Abstract
Nowadays, middle-career teachers are expected to guide and nurture young teachers. However, how to communicate with them for effectively guiding them has not been fully clarified. Therefore, this study aimed at clarifying how senior teachers relate to and support young teachers in collaborative reflections with them. The researcher created a collaborative reflection session for one middle-career leader and four young teachers at a public junior high school and conducted participant observation of the session and post-interviews. The obtained data was analyzed qualitatively using the ALACT model as a framework. As a result, it was revealed that middle-career teachers used the helping skills theorized by Korthagen et al. (2001) as the second and third phases of the ALACT model, "Looking Back on the Action" and "Awareness of Essential Aspects", respectively. The quality of the relationship between middle-career teachers and young teachers deepened meaningfully, especially in the "facing" phase. It also revealed the difficulty of participant involvement due to the fact that middle-career leaders could potentially be the source of discomfort for young teachers in the workplace, as well as the the communication style of the middle-career leader when building on interaction between participants.
