Turning heads: The impact of political reform on the professional role,identity and recruitment of head teachers in Wales

This article considers the professional work, identity and recruitment of head teachers (HTs) in Wales. Drawing on the sociology of professions, the article illustrates how intensive educational policy reform post‐2011 has restricted HTs’ professional agency and re‐orientated the head teacher role towards organisational professionalism. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews (n=30) with both head and deputy head teachers, the article argues that issues with the recruitment and retention of HTs in Wales can, in part, be explained by the promotion of managerial and technicist approaches to professional practice. This role reconfiguration is the result of myriad and, at times, overlapping accountability mechanisms. The article illustrates how these changes to HT professional roles and identity are more intense within a small education system where HTs had, traditionally, enjoyed an elite professional status. To ameliorate these issues, the article proposes policy initiatives which the Welsh Government could introduce to foster the agency of HTs within a revised professional framework for educational leadership in Wales.     

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.     

Optimising the blended learning environment: the Arab Open University experience

This paper will offer some insights into possible ways to optimise the blended learning environment based on experience with this modality of teaching at Arab Open University/Jordan branch and also by reflecting upon the results of several meta-analytical studies, which have shown blended learning environments to be more effective than their face to face and online only counterparts. Three key elements will be presented as important ways for improving the blended learning environment: forging genuine collaborative partnerships between institutions in terms of the team-writing of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) material, adopting a more theoretically based instructional approach, such as the cognitive apprenticeship (CA) model, which emphasises making thinking visible and developing a comprehensive understanding of blended education in order to help students achieve their educational goals.     

Requisite participant characteristics for effective peer group mentoring

Effective mentorship, due to the developmental nature of the experience, hinges upon the people involved—specifically, the personal characteristics of the mentoring collaborators. In this paper, the author explored requisite participant characteristics for peer group mentoring. One dozen executive-level professional women shared their stories-of-experience as participants in peer mentoring groups. A thematic analysis was utilized to investigate the narrative data from these interviews. Findings suggest that these participant characteristics include (a) an intrinsic interest; (b) a learning disposition; (c) a commitment to the mentoring experience; (d) comfortability with vulnerability and having the courage to share struggles; and (e) an inherent desire to support others in their learning, growth, and development.     

Educational Practice in Leadership Mentoring: The Singapore Experience

Findings of a study on the practice of school management learned through mentoring reveal that leading surfaced prominently as the prime aspect of what could be learned through formal mentoring and could be put into practice on the job. These principals, who have the opportunity to learn through mentoring, suggest their learning and practice of leading primarily through relating with people. The three features involved are: leading through relating with people actively, promoting trust in relating with people, and serving as worthy models in their dedication to service. As such, the learning of leading through formal mentoring could be of significance in the professional development of aspiring principals. It highlights a known practice of leading, learned through leadership mentoring, for an unknown future. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Perspectives and Experiences on Mentoring Undergraduate Students in Research: Part I

Abstract

This issue is the first of a special PRIMUS two-part issue collecting articles from experienced faculty mentors. We offer it as a valuable resource for faculty leading undergraduate research programs. It is inspired by the “Regional Faculty Workshop on REU Issues” in 2013 and the Joint Mathematics Meeting 2015 Mathematical Association of America’s “Themed Session on Perspectives and Experiences on Mentoring Undergraduate Students in Research.” This issue consists of seven papers focusing on the larger issues involved in creating, running, and sustaining an undergraduate research program in mathematics.     

Integrating Undergraduate Peer Mentors into Liberal Arts Courses: A Pilot Study

This article presents research and narratives on the integration of course-based peer learning assistants into seven courses. A new curricular peer mentoring program was piloted in the 2005–2006 academic year in an interdisciplinary liberal arts college at a large Canadian research university. Undergraduate students enrolled in a practicum course which supported their learning while they collaborated with the “host instructor” of the course in which they served as peer mentor. Assistants’ roles varied and included individual tutoring, help via email, online discussion facilitation, small group facilitation, in-class presentation and discussion facilitation, and extracurricular study groups. Their integration into scheduled class activities resulted in participating students’ perception of enhanced learning. Data included peer mentors’ assignments, host instructor feedback, and student surveys.

Heroes and villains: the insistence of the imaginary and the novice teacher’s need to believe

This paper stems from research in Australia examining pre-service teacher and mentor teacher experiences on the practicum. The paper focuses on findings from the research, highlighting the tendency among the pre-service teachers to either valorise or demonise their mentor teachers, reflective of what we describe, following Kristeva and Britzman, as their powerful need to believe. The paper draws on psychoanalytic theory in order gain insights into this process, viewing the pre-service teachers’ accounts of their mentors as fantasies that serve a stabilising function in order to manage the intense emotional demands of schools and classrooms. The paper concludes with considerations of how teacher educators might ameliorate the ideality of novice teachers, reflecting the insistence of the imaginary, and hence enable them to benefit more from the practicum experience. We briefly suggest the use of tools that work within the symbolic register to exercise a mediating role in the context of these intense demands.