Examining gender similarity and mentor’s supervisory status in mentoring relationships

This study examined the influence of mentor’s status (supervisor vs. non‐supervisor) and gender similarity (homogeneous vs. diversified) of mentor–protégé dyads on protégé’s perception of mentoring functions and outcomes. We collected and analyzed data from 217 mentor–protégé dyads comprised of working professionals from a variety of industries. Results of MANCOVA indicated that supervisory mentors provided more career development functions than non‐supervisory mentors. Mentor–protégé gender similarity and mentor’s supervisory status interacted to influence psychosocial support, career development, and career satisfaction. Key findings are discussed in terms of implications for future research and career counseling in industry and education.     

Case study: adjunct’s perspectives of a mentoring program at a community college

ABSTRACT

Adjunct faculty use in higher education has been on the rise since the 1970s, with adjuncts teaching 58% of United States community college classes. Yet, adjuncts are consistently excluded from the professional development opportunities offered to their full-time counterparts. For institutions to ensure their students are receiving the best education possible, it is vital to provide resources, access, and points of engagement that enable adjunct instructors to build collegiality. Mentoring is an effective way for institutions to support their adjunct population. I highlighted points of consideration for mentoring programs within higher education by examining the implementation of a mentoring program at a community college in the United States. The purpose of my qualitative case study was to document adjuncts’ experiences while entering a new mentoring program.     

Adapting mentoring to individual differences in novice teacher learning: the mentor’s viewpoint

Being adaptive to the individual novice teacher is considered a condition for effective teacher mentoring. The aims of this study are therefore to explore (1) mentoring activities through which mentors intend to adapt to the individual novice teacher and (2) characteristics of adaptive mentors. Information was collected through on-site, post-mentoring conversation interviews with 18 mentors holding different mentoring conceptions, from different programs for Initial Teacher Education in the Netherlands. Four adaptive mentoring activities were identified: (1) aligning mutual expectations about the mentoring process, (2) attuning to the novices’ emotional state, (3) adapting the mentoring conversation to match the reflective capacity of the novice teacher, and (4) building tasks from simple to complex relative to the novices’ competence level. Adaptive mentors were (1) more likely to mention activities intended to support construction of personal practical knowledge and (2) less likely to mention activities intended to create a favourable context for novice teacher learning. Suggestions for using findings to enhance mentor adaptiveness are discussed.     

Why mentor? Linking mentor teachers’ motivations to their mentoring conceptions

Current mentoring models for teacher preparation and induction emphasize the need to engage novice teachers’ learning through collaborative professional learning communities. Mentors in such communities are expected to engage in joint knowledge construction with novices, and to be ‘co-thinkers’ who enact a developmental view of mentoring, as well as ‘co-learners’ who are willing to engage in mutual learning with their novices. These two aspects are assumed to be associated in mentor thinking. The aim of this questionnaire study was, therefore, to explore the relationship between mentors’ mentoring conceptions and their mentoring motives. Participants were 726 secondary education mentor teachers, associated with 13 institutes for teacher preparation in the Netherlands. Results showed that a motivation to mentor for personal learning was more strongly associated with a developmental conception of mentored learning to teach than with an instrumental mentoring conception. The same was found for a motivation to mentor for contributing to the profession, but less pronounced. These findings suggest potential strategies for the selection and preparation of mentor teachers for programs that intend to foster collaborative inquiry approaches for novice teacher support.     

‘Radically different learning’: implementing sustainability pedagogy in a university peer mentor program

Framed in Michele Foucault's theories of discipline and technologies of the self, this paper explores the possibilities for teaching and researching across disciplinary boundaries within the academy. In Foucault's studies of systems of thought, he conceptualized practices – like sexuality – to be instances of what is possible to be, think, and do within a historical moment. In the ethnographic study reported on in this paper, we examined perceptions and practices of discipline-based academics seeking to work across traditional scholarly boundaries as instances of what was possible to be, think, and do in transdisciplinary teaching and research in higher education. Connecting transdisciplinary knowledge production with possibilities for critically engaging with sustainability as a social movement and imperative, we identify questions about and the promise of higher education as a place where this work can be done.     

