The Subject of Mentoring: Towards a Knowledge and Practice Base for Content-focused Mentoring of New Teachers

While new teacher mentoring has traditionally focused on socio-emotional support and professional socialization, understanding mentors’ role in developing novices’ content teaching is needed given new educational reforms. Few researchers have explored a knowledge/practice base for content-focused mentoring. Therefore, we ask: what do content mentors identify as knowledge/practices needed for subject-specific mentoring? How is subject-specific mentoring enacted? What complexities arise? We found: (a) developing novices’ content teaching is a distinct mentor role; (b) a knowledge/practice base, with mentor’s pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge of content-specific assessment most frequently reported; and (c) enactment of content-focused mentoring reveals promising practices in guiding novices in assessing and developing students’ disciplinary thinking, and tensions between content-focused and socio-emotional mentor roles.     

Why social capital is important for mentoring capacity building of mentors: a case study in Hong Kong

Most studies of school-based mentoring practice have put their key focus on discussions of the professional growth of novice teachers rather than of their mentors. Mentoring practice, however, is also a platform from which mentors can build or enhance their professional competency and capitalize their leadership role as they interact with novice teachers and their colleagues. This is an area which deserves further research attention. Drawing on the concept of social capital, this small-scale qualitative study investigates how mentors can develop or revise their mentoring skills and knowledge while they engage in school-based mentoring practice. Semi-structured interviews and documents were collected from 31 mentors from primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong from 2014 to 2015. Findings of this study firstly show that both bonding social capital and bridging social capital can help mentors develop their mentoring knowledge in different ways. Secondly, bridging social capital can help mentors act as boundary brokers who develop transformative learning by interacting with outside experts. Providing more off-site or cluster-based mentor training programs and mentoring partnership schemes with outside experts could be the way forward to maximize the professional competency of mentors aiming at improving school capacity.     

Effective Practices for Mentoring Beginning Middle School Teachers: Mentor's Perspectives

In order to improve student achievement, school systems must provide new teachers with support to become effective teachers more quickly. Educators frequently use mentoring to support new teachers and reach the goals of improved classroom performance as well as teacher retention. The intention in this study was to provide insights into the mentoring of beginning teachers working in the middle grades. In this exploratory case study, three elements of a mentoring model deemed necessary for the implementation of effective mentoring for middle school teachers are presented. First, the mentor must forge a trusting relationship with the new teacher. Second, the mentor must support and guide the new teacher in creating a classroom environment that is supportive of learning. Third, the mentor must be able to support and guide the new teacher in instructional strategies appropriate to the content and context of the classroom. Furthermore, this research highlighted a need for mentors to receive ongoing training in classroom management, instructional practices, and relationship building in order to remain effective mentors. Without effective trained mentors programs will fail to meet their goals of improving instruction and retaining teachers past their induction year.     

Leadership in Hard-to-Staff Schools: Novice Teachers as Mentors

In our study, we chronicle the development of two novice urban teachers who developed in to mentors in the third year of their teaching. The two novice teachers were hired to serve as mentors to new teachers in or near their school. Interviews with the teachers about their experiences identified three areas of discussion as a result of their mentoring role that included reflection on the impact to their own practice, identification of the need for time management skills, and realization of the reasons for mentoring. The results of the novice teachers serving as mentors were positive for the mentors and helped to set the stage to sustain the mentoring program.     

Mentoring and teachers’ professional development in Albania

The role of teachers is becoming increasingly important in advancing student learning outcomes. This article discusses one area that is still in need of significant reform in Albania: the induction and mentoring of new teacher-candidates. Based on a mixed-method study involving 275 Albanian teachers and mentors, it provides insights into the benefits and challenges of current practices. The study identifies a number of key areas in need of improvement, including: the selection of mentors; professional training for mentors; communication among different stakeholders; and overall planning and coordination of mentoring services. These issues are discussed within a wider European policy context that situates mentoring as an important component of teachers’ ongoing professional development.     

Environmental education professional development for teachers: A study of the impact and influence of mentoring

Rivers2Lake helps teachers learn to provide watershed educational experiences for students through a summer institute followed by mentoring. Teacher focus groups were conducted to investigate the impact of mentoring, as well as toward understanding what was influential in bringing about those impacts. Mentoring impacted teachers in affective ways and helped them use what they learned at the institute. The influential nature of the mentoring may be due to the mentors providing a sense of accountability, personalized support, as well as encouragement of reflection and assistance with navigating barriers. Teachers also articulated qualities of effective mentors: invested, flexible, and responsive. With teachers varying in the degree to which they felt they could continue R2L implementation without the support of mentors, implications are discussed.     

