Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision,support and collaborative self-development

This article examines contested practices of mentoring of newly qualified teachers within and between Australia (New South Wales), Finland and Sweden. Drawing on empirical evidence from a variety of studies, we demonstrate three archetypes of mentoring: supervision, support and collaborative self-development. Using the theory of practice architectures, we show that (1) these three forms of mentoring represent three different projects: (a) assisting new teachers to pass through probation, (b) traditional mentoring as support, and (c) peer-group mentoring; and (2) these different projects involve and imply quite different practice architectures in the form of different material-economic, social-political and cultural-discursive arrangements.     

Developing Timorese early years teachers’ pedagogy through an Australian mentoring programme

This paper explores the successful mentoring of Timor-Leste early years teachers by Australian teachers to expand their knowledge and practice of child-centred play-based pedagogy. The mentoring programme for the Timorese teachers occurred through an extended visit to a school in Victoria, Australia, for eight weeks to work with mentor teachers in their early years classrooms. Data were collected to explore the effectiveness of the programme through classroom observations and participant interviews. Observations were conducted in the classrooms of the mentees before the programme to provide context for the interviews and after the programme for indications of pedagogical change. The mentoring programme supported the Timorese teachers to reflect and review early years pedagogy. It led to changes in their teaching philosophy, design of learning activities and the inclusion of assessment practices. After two years the Timor-Leste teachers were using a child-centred play-based model of teaching and learning to guide the development, organisation and facilitation of learning activities at their kindergarten. The foundation of the mentor programme’s success was the trusted and equitable relationships between the teachers and the organisations involved. Understanding of cultural differences was acknowledged and supported the robust discussions and reflections that empowered teachers to take action.     

Evaluating a formalised peer mentoring programme: student voice and impact audit

Over the past 10 years, mentoring of children and young people has become an increasingly important feature of social policy in the United Kingdom. This is evidenced in the rapid growth in the number of mentoring schemes operating in a range of educational settings. In 2006 the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation was contracted by the Department for Education and Skills to pilot nationally a formal and sustainable peer mentoring scheme in 180 secondary schools in England, generating 3600 matched pairs. The evaluators, appointed by the Department for Education and Skills, had the overarching aim of supporting the development of evidence‐based peer mentoring and enhancing the capacity of those involved to engage in evaluation practice. This article reports the methodology and main findings of the evaluation of the programme. It was evident that schools engaged positively and productively with the project and with this structured form of mentoring. Qualitative interview evidence, self‐report data from the ‘About Me’ scale, and the teacher and mentee and mentor ‘voice’ attested to benefits, but impact data (attendance, attainment, behaviour) did not provide corroborative evidence of a positive effect.     

Making mentoring explicit: articulating pedagogical knowledge practices

Mentoring pedagogical knowledge is fundamental towards developing preservice teachers’ practices. As a result of a train-the-trainer mentoring programme, this study aimed to understand how mentors’ engagement in a professional development programme on mentoring contributes to their mentoring of pedagogical knowledge practices. This qualitative research analyses the mentoring of pedagogical knowledge from six paired mentor teachers and preservice teachers (n=12) after a four-week professional school experience. Findings indicated that the train-the-trainer model was successful for mentoring pedagogical knowledge on 10 of the 11 advocated practices. This suggested that a well-constructed professional development programme on mentoring can advance the quality of mentoring for enhancing preservice teachers’ practices.     

Developing Research Skills for the Future Workplace through Interdisciplinary Near-Peer Mentoring

Abstract

Experiential learning is touted as an effective way of imparting research skills. This suggests that master’s students undergoing training in research psychology should be exposed to managing projects and supervising interdisciplinary research teams and projects before entering the workplace. The Department of Psychology and Department of Town and Regional Planning at a South African university developed a near-peer mentoring programme in which the psychology master’s students mentored undergraduate urban planning students who were writing their final-year research reports. Focus group discussions with the psychology students about their experiences of the programme were analysed using phenomenography. The psychology students experienced their role as mentor in five hierarchical variations. The first four were seen as challenging, while the benefits were only experienced at the highest level of the hierarchy. Lessons learnt from the mentoring relationship that mirror certain workplace research skills are discussed followed by recommendations for improving the mentoring programme.     

