied on her for information from the start of the semester:

And . . . a lot of the freshmen were more comfortable speaking to me than the GAs [graduate assistants] or Dr. Barnes. So, I’d get texts and calls. I remember at the beginning, at the first meeting, you know, I had a text. I had three text messages from three of the new freshmen, “Do we have to dress up for the meeting? For the first meeting?”

Katie expressed a strong belief in the importance of the peer relationships within the USCSP. She felt a responsibility for the incoming freshmen, and she believed that the peer relationships would help them make the transition from high school to college and from student to teacher. This seems to be consistent with the suggestions of Loots (2009), Angelique, Kyle, and Taylor (2002), Conway et al. (2010) who have all affirmed that peer mentors can sometimes be more effective with mentees. Senior students who have recently gone through early teaching experiences may be better able to relate with novice preservice teachers, offering an empathic ear and mutual understanding.

Chips in the Mentoring Mosaic

While mentoring mosaics are implemented to offer support and constructive guidance, a mentoring community is not without concerns. Even within a hybrid program like the USCSP there are negative feelings that can develop. There can be issues with competition, with lack of trust, with apathy, with boredom and negligence (Heikkinen, Tynjala, & Jokinen, 2012). I did not observe any direct instances of competition, but I did hear some preservice teachers complain about peers who were somewhat indifferent or negligent in their roles at times. Furthermore, several USCSP teachers expressed feelings of being underutilized in their initial positions.

Some of the preservice teachers wished they were given more responsibility early on in the program. One freshman explained “getting more hands on freshman year would probably help. Or, doing it just, like, second semester after you’ve seen the first semester.” Cameron described his role as a first-year teacher:

Last year I was an assistant. That’s the only, I guess, legalistic thing you could say. You have to come in first year as an assistant. So, last year I was an assistant and all we did was just go around and correct posture and do the dirty work of the teachers.

Although fixing posture, adjusting bow holds and taking attendance were necessary and fundamental aspects of string teaching in this context, Cameron seemed to resent these tasks, as demonstrated by his use of the phrase “dirty work.” He expressed a desire to be engaged in what he considered to be actual teaching practice from the beginning. Preservice teachers often express a desire for more firsthand experience (McDowell, 2007). Mentors and cooperating teachers, however, have to strike a balance between providing appropriate teaching and leadership opportunities along with the continued modeling of good practices. This can be a difficult space for mentors and mentees to negotiate, as there is no singular solution. Dr. Barnes was cognizant of her mentor role as a balancing act. She shared, “I want to do the best I can for my students [the undergraduates], but it has to be within the framework because they’re taking care of the children . . . they [must] take that responsibility seriously.” Although Cameron experienced some dissatisfaction with the designated levels of responsibility in the USCSP, others were grateful for the progression. Crystal explained, “It’s a great little cycle—you end up teaching the class that you first assisted in.”

Discussion and Implications for Teacher Educators

Mentoring is already a critical part of music teacher education programs, but perhaps the breadth and depth of mentoring relationships within the preservice teacher experience needs to be reexamined (Campbell & Brummett, 2007; Mullen, 1999). While there are many programs in the United States that offer varied fieldwork and mentoring opportunities, including 39 other string project sites (Barnes, 2013), the USCSP mentoring model is unique because of the elaborate network (or constellation) of multiple perspectives and intensive mentoring habits in place prior to the capstone student teaching practicum. Before the USCSP undergraduates student teach in partner public schools they have already spent years and hundreds of supervised hours observing, assisting, and teaching within the string project. They have been observed and video-recorded. They have received vertical mentoring in the form of feedback from graduate assistants, private teachers, former teachers, and the string project director. They have received horizontal mentoring in the form of feedback from peers, students, and community members. They have been asked to reflect-in-action (Elliott & Silverman, 2015; Schön, 1987) and reflect-on-action (throughout weekly string project teacher meetings and undergraduate coursework) as a means of self-mentoring. As such, they have actively participated in a sustained culture of teaching and mentorship throughout all 4 years of their undergraduate careers.

