FOSTERING TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING THROUGH LEARNING AND E-LEARNING: ENHANCING NEW TEACHER MENTORING

New York City, Wagner College Education Faculties are exploring real-time facilitator-led reflection online for new teachers in practice. We designed a robust learning environment supporting traditional on-site class sessions and included online learning. These teaching and learning strategies foster daily reflection especially during the period of time when the participating teachers are not in their New Educators at Wagner (NEW) graduate class. As researchers, educators and NEW advisory board members, we present a qualitative case study about how transformative learning is experienced by the NEW professor/mentor and NEW beginning teachers in two modalities: online and live. Our report narrates the teachers', as learners, and the faculty mentor's insights into these critical factors. Our goals for this study are threefold: 1) determine if the process of engaging new teachers actively in discussion encourages them to critically reflect and grow as teachers; 2) improve and enhance the application of first year teachers' learning by incorporating online and live pedagogies as well as oneto-one mentoring; 3) ascertain if the combination of live and online experiences is transformative. The instrument used for this study is Dr. Stephen Brookfield's (1999) [1] Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ). The CIQ is used to stimulate discussion and reflection in three uniquely different learning environments, onsite, online and live classroom. This proposal tells a story of how an adult educator is an agent of transformative learning. The proposal addresses assumptions about fixed truths (Mezirow, 1990) [2]. The study examines whether a faculty mentor's presence in the classroom is an effective way of improving teaching and learning. This proposal also discusses how the process of transformative learning is enhanced by e-learning. The e-learning is accomplished through using the new teachers' collective feedback from their class CIQ and posting it online after each class session. The teachers are encouraged to reflect on the posted feedback and to generate further discussion on MOODLE (Wagner's secure online platform). Teachers' enter their responses on MOODLE, including their reflections of classroom experiences, responses to other teacher's reflections and to their college classroom experiences. According to Brookfield and Preskill (2005) [3], "asynchronous exchange permits learners to experience a relatively leisure review of everything that has been said. This makes it easier for them to look for recurring themes, essential questions and emerging understanding."(p. 241) [3] Proposal questions for participating teachers are adapted and modified from the CIQ and include: What aspects of NEW mean the most to you? How do feel your teaching and learning has changed? What piece of the NEW learning experience online and in the classroom are most significant and/ or least significant to your development as a new teacher? School leaders report that by their formal and informal observations of NEW teachers throughout the academic year and into the next academic year, positive and transformative learning occurs. Citing e-learning and teacher mentoring as a stimulus for this growth, these leaders observe more growth in NEW teachers in comparison to those beginning teachers who did not participated in the NEW experience.