Faculty Mentors in Teacher Induction: Developing a Cross-institutional Identity

ABSTRACT

Though the knowledge base on mentoring new teachers has grown exponentially in the past 30 years, researchers know less about university involvement in induction, and even less about the role that faculty mentors may play in induction. Drawing on interview, e-mail, and observational data from a yearlong mentoring relationship between a faculty mentor and 7 new teachers, the author examined a faculty mentor's role in supporting beginning teachers. Findings highlight the importance of identity development in assuming a cross-institutional role as a faculty mentor. The transition from teacher educator to teacher mentor requires the development of a mentor identity that is recognized and valued in the community of practice inhabited by classroom teachers.     

Mentoring in-service teachers: Issues of role diversity

This paper reports on the findings from a review of classroom-based action research reports by the masters students of an in-service teacher education programme offered by the Aga Khan University, Institute for Educational Development in Karachi, Pakistan. In these reports the students played the roles of researchers and mentors, i.e. they worked as mentors with teachers in a school, researched the process of mentoring and reported the findings. I undertook this review to report findings related to impact on schools and classrooms of new approaches to teacher development. While, the findings stopped short of reporting impact of mentoring on classrooms, it revealed significant issues pertaining mentors’ roles. There was tension in how these roles were conceptualized within the masters programme and how they were enacted. For example, the mentors were expected to work in a generalist role as mentors, i.e. to work with teachers irrespective of the discipline that the teachers taught. However, experiences from the field showed that perceptions of mentor as a subject specialist dominated the process of mentoring. The paper also reports on other issues pertaining to mentor–mentee interactions in the context of in-service teacher education in a developing country setting.     

Developing Mentors: An Analysis of Shared Mentoring Practices

Understanding how experienced teachers share and articulate effective mentoring practices can guide efforts to prepare quality mentors. This qualitative study focused on mentoring practices within a teacher-designed student-teaching program conceptualized while the mentor teachers within the program were students in a graduate-level mentoring course and implemented upon the mentors’ completion of their graduate studies. Data sources included interviews and field notes from meetings with mentors and student teachers. The results detail specific mentoring practices: explicit instruction through scaffolding, developing the whole teacher, student-teacher-directed learning, fostering student teachers’ individual practice, explicit mentoring of one another, and reflecting on mentoring. These practices were enabled by program structures such as mentor meetings, an online forum, and mentors’ observation of all student teachers in the program.     

Mentoring for school based teacher education in Australia

This article is to explore the possibilities of mentoring for school based teacher education in Australia. Traditionally, supervision at the school level during the practicum in Australia has been focused on the classroom teacher whose role was to oversee and watch the direct work of the student teacher. However with the reforms in teacher education within the higher education sector which began in the late 1980s, a new challenge has arisen, which emphasises a shift of focus within the practicum from the role of classroom teacher as supervisor to one of mentor. Therefore, teachers who wish to become mentors will require new skills and competencies which extend beyond those of supervision, which necessitates the need for further training and education of classroom teachers. This article examines the mentoring role and the skills needed by teachers in supporting the development and education of student teachers into the teaching profession. The article also briefly examines the implications that this shift in focus from supervisor to mentor may bring for the participants involved in the education of student teachers.     

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.     

Teacher‐mentor to Teacher‐researcher

This paper focuses on the Primary PGCE at Keele University, which is now in its third year of a new course structure, fulfilling the requirements of the DFE circular 14/93. As the school‐based partnership has developed, teacher‐mentors have gained new understanding of both their role in teacher training and their relationship with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper seeks to outline how the process of mentoring has developed teachers’ skills in a way which has promoted their understanding of, and interest in, school‐based research. Four key issues are explored in probing the link between mentoring and school‐based research: the difference between theory and practice; links between teacher‐mentors and HEI tutors, the process of reflective practice; teachers as knowledge constructors. These are examined in relation to the process of mentoring and to the way in which each contributes to developing mentors’ participation and interest in school‐based research.     

Contexts of mentoring and opportunities for learning to teach: a comparative study of mentoring practice

Drawing on data from twenty-three US, UK, and Chinese mentor teachers, this study explores the relationship between contexts of mentoring and mentoring practice. It discusses learning opportunities created by mentoring in different contexts for novices to learn to teach. Through comparative analysis, it finds that mentoring practices show greater differences across programs and countries than within. This is the case even when mentors are practicing or moving toward practicing a kind of teaching as expected by education reformers. These differences are reflected in mentors’ beliefs about what novices need to learn, their interaction patterns and foci with novices. Three instructional contexts in each setting shape such differences: structure of school curriculum and assessment, organization of teaching and mentoring, and student population. These findings suggest that the reform-minded teaching practice that mentors developed does not necessarily guarantee the effective mentoring that supports teacher learning and teaching reform. Teacher educators should pay attention to the influences of instructional contexts on mentoring and the kinds of learning opportunities that mentoring creates for novice teachers in different contexts. When designing mentoring programs and arranging mentoring relationships, teacher educators need to consider how to restructure school contexts and help mentors learn how to mentor.     