Teachers’ perceptions of a mentoring cohort model in a program leading to certification to teach English language learners

This study focused on the perceptions of in-service general education teachers who completed a cohort mentoring program leading to certification in English as a Second Language (ESL) at a large, urban university. Based on interviews with 19 members of a cohort of 28, participants valued both the support and augmented skills-development the mentoring element afforded and the supportive, collaborative environment provided by the cohort model. Many also reported that the ESL-targeted strategies they learned were helpful in teaching all student populations and that program participation contributed to their increased involvement in leading professional development and, for some, to their intention to seek administrative roles. Based on these findings and the literature reviewed, the program examined may represent a model that can help to meet the demonstrated need for more trained ESL teachers in U.S. schools and can contribute to developing school leaders.     

Interprofessional capital in children’s services transformations

This paper discusses the adoption of an integrated approach to children’s services. The paper opens by introducing the Scottish policy statements that recommend that it is at the level of the school and community that integrated services need to be effective for the aims of social justice and inclusion to be achieved. The policy discourses are analysed to reveal a number of potential issues of contention between the different practitioner groups involved in children’s services relating to the relocation of the space of integration and the nature of practitioner‐, practice‐ and governance‐level relations. The social capital theory is then introduced, and a multi‐level conceptual framework of sub‐types of social capital is proposed to chart and analyse intersections and potential points of disjuncture in the work of the different practitioner groups in schools. The concept of human capital is used to explore questions of practitioner knowledge, expertise and research practices. It is suggested that mapping the capital resources used by the children’s sector practitioners provide a framework to analyse how inter/transprofessional relations currently operate and to identify interstices where practitioners’ social and human capital need to be reconstructed to better serve children and young people, and their families.     

Technology utilisation in elementary schools in Turkey’s capital: a case study

A case study was conducted to explore teachers’ current technology use in elementary schools in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. The data were collected through a survey, and participants included 1030 classroom teachers across eight districts. The present study results revealed that significant challenges remain with regard to technology use in the classroom, even in the capital of Turkey, where teachers have advantages in terms of technology access and use compared to rural areas. The participant teachers used technologies most frequently for lesson preparation activities, rather than for delivering instruction. Although the teachers felt that school principals and colleagues were usually supportive of technology use in lessons, they complained about insufficient professional development activities and incentives. Representing a snapshot of teachers’ technology use in elementary school settings, this study sheds light on essential factors that should be considered in any technology integration process in schools. The study findings offer valuable insight for policy-makers and school leaders on how to support the technology integration process and allocate money for technology initiatives.     

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.     

University academics’ experiences of learning through mentoring

The use of mentoring for staff development is well established within schools and the business sector, yet it has received limited consideration in the higher education literature as an approach to supporting learning for academics. In this study located at one metropolitan university in Australia, an online questionnaire and one-on-one semi-structured interviews were used to explore academics’ experiences of mentoring, with a view to understanding the broader benefits mentoring might offer to the academic community. Findings from the study highlight that in an era where change is pervasive tertiary education providers should consider implementing mentoring as a valuable approach for supporting the work of academics. The academics in this research explained that through mentoring, they learnt how to build professional relationships and friendships; it helped them develop a sense of personal satisfaction; acted as a catalyst for career and leadership enhancement; expanded understandings of teaching and research and as a consequence of engaging in self-reflection it opened up new ways of thinking about their work.     

Characterizing children’s spontaneous interests in science and technology

This article reports the results of an analysis of 1676 science and technology questions submitted by Israeli children to a series of television programmes. It categorizes the children’s questions with reference to five different coding schemes: field of interest, motivation for asking the question, type of information requested, country‐specific aspects, and source of information. The results point to the popularity of biology, technology, and astrophysics over other sciences, indicate a shift in interests and motivation with age, and reflect a variety of gender‐related differences within the sample. The implications of the findings for some current trends in curriculum development and for informal science education are discussed with reference to the wider context of the pupils’ voice in education.     

