Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to assess the prevalent mentors mentoring
characteristics and practices, their influence on Physical Education (PE)
student-interns’ career development, barriers to mentoring, and the
relationship between mentoring characteristics, mentoring practices, and
career development of PE student interns. The explanatory sequential mixed
method design, census and purposive sampling were used to select participants
for the study. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 122
PE student-interns. Eight PE mentors and eight PE student-interns were also
interviewed using semi-structured interview guide. The findings of the study
indicate that mentoring characteristics and practices were highly prevalent in
mentoring PE student-teachers during internship, mentoring characteristics
and practices showed moderate prevalent influence on the career development
of student-interns during internship, inadequate training and retraining of
mentors recorded as the highest barrier to effective mentoring during
internship, and both mentors mentoring characteristics and practices were
good predictors of PE student-interns career development during internship.
The ITECPD of UEW should take into consideration, mentors’ mentoring
characteristics and practices in selecting of mentors. The ITECPD should
ensure that all the stakeholders of mentoring are trained and retrain at least
every two years for effective mentoring of student-interns. Mentoring barriers
should be minimised through training and motivation to ensure effective
preparation and development of student-interns during internship. Mentors
mentoring characteristics improve mentors’ mentoring practices for quality
student-interns career development.
