Session Information
10 SES 13 A, Mentoring in Differing Education Contexts: Perspectives from Norway, Ireland and Australia
Symposium
Contribution
Since the 1970s, mentoring has been discussed as a strategy that can smooth the transition to practice for beginning teachers (see Gray & Gray, 1985). Research indicates that having the support of a mentor enhances beginning teachers’ classroom practice (Rozelle & Wilson, 2012), along with their sense of teacher efficacy (LoCasale-Crouch, Davis, Wiens, & Pianta, 2012) and wellbeing (Kessels, Beijaard, Veen, & Verlop, 2008). While historically most mentoring of beginning teachers has been ad hoc and informal, current evidence suggests effective mentoring requires both trained mentors with well-developed mentoring skills and understandings (Feiman-Nemser & Carver, 2012) and resources to allow the time to build and maintain the mentoring relationship (Ingersoll, 2012). This paper discusses preliminary findings in an ongoing project involving a large-scale Australian mentoring program that aims to prepare around 3000 experienced teachers to mentor beginning teachers. The program positions the mentoring relationship to be confidential, supportive and based on a process of collaborative inquiry. The preparation of the mentors focusses on leading professional learning via reflection, dialogue and criticality. Initial findings show the impact of the program includes; building a common language and shared understanding around the role of mentor, consolidating a collaborative inquiry approach to mentoring and providing opportunity for self-reflection and critique around mentoring approaches and practices. More broadly the participants reported a rejuvenated passion for teaching, professional learning and mentoring as well as acknowledging of the impact of mentoring on their own learning and development. As such, the early findings of this project have international implications in relation to the professional learning and development outcomes of providing formal mentor preparation programs.
References
Clutterbuck, D. (2004). Everyone needs a mentor: Fostering talent in your organisation (4th Ed.). Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development: London. Feiman-Nemser, S., & Carver, C. L. (2012). Creating Conditions for Serious Mentoring: Implications for Induction Policy. Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, 111(2), 342-364. Gray, W.A. and Gray, M.M. (1985). Synthesis of Research on Mentoring Beginning Teachers. Educational Leadership, 43(3), Nov 1985, 37-43. Ingersoll, R. (2012) Beginning Teacher Induction: What the Data Tell Us. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(8), 47-51. http://www.kappanmagazine.org/content/93/8/47 Kessels, C., Beijaard, D., Veen, K. v.,& Verlop, N. (April 2008). The importance of induction programs for the well-being of beginning teachers. In Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY. LoCasale-Crouch, J., Davis, E., Wiens, P., & Pianta, R. (2012). The role of the mentor in supporting new teachers: associations with self-efficacy, reflection, and quality. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 20(3), 303e323. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2012.701959 Rozelle, J. J., &Wilson, S. M. (2012). Opening the black box of field experiences: how cooperating teachers’ beliefs and practices shape student teachers’ beliefs and practices. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(8), 1196e1205. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2012.07.008
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