Local social capital through e‐mentoring: an agenda for new research

This article synthesizes research on social capital, school outcomes, internet use, and volunteering to argue that e‐mentoring – which is commonly practiced over long distances – could become a powerful way to build greater cohesiveness in local communities. Realizing this potential will require a larger‐scale and more coordinated approach to research and program design, as well as a change in e‐mentoring researchers’ methods. The payoff for these changes would be greater opportunity for e‐mentoring research to contribute to social policy and school effectiveness initiatives.     

The development of apt citizenship education through listening to young people’s voices

This article highlights important and enduring contributions of the text to the development of action research, while also pointing to the need for attention to theories informed by a politics of difference. The re-examination of Becoming Critical (Carr & Kemmis, 1983) is set against the backdrop of rereading Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook (1962). Rereading works after a lengthy period of time highlights issues of identity and context for the writer and (re)reader. While the silence of the text over issues of identity is an important omission, the article emphasizes the importance of the text to issues of teacher professionalism in a contemporary context of worsening social inequality and regulation of research.     

Young people’s voices: disciplining young people’s participation in decision-making in special educational needs

In recent years, education and family policy in the UK has sought to incorporate the views of children and young people through an active participation agenda, in the fulfilment of children’s rights under the obligations of the UN Convention for the Rights of the Child. Drawing on empirical evidence, this paper suggests that this aspiration is flawed. The inclusion of young people’s voices in decision-making is context dependent, and influenced by individual relationships, both positive and negative. It is framed by policies that subjugate children within disciplinary technologies that determine a regime of ‘truth’ about effective and appropriate participation. Drawing on data gathered as part of a wider study on the relationships between services users and services providers in special educational needs, this paper demonstrates that active inclusion of the voice of the child can be illustrated to be at least variable, and at worst prejudiced. It is suggested that the notion of participation produces tacit forms of ‘government’ that further classify and divide young people, magnifying their marginalization.     

Characterizing a highly accomplished teacher’s noticing of third-grade students’ mathematical thinking

This study investigated a highly accomplished third-grade teacher’s noticing of students’ mathematical thinking as she taught multiplication and division. Through an innovative method, which allowed for documenting in-the-moment teacher noticing, the author was able to explore teacher noticing and reflective practices in the context of classroom teaching as opposed to professional development environments. Noticing was conceptualized as both attending to different elements of classroom instruction and making sense of classroom events. The teacher paid most attention to student thinking and was able to offer a variety of rich interpretations of student thinking which were presented in an emergent framework. The results also indicated how the teacher’s noticing might influence her instructional decisions. Implications for both research methods in studying noticing and teacher learning and practices are discussed.     

‘It’s only a phase’: examining trust,identification and mentoring functions received across the mentoring phases

Kram has proposed that mentoring relationships develop and mature over time, providing different levels of mentoring functions as they progress through a sequence of four distinct phases: initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. However, the influence of these mentoring phases on the dynamics and functions of mentoring has received little research attention. This quantitative field study examined the effect of mentoring phases on protégés’ perception of trust and identification with their mentors and mentoring functions received using data from 88 working professionals from industry and education. Results of MANCOVA indicated that protégés in the redefinition phase reported higher levels of psychosocial support than other protégés, and protégés in the separation phase reported lower levels of career development and role modeling than other protégés. No significant differences across the mentoring phases were found for trust and identification among protégés towards their mentors; however, protégés from education reported lower levels of identification with their mentors than those from industry.     

Exploring inclusive practices in primary schools: focusing on children’s voices

This paper reports a small-scale research project which took place in one primary school in the north-east of England. The study aimed to listen to children’s views about how the practices of teachers helped and/or hindered their sense of inclusion in classrooms. Inclusion was understood here in a broad sense rather than specifically relating to children with special educational needs. Participatory research tools were used as part of group interviews with children from three different year groups. Even though the children were mostly happy with their school experience, it was noticeable that there were some areas for concern for some children that related to four interconnecting themes: unfairness, shouting, loneliness and seating plans. All of these themes seemed to be connected with children’s interpersonal relationships – with teachers and with each other – and can be seen as crucial in terms of understanding inclusion in schools and further developing existing practices.