What do mentors learn through mentoring in Japanese induction program?
Author(s):
Tadashi Asada (presenting / submitting) Kokoro Imamura
Conference:
ECER 2014
Network:
01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Format:
Paper

Session Information

01 SES 02 B, Aspects of Mentoring

Paper Session

Time:
2014-09-02
15:15-16:45
Room:
B033 Anfiteatro
Chair:
Valerie Drew

Contribution

   In Japan the induction program, ‘Shoninsha-kenshu’ is a kind of the formal mentoring program, but because all beginning teachers must take this program, the education board usually place the experienced teachers as mentors with little regard for characteristics of both mentors and mentees. Mentors usually have charge of four beginning teachers in two schools, so that the mentoring relationship is not always effective and successful. However, the effectiveness of mentoring depends on mentoring relationship and the nature of the mentor. According to the review on mentoring beginning teachers by Hobson et al.(2009), successful factors on mentoring related to (i) contextual support for mentoring;(ii) mentor selection and pairing;(iii)mentoring strategies; and (iv) mentor preparation. In Japan there are few mentor programs and each education board has no guideline for mentor selection and pairing. Most mentors also are not trained. This situation appears to be a critical problem in mentoring beginning teachers in many countries.

Mentoring is critical for the teacher’s professional training. From the viewpoint of teacher’s knowledge, Furlong et al.(1988) proposed the four levels of professional training; Level(a) Direct practice, (b) Indirect practice, (c) Practical principles, (d) Disciplinary theory, which means it is necessary to move from the notion of supervision in school to the notion of mentoring(Maynard & Furlong, 1993). In addition, in terms of the role of the mentor it is necessary to begin with the mentees’ perspective.

As mentioned above, in order to make the Japanese induction program as mentoring effective, we should introduce the viewpoint of mentoring relationship, the mentees’ perspective into the mentoring evaluation, and the benefits of mentors. The effectiveness of mentoring is thought to be influenced by both mentor’s competencies and the mentoring relationship, which correlate to each other. This study investigates what do mentors learn from mentoring process in Japanese induction program to explore the relationship among the mentoring effectiveness, the mentoring relationship, and mentor’s competencies. In terms of the mentoring relationship, Pitton(2006) pointed out a dialogue process between mentor and mentee is important to establish the effective mentoring relationship. So this study used the expectations for the mentee and the mentor as the indicator of mentoring relationship. For mentor’s competencies, Podsen et al.(2000) proposed eight mentor’s competencies; (i)understanding the mentor role, (ii) promoting collaborative learning, (iii)nurturing the novice,(iv)developing your performance -coaching skills, (v)modeling and coaching effective teaching strategies, (vi)modeling and coaching effective classroom management standards, (vii)displaying sensitivity to individual differences,(viii)shaping professional relationships. In this study we used these competencies as mentoring strategies/skills.

In order to make the Japanese induction program effective, we pose the research questions as follow; (1)How do mentees evaluate their mentor’s competencies?, (2) How does the mentoring relationship influence on the mentor’s competencies evaluation by the mentee?, (3) What can the mentor and the mentee learn about through the induction program? , and (4) Does the mentoring relationship correlate to what is learned by the mentor and the mentee? In this study we focus on what can the mentor learn from mentoring process, so the research questions of this study are (1) What can the mentor  learn about through the induction program? , and (4) Does the mentoring relationship correlate to what is learned by the mentor?, because we presented our findings of other research questions at ECER2011.

Method

The participants are 52 beginning teachers and 52 their mentors at elementary and junior-high schools in western Saitama Prefecture in Japan. The questionnaire consists of 5 parts; participant’s attributes, mentor’s competencies(40 items), the expectations for the mentor(22 items), the expectations for the mentee(28 items) , what is learned through mentoring(sentence completion test). We asked mentors to answer the questionnaire about both the importance and performance level of mentor’s competencies, expectations for the mentee, and the expectations for the mentor from the mentee’s position by Likert scale method. We also asked mentees to answer the questionnaire about the performance level of mentor’s competencies, expectations for the mentor, and the expectations for the mentee from the mentor’s position. The term of this investigation was from November to December in 2010. We conducted factor analyses, calculated each sub-scale score according to the extracted factors, and then explored the relationship among sub-scale scores. Meanwhile, we made the category system based on the morphological analysis（a kind of text analysis） and classified what is learned through mentoring by mentors. Finally, we explored what did mentors learn from the mentoring and discussed the relationship between the mentoring effectiveness and other investigated factors from the viewpoint of mentors.

Expected Outcomes

First, on mentor’s competencies, 8 factors were extracted by factor analysis, but from the factor structure, mentees seemed to recognize their mentors gave support about teaching and their school lives. Most mentors apeared to do in the same way. Second, on expectations for the mentor, 4 factors were extracted by factor analysis. The content of expectations for the mentor is 1) to respect a mentee’s autonomy in a measure, 2) to communicate with a mentee frequently, 3) to support a mentee emotionally, 4) to provide information about school, school community, and educational policies by the education board. Meanwhile, for expectations for the mentee 3 factors were extracted. The content was 1) to teach in the proper way and control the classroom, 2) to establish good relationship with a mentor, 3) to try to develop mentee’s own teaching style through learning from a mentor. In general, mentors seemed to have lower expectations for mentees than mentees' expectations for mentors. That means mentees tend to be dependent on their mentors. Third, these factors correlated to one another, and what is learned by mentees appeared to be similar to their expectations for the mentor. Meanwhile, mentors learned two things, what is teaching and how to support their mentees. However, few mentors wrote about how to support their mentees. As mentioned above, the Japanese induction program seems to be the apprenticeship model, and mentors did not always learn about the mentor's skills. In Japan how to facilitate mentees’ autonomy in apprenticeship and how to develop mentors' qualities seem to be a critical problem.

References

Furlong,VJ.,Hirst,PH.,Pocklington,K., Miles,S.(1988) Initial Teacher Training and the Role of the School, Buckingham: Open University Press. Maynard,T., Furlong,J.(1993) Learning to Teach and Models of Mentoring in McIntyre,D. et al.(ed.) Mentoring: Perspectives on School-based Teacher Education, London: Kogan Page. Hobson,A.J., Ashby,P., Malderez,A., Tomlinson,P.D.(2009) Mentoring beginning teachers: What we know and what we don't. Teaching and Teacher Education 25, 207-216 Pitton,D.E.(2006) Mentoring Novice Teachers: Fostering a Dialogue Process 2nd ed. Corwin Press. Podsen,I.J., Denmark,V.M.(2000) Coaching & Mentoring First-Year & Student Teachers. EYE ON EDUCATION.

Author Information

Tadashi Asada (presenting / submitting)
Waseda University
Faculty of Human Sciences
Tokorozawa
Kokoro Imamura
Waseda University, Japan

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