Session Information
Contribution
This paper reflects the changes in the latest conceptualisations of mentoring through a literature review and empirical findings in three different in-service teacher mentoring programs in Finland. In the context of teachers' professional development, there seems to be various definitions and understandings of the concept of mentoring. Traditionally, mentoring has been referred to a process whereby a more experienced teacher gives advice to less experienced one (Roberts 2000). Usually the context of mentoring is in the induction phase of teacher education; mentoring has been regarded as a means of supporting newly qualified teachers. This traditional understanding has lately been challenged by a number of authors. The latest conceptualisations of mentoring are not based on an assumption that the mentor knows best. There has been a recent shift in the literature to reconceptualize mentoring as much more of a collaborative collegial relationship. Instead of the traditional expert-novice relationship in the induction phase, mentoring has lately been regarded as a process of developing teachers' professional capacities throughout their teaching careers. The shift away from the mentor as a hierarchical, one-way view to a more reciprocal relationship has been conceptualised in terms such as co-mentoring, mutual mentoring, collaborative mentoring, critical constructivist mentoring, dialogic mentoring and peer mentoring (Bokeno & Vernon 2000; Musanti 2004; Le Cornu 2005). In this study, the term peer mentoring is used to highlight the reciprocal and rather informal professional dialogue between the teachers. The empirical data of the study is based on three different mentoring programs. The study is based on an action research project "Peer mentoring in teachers' in-service education", funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund. The project aims at organising peer mentoring within teachers' in-service education in the region of Jyväskylä. This action research project is compared with two different models of mentoring in Finland. In the mentoring program implemented in the city of Helsinki, the process is based on a classical one-to-one relationship between a novice teacher and a more experienced teacher. In the city of Kokkola, each group of newly qualified teachers are mentored by a more experienced teacher. In the region of Jyväskylä, the action research project was launched on fall 2006 in the 12 municipalities. In this project, the mentoring process is clearly conceptualised as reciprocal peer mentoring. In each group, some of the teachers holds a key role as a practical organiser of the program, but this person is not expected to be an expert unlike in the traditional conceptualisation of mentoring. The groups outline their own program throughout the academic year. In some of the meetings, narrative and co-operative methods as well as expert lectures are also used so as to promote reflective dialogue. The teachers in the groups vary in age and experience; most of them could be described as mid-career teachers but there are also newly qualified teachers as well as experienced teachers who will soon retire on a pension. The data consists of focus group interviews of the key teachers, emails and researcher's diaries and memos, and it will be analysed within a narrative framework.In the presentation, the focus is on the preliminary results of the Jyväskylä region project. There will also be a comparison of the experiences of the three versions of mentoring and analysing their strengths and weaknesses. As a theoretical result of the study, the interaction in the different mentoring models is analysed on three levels of dialogue: on existential, epistemological and juridical-ethical level.Bjerkholt, E., Eisenschmidt, E., Fransson, G., Hedegaard, E., Heikkinen, H., Jokinen, H., Klages, W., Morberg, Å. & Rothma, V. 2006. Co-operative partnership: Newly Qualified Teachers in the Northern Europe - Research and Development Network. A symposium in the Annual Conference of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe, Portoroz, Slovenia, October 23th 2006. Bokeno, R. M. & Vernon, W. G. 2000. Dialogic mentoring. Management Communication Quarterly 14 (2), 237-270. Heikkinen, H. & Karjalainen, M. 2004. Educating mentors - a poetic way of understanding. In M. Pandis (Ed.) Educational Science in the Axis of Change. Tallinn Pedagogical University, 312 - 325. Heikkinen, H. 2002. Whatever is Narrative Research? In: Huttunen, R., Heikkinen, H. & Syrjälä, L. (Eds.) Narrative research. Voices of Teachers and Philosophers. Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 13 - 28. -Ref. Heikkinen, H., Huttunen, R. & Syrjälä, L. 2007. Action Research as Narrative: Five Principles for Validation. Educational Action Research 15 (1), 5-19. Jokinen, H. & Välijärvi J. 2006. Making Mentoring a Tool for Supporting Teachers' Professional development. In R. Jakku-Sihvonen & H. Niemi (Eds.) Research-based Teacher Education in Finland - Reflections by Finnish Teacher Educators. Finnish Educational Research Association. Research in Educational Sciences. Turku. 89-101. Jokinen, H. & Välijärvi, J. 2005. Could We Use Mentoring in Supporting Novice Teachers' Professional Development. Paper presented in Adult Education Conference Turku, Finland. Jokinen, H., Heikkinen, H.& Välijärvi J. 2006. Mentoring in Supporting Newly Qualified Teachers' Professional Development: Individualism or Organisation Development. Paper in ATEE 2005 Conference web publication. http://www.atee2005.nl/publ/papers.htm. 219-222.Le Cornu, R. 2005. Peer mentoring: engaging pre-service teachers in mentoring one another. Mentoring and Tutoring 13 (3), 355-366. Musanti, S. 2004. Balancing mentoring and collaboration. Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue 6 (1), 13-23.Roberts, A. 2000. Mentoring revisited: a phenomenological reading of the literature. Mentoring & Tutoring 8 (2), 145-169. Välijärvi, J., Heikkinen, H., Jokinen, H., Sarja, A., Savonmäki, P., Johnson, P. & Leivo, M. 2005. Mentoring and Collaboration in Teachers' Work. Helsinki: Academy of Finland, 21-22.
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