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.     

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.     

Mentoring “Inside” and “Outside” the Action of Teaching: A Professional Framework for Mentoring

This study seeks to contribute to the research on mentored induction by investigating the practices mentors employ in their work with new teachers in two high-need, high-poverty urban elementary schools. Informed by Schwille’s (2008) temporal framework of “educative” mentoring practices occurring “inside” and “outside” the action of teaching, this study investigated the range of practices mentors employed, new teachers’ perceptions of the practices, and if the practices contributed to new teachers’ professional learning. Participants included six new teachers and two induction mentors. Results indicate that “inside” and “outside” mentoring practices are complementary and should be conceived as assisted performance and judiciously selected to promote productive changes in new teachers’ practice. Recommendations for mentoring programs are provided.     

Teacher training for social responsibility: a new mentoring role in the training of community teachers

ABSTRACT

Our study is focused on the field-experience of a unique ideological group. The prospective teachers are community activists who are dedicated to meeting the social needs of communities through education, mainly in the periphery and in weakened populations. Their vision is to become community teachers. We focused on a new mentoring role, which was created in order to meet the special needs of this group. The new mentors are members of the same movement as the prospective community teachers, share their ideology and dilemmas, and gain their trust. The findings show that this role is necessary and meaningful. We discuss different aspects of the role of the new mentors, including aspects of informal mentoring, and how it can be applied in other teacher-training models. Our findings may help in providing ideas for choosing mentors with special characteristics for special students.     

师父、师傅还是老板——从教师角色看研究型大学师生关系

高校教师评价体系重科研轻教学、研究生需求的多元化和功利主义的校园文化,构成了现代研究型大学师生关系的背景因素。根据教师在师生关系中自身角色认知不同,大致可将教师分为＂不愿妥协的清高者＂、＂信奉适者生存的现实主义者＂和＂主动搏击的操控者＂3类,而这3类教师对待学生的态度有显著区别。研究发现,在师生利益的博弈中,学生正沦为教师制造科研业绩的工具,忽视教师在道德和人格上的榜样作用对学生的全人发展非常不利。唯有在教师评价中增加道德实践的标准,通过大学教师发展树立起教师的学术责任意识,加强师生沟通,才有可能挽救逐渐淡漠甚至异化的师生关系。     

Specific mentoring: a theory and model for developing primary science teaching practices

The transition from generic mentoring to specific mentoring practices can provide a stronger focus for developing preservice primary teachers (mentees) in subject‐specific areas. Constructivist theory and a five‐factor model towards specific subject mentoring are proposed as ways to develop mentees' teaching practices. Firstly, constructivist theory complements mentoring within field experiences (practicum/internship), as it can be used to build upon prior understandings towards developing the mentee's knowledge and skills for teaching. Secondly, the picture that emerges from the literature shows five factors for mentoring, namely: (i) personal attributes that the mentor needs to exhibit for constructive dialogue; (ii) system requirements that focus on curriculum directives and policies; (iii) pedagogical knowledge for articulating effective teaching practices; (iv) modelling of efficient and effective practice; and (v) feedback for the purposes of reflection for improving practice. It is argued that ‘generalist’ primary teachers in their roles as mentors will require specific mentoring strategies linked to these five factors to enable effective mentoring in specific subject areas.     

Analysis of ill-structured problem solving, mentoring functions, and perceptions of practicum teachers and mentors toward online mentoring in a field-based practicum

This article describes an exploratory study of question prompts and online mentoring (specifically a lateral or peer mentoring experience) in a field-based practicum that focused on teaching ill-structured problem solving of classroom discipline. Data were gathered on 26 in-service practicum teachers through online observations, online journal reports, questionnaires, and reflection logs. Results showed that the practicum teachers were successful in using the approach to plan and implement effective interventions for their students and that they perceived the online mentoring approach as being very beneficial in supporting their learning. A more detail analysis of seven practicum teachers and their mentors indicated that their mentors engaged in eight types of online mentoring functions; the most frequently used were asking practicum teachers to elaborate, and valuing the practicum teachers’ contributions. The influence of the mentoring functions on the seven practicum teachers’ ill-structured problem solving is also discussed. The study offers evidence that asynchronous online mentoring and question prompts can enhance the professional development of both practicum teachers and mentors by helping them learn about and apply intervention strategies in solving real-world teaching problems.