Some might argue that it was the plethora of teaching opportunities alone that served to prepare the preservice teachers in this setting. However, the combination of teaching and mentoring is what I found to be most powerful in the USCSP. As the undergraduates taught and then reflected together with their peers and master teachers, they were able to develop and refine their teaching praxis and discover their own identities as music teachers. The preservice teachers constructed individual mentoring mosaics as they learned how to critically reflect and act, through observations, discourse, imitation, and feedback, as students (of their own private teachers), as teachers (of large and small group classes and private lessons), as leaders (of ensembles and school assemblies), and as colleagues (through weekly teacher meetings and discussions with peers). This process afforded them a noteworthy place of creativity, inquiry, dialogue, and discovery. In Lydia’s words:

You have fellow members to communicate with and bounce ideas off of, and you have your professor and a master teacher there, guiding you the entire time. It was challenging having the responsibility of teaching while taking classes, participating in ensembles, and facing all the demands that come with pursuing a music degree, but that experience had a profound effect on me.

Whether they called it “real world,” “professional,” or “hands-on” experience, Lydia, Jessica, Katie, Cameron, Crystal, and other preservice teachers all valued the USCSP mentoring mosaics as preparation for and “a stepping tool” to their future careers. One undergraduate acknowledged,

Having worked with students for 4 years at string project, my semester spent in the public schools during my student teaching just felt like the next step. I was not uncomfortable in front of the students; I already had my teacher skills and voice. My practice at string project and through classes at USC prepared me for the classroom.

Another graduate of the program asserted, “Student teaching becomes such a different experience when you’ve already had 3- or 3½ years’ experience under your belt, and I had tremendous confidence interviewing for my first job!” These affirmations of self-efficacy were the norm among the USCSP preservice teachers, not the exception. They are consistent with Prichard’s (2013) findings that mentoring contributes to both personal music teaching efficacy and classroom management efficacy in early music education coursework experiences.

Mentoring practices within a teacher education program have potential to foster future edifying professional interactions in education, to advance NAfME ideals for professional development and to stem prevalent feelings of isolation, burnout, and praxis shock (Ballantyne, 2007). As we forge ahead in music teacher education, we need more research into vertical and horizontal, formal and informal mentoring practices to fully understand the benefits and challenges for both preservice and in-service teachers and to develop meaningful and effective models. This could include exploration of communities of practice according to the work of Wenger (1998), or an in-depth look into patterns of self-awareness and self-mentoring in the music classroom (Darling, 2007). I would suggest that mentoring mosaics be examined further as potential viable models of dialogue, support and community for preservice teachers. The opportunity to develop a personal constellation of mentoring relationships provides preservice teachers with many voices and practices to choose from when cultivating teacher knowledge, ability, disposition, and identity. The abundance of choices increases the likelihood that preservice teachers will find helpful and strong mentoring relationships able to provide them with career-enhancement opportunities and psychosocial benefits, all of which have been linked with higher satisfaction at work and increased self-efficacy.

In addition, there is a possibility these relationships will continue well beyond the boundaries of the preservice teacher cohort. Six years since this study, I have seen a number of the participants spending time together at conferences, trading ideas on social networks, leading workshops and presentations generated from their current work as teachers, and staying in touch with others who remain in the string project. In this regard, the mentoring mosaic model seems likely to engender lifelong relationships and allow for the portability of mentoring. If preservice teachers are able to build psychosocially supportive relationships, where they learn to ask questions, persist in dialogue, regard peer input and glean valuable lessons, and dispositions toward teaching within their undergraduate years, perhaps that will provide them with pragmatic strategies and a meaningful way of being connected with other teachers to support them throughout their in-service experiences. While all teacher education programs employ some form or combination of vertical and horizontal mentoring, I suggest that more attention should be given to the potentialities and possibilities of hybrid mentoring mosaics to better prepare preservice teachers for the ever-shifting terrain of music education today.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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