Congratulations to Professor Paula Golombek, whose paper, “Reconceptualising Peer and Expert Mentoring in Language Teacher Education Through Tiny Talks and Troika ZPD Activity” was recently published in the latest issue of the European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL. Abstract is below and link to paper is here. Way to go Dr. Golombek!
“Vygotskian-inspired tiny talks (Zoshak, 2016) and mentor email responses are imagined as a troika ZPD that fosters collaborative dialogue between novice teachers in the practicum and their mentor, and a way for the mentor to gauge how teachers were experiencing and thinking about their own and their partners’ teaching. Peer dialogue enabled emotional/cognitive dissonance and emotional support to emerge, which the mentor could then mediate responsively. Envisioning peer and expert mentoring through a Vygotskian dialectic in language teacher education offers a space through which novice teachers can work through being a teacher while being supported when they cannot.”