Exploring the links between mentoring and work-integrated learning

The role of work-integrated learning (WIL) is a popular focus at many universities, including among academics in the business disciplines in Australia. This article explores whether a mentoring programme provided for female business and law students results in similar benefits as those reported for WIL activities and, hence, provides career- and study-related benefits for the participating students. While research into mentoring is not a new phenomenon, this qualitative study focuses on mentees as students who are assigned mentors from a range of organisations, rather than the typical studies which have both parties employed in an organisational context. The study explores the career-related and psycho-social benefits reported by students in a mentoring programme, including increased confidence, improved knowledge about their chosen profession, stronger career focus/understanding and, for some, opportunities leading to employment post-study. These benefits are then considered in relation to how they mirror the outcomes of WIL. While the sample size is small, the findings have implications for academics and career development professionals in higher education seeking to better integrate theoretical knowledge with the realities of the workplace, thereby helping to prepare students more effectively for their careers.     

南非教师教育的质量保障制度

为了保障教师教育的质量,南非构建了从教师教育机构审查、教学项目认证、教师资格认证到教师专业发展的一体化质量保障体系,并为此成立了高等教育质量委员会、教育从业者委员会和行业教育培训局等质量保障机构。无论在机构审查标准、教学项目认证标准、教师资格认证标准、教师专业发展系统,还是教师专业能力描述、教师职业规范要求,教师专业发展内涵上都颇具特色,为教师教育质量保障制度体系的构建提供了有益的国际经验。     

Mentors for beginning teachers as middle leaders: the messy work of recontextualising

ABSTRACT

Mentors for beginning teachers in schools are often unacknowledged middle leaders in their schools. Through their work with beginning teachers, they not only provide local leadership in their contexts, they influence and shape the work of the next generation of teachers. Government-funded mentor training for the purpose of supporting beginning teachers in Education Queensland schools commenced in 2014 (Queensland Government. [2017]. Mentoring Beginning Teachers. http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/employee/teachers/mentoring.html). In Queensland, Australia, over 3000 experienced teachers have completed a two-day professional learning Mentoring Beginning Teacher (MBT) programme. Upon completion, mentors were expected to design and enact a mentoring programme that met the beginning teachers’ needs in their context, using the dialogic mentoring principles they had learned to fulfil the policy goals of increasing the number of beginning teachers transitioning to full registration. This article draws on Bernstein’s ([2000]. Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique. Revised ed. Rowman & Littlefield) concepts of recontextualisation, and horizontal and vertical discourses of knowledge to understand how mentor teachers negotiated and enacted their roles as middle leaders in schools in diverse schooling contexts.     

Critical Thinking,Caring and Professional Agency: An Emerging Framework for Productive Mentoring

In this paper, we report on a mentoring programme which provides an accreditation pathway to a master’s level qualification. The paper served three purposes. First, informed by selected literature on education we caution against expedient reductionist models that are based solely on novice–expert mentoring relationships with limited facility for critical inquiry. Second, we present an evolving theoretical framework for productive mentoring based on our critique of a preferred academic literature and interactions with mentor teachers, school principals and teacher educators. We proactively encouraged an awareness of societal norms and traditions that can appear as counterculture to critical thinking. Lastly, we consider some implications for productive mentoring as an academic, caring and professional practice within a continuum of teacher education.     

A formal mentoring programme to align equity mandates with research outputs: A case study

Abstract

To sustain research outputs while progressively ensuring that staff profiles reflect demographic realities, the College of Human Sciences at the institution under study embarked on a formal mentoring programme in April 2009. The focus of the programme is to mentor newcomers to academe by productive academics who will be retiring from the system over the following decade. The aim of the research was to investigate the functioning of the formal mentoring programme and to determine the extent to which the programme provided for research output opportunities after one year of implementation. A qualitative intrinsic case study approach was followed, employing document study and in-depth individual interviewing. It was found that planning had been thoroughly done and the formal mentoring programme was professionally implemented. Concerns about an initially too formalised approach were counteracted by building flexibility into the reporting on mentoring initiatives. A cost to mentoring was found to arise from the fast-tracking of unrealistic research output expectations.     

Exploring perceived support of postgraduate medical science research students

There is still much to learn about the support required by postgraduate research students, across academic disciplines, to facilitate successful completion of a research degree. The primary aim of this study was to explore postgraduate medical science research students’ perceptions of academic and mentoring support at different stages during their degree programme. A second aim was to explore the feasibility and acceptability of peer mentoring as a strategy to enhance student support in this population. A mixed method study design was used. Students first completed an online questionnaire, which was then supplemented with focus group discussion to explore emergent findings in greater depth. The main results indicated that the nature and quality of academic supervision support have a significant influence on research student training and development. ‘Functional’ and ‘relationship development’ concepts of supervisory styles were highlighted as important aspects to perceived support in this research population. The main facilitators to enhance academic support were effective communication, project planning and timely feedback. There was a high degree of acceptability for a peer mentoring programme as a complementary approach to enhance student support. Peer mentoring psychosocial functions such as friendship, counselling and career guidance were considered potentially beneficial to enhancing student support. Students also discussed peer coaching as central to their learning and research skill development. This work is a useful starting point to explore perceptions of research student support in the target population. Further work is required to develop strategies to enhance student support in academic practice.     

