Triangulation by Mentors in Teachers’ Practices Assessment: a Comparative Study in Primary and Secondary Education

Abstract

Our study explores how mentors assess teaching practices of trainee teachers in primary and secondary schools in French-speaking Switzerland. Statistical analysis of 311 surveys show that although experience is a core element of the assessment criteria of mentors, they triangulate their perceptions with other data sources such as teacher competency reference framework, official curricular guidelines and to a lesser extent, theoretical research on teacher education. The results also reveal that mentors in primary education differ from their secondary education counterparts in terms of intersubjectivity regarding performance evaluation of trainee teachers.