Please respond to post with at least 250 words 2 in text citations and references with page numbers.
It is not known how novice public general education elementary in-service teachers perceive their experiences of pre-service mentoring that influenced their current teaching practices. A qualitative methodology is suited for this study because it focuses on understanding how people make meaning of their social realities (Mwita, 2022, p. 618). Researchers can gain new insights into the phenomenon, but this requires studying the experiences of individuals. Luft et al. (2022, p. 5) stated that when selecting a theoretical framework, the researcher must reflect on the phenomenon within the study and the assumptions aligned with the phenomenon. The phenomenon is the novice elementary teachers’ experience of pre-service mentoring. The novice researcher will be using two theoretical frameworks that will assist in gaining insight into the experiences of the research phenomenon.
Two theoretical frameworks underpin the novice researcher’s qualitative design, which is an interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). They are phenomenology and hermeneutics. According to Smith et al. (2022, p. 7), phenomenology is concerned with people’s lived experiences and the meaning they attach to their subjective experiences. Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation (Smith et al., 2022, p. 17). Heidegger believed that people’s life experiences could only be accessed through our interpretation of the world. During a research study, the researcher is attempting to understand the participants, who are in turn trying to make sense of their own experiences. This is called double hermeneutics. Data collection involves semi-structured interviews to collect the rich, in-depth information required to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences. A small sample size is needed due to the interview duration. The interviews can take 45 minutes to one hour.
The qualitative methodology, along with a phenomenological and hermeneutic framework, will provide the novice researcher with the lens to systematically explore the lived experiences of the research phenomenon.
Luft, J. A., Jeong, S., Idsardi, R., & Gardner, G. (2022). Literature reviews, theoretical frameworks, and conceptual frameworks: An introduction for new biology education researchers. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 21(3), 1-10.
https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0134
Mwita, K. (2022). Strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research in social science studies. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science 11(6), 618-625. https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v11i6.1920