The transfer of content knowledge in a cascade model of professional development

A cascade model of professional development presents a particular risk that ‘knowledge’ promoted in a programme will be diluted or distorted as it passes from originators of the programme to local trainers and then to the target teachers. Careful monitoring of trainers’ and teachers’ knowledge as it is transferred through the system is therefore imperative. This paper focuses on the transfer of content knowledge through an in-service teacher professional development programme and offers an innovative methodology for investigating knowledge transfer, i.e. through insights gained during a mentoring process. The findings suggest that this methodology facilitated assessment of knowledge transfer because it involved the identification of knowledge in practice. The focus on knowledge in practice appeared to avoid a deficit model of trainers’/teachers’ knowledge and revealed that content knowledge was generally being successfully transferred throughout the system. A detailed analysis of different aspects of content knowledge transfer suggested various foci for additional training.     

Providing English Language Support through Collegial Mentoring: How do we measure its impact?

As staff developmental initiatives become increasingly common in educational institutions, the evaluation of such programmes may need careful consideration. This paper describes a staff developmental initiative in which a one-on-one mentoring service was offered as part of a funded staff development project entitled 'Effective English Communication for Teaching and Research' (EECTR). EECTR provides language support to all academic staff in a Hong Kong university. The mentoring sessions typically require a discussion of the nature of academic writing. For evaluation purposes, feedback was collected through various questionnaires which indicated that the EECTR mentoring had been a fairly successful programme. However, these traditional measures could not tell the stakeholders the impact of the mentoring process on individual clients. Thus two additional measures were taken. First, three in-depth case studies were undertaken to ascertain how individuals saw the impact of mentoring. Additionally, interviews with clients were also conducted over a two-year period. With support from the data, this paper demonstrates how multiple measures of evaluation provided an opportunity to see the dynamic interaction between general perceptions of impact and individual learning within a programme.     

Peer mentoring for first‐year teacher education students: the mentors’ experience

Universities worldwide are developing peer mentoring programmes to assist first‐year students’ transition into university life. Awareness of the mentees’ experiences in the mentoring programme – the successes and challenges – contributes to ongoing planning for successful transition for first‐year students. Also, understanding the mentors’ experiences can contribute to the success of the programme and, more importantly, can lead to strong self efficacy for the mentors. This qualitative study appraises a mentoring programme for first‐year undergraduate students from the mentors’ perspective. The mentors’ experiences, both positive and negative, are discussed and a relational model of mentoring is presented. The results of this inquiry have implications for the development of future mentoring programmes, particularly in terms of mentor recruitment and preparation, if first‐year students are to be effectively oriented and supported in their transition to university study.     

澳大利亚职业教育与培训体系特征

1995年澳大利亚建立了职业教育与培训的国家资格框架体系,全国统一的国家资格证书和互认的学分制使澳大利亚的职业教育与普通教育、高等教育最大限度地实现了"交互式"融通。TAFE学院为职业教育与培训的主体机构,课程面向职前、职后及不同年龄段人士设置,专业教师有3至5年的行业工作经历。行业协会参与职业教育的决策和管理,负责教学质量评估。澳洲政府出台并实施了一系列职业教育法规,政府投资占职业教育投资总额的97%。     

USING CHILDREN'S WORK TO REFLECT ON TEACHING: ONE EARLY CHILDHOOD STUDENT TEACHER'S REFLECTIONS

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the engagement of preservice teachers in the kind of authentic experiences that provided the modeling needed to make high‐quality instruction in mathematics a reality for young children. Inasmuch as these preservice teachers had not yet received any formal methods classes in mathematics, the authors theorized that classroom teachers whose practices and dispositions were congruent with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards and the State of South Carolina Mathematics Standards could model effective teaching instruction for young children using the project approach. These same teachers could then provide mentoring and encouragement to preservice teachers as they became involved in this high‐quality program for 4‐year olds, deepening the knowledge base of the preservice teachers regarding developmentally appropriate ways to teach numeracy to 4‐year olds. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.     

Enriching students’ language skills and confidence through a university mentoring scheme

University can be a challenging learning environment for students entering with a lower level of English. This report focusses on a mentoring scheme which aims to enhance undergraduate students’ English language skills so that they gain the most from their studies. Around 200 students participate in this mentoring scheme each academic year and the programme involves around ten university English teachers who act as mentors. In this report, we describe the programme and reflect on our experience as mentors.