Mentoring in music education: The collaborative relationship among the student teacher, cooperating teacher and college supervisor. A qualitative action research study

The relationship among the cooperating teacher, student teacher, and college supervisor was the focus of this research. The term “mentor” is used in this study as a metaphor for the opportunity for each of the participants to teach something to one another as well as learn from one another. The purpose of the study was to examine the mentoring process as it took place in the collaborative relationship among the participants in the music student teaching setting.; Two in-depth case studies were conducted for this study, using qualitative research techniques. As the college supervisor and researcher, I was able to connect this study directly to my position as a director of music education, therefore using this as an action research study. I primarily relied upon data collected through interviews, with journal entries, discussions during seminars and use of e mail as additional sources.; From analysis of the data, both within each case and across cases, themes relevant to the development of the collaborative relationship and mentoring process emerged. It seemed that the situation in which the mentoring took place in each of the four relationships: student teacher/cooperating teacher, student teacher/college supervisor, cooperating teacher/college supervisor, student teacher/cooperating teacher/college supervisor, was shaped by the participants' perspectives of their roles in the process. When each of the participants believed that he/she had something to learn from the experience as well as offer the others, the collaborative experience seemed to become more evident than when one of the participants felt that he/she had nothing or little to learn from the other two.; The themes revealed in the analysis led to several conclusions. The main conclusions were that the supervisor may choose to use, as primary criteria, placing student teachers with cooperating teachers who are eager to learn from the experience as well as guide the student teachers and that the supervisor has the ability to nurture both the collaborative process and mentoring relationship during the experience. Following a discussion of the conclusions are some implications for placement of student teachers and supervision, as well as recommendations and suggestions for further research.