Research Focus

There is compelling research evidence suggesting that effective mentoring contributes to early career teachers’ increased commitment to teaching and retention. Effective mentors model desired practices, provide constructive feedback to mentees on lesson observations, and help mentees set clear goals for their own learning. However, relatively less is known about what school leaders, and headteachers especially, do to ensure effective mentoring for early career teachers (ECTs). In this paper we use the signature pedagogy theory by Shulman (2005) as a conceptual lens to make sense of leadership practices designed to grow mentors and improve mentoring support for ECTs. These leadership practices are seen as signature pedagogies that school leaders employ to develop staff and strengthen organisational capacity.

The conceptualisation of the research assumes that while mentors play a unique role in their schools, they are part of their schools’ teaching staff and influenced in their retention decisions by most of the same conditions as their teaching colleagues, along with conditions unique to their mentor roles. Taking the school organisation as the unit of analysis, we explore how these headteachers design the cultures and conditions that are conducive to professional learning and how such design is perceived by mentors as beneficial for their own development and the development of their early career colleagues. This paper is guided by the following research question: What do the headteachers do to develop mentors in their schools?

Conceptual framing

The research literature has been consistently reporting that the quality of in-school professional learning and development cultures and conditions – designed and shaped by school leadership – impacts on the job satisfaction, wellbeing, and retention decisions of teachers. In this paper we build on, and extend, Shulman’s (2005) theory of signature pedagogies to analyse, interpret and make sense of leadership strategies that enable and embed effective mentoring as an indispensable part of the capacity building and organisational learning structures and culture in school.

The implicit ‘why’ dimension

This ‘hidden’ dimension reveals the values that underpin, drive and direct school leaders’ actions and practices. A key defining aspect of principal leadership is ‘fostering consistent values, expectations and standards, and through these, empowering and transforming staff capacities and organisational conditions to embrace change and improvement’ (Day et al., 2024, p. 6). Ample research evidence shows that the provision of skilled mentors to early career teachers stands a good chance to ensuring teacher development and retention (e.g., Marable & Raimondi, 2007; National Education Union, 2022).

The deep ‘how’ dimension

This ‘know-how’ dimension explains how leadership values are enacted in the organisation. There is rich research evidence suggesting that effective mentoring depends on both the retention of skilled mentors in the school and the provision of conditions which allow mentors to develop and exercise those skills productively (Leithwood et al., 2024). The focal point of this dimension rests on leadership actions that create and sustain the necessary conditions which enable effective mentoring to bear fruit in the organisation.   

The surface ‘what’ dimension

This ‘impact’ dimension entails concrete accounts of mentors’ experiences and whether and how mentor-mentee interactions have improved ECTs’ teaching practices and by extension, the job satisfaction and wellbeing of mentors and ECTs. Evidence of the association between effective mentoring and teachers’ increased commitment to teaching and teacher retention is also suggested in previous research (e.g., Leithwood et al., 2024; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). What we observe in this dimension reveals senior leaders’ value-driven commitment to professional learning in school (i.e., the implicit dimension), and as importantly, how they have managed to successfully enact their leadership values in context (i.e.,the deep dimension) to shape organisational learning and development.

This paper draws upon case study evidence from a four-year mixed methods study on the impact of the UK government-funded Early Career Framework (ECF) programme on retention. This longitudinal study, of which the research described in this paper is one component, examines the effects of the ECF programme on teacher retention decisions. While the longer-term goal is to retain talented teachers, this research enquires about how to retain those mentors considered critical to that longer term goal. This paper is based on evidence from the semi-structured face-to-face interviews with mentors and headteachers from 14 case study schools in England. Our sampling strategy treats schools as the unit of analysis and the selection considers individual, school and cluster-level factors. Additionally, the contextual characteristics of the schools (e.g., percentage of pupils eligible for Free School Meals) were used to inform our school sample selection. Since the aim of this research was to explore how school leaders created the optimal and positive organisational cultures and conditions that have enabled mentors to provide effective mentoring to ECTs, our case study sample is positively skewed with schools judged by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) as “Good” and “Outstanding”. Our sample is also skewed with more than half of the schools serving socioeconomically highly disadvantaged communities (as indicated by the proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals). Additionally, our sample is positively skewed with schools having mentors and ECTs reporting positive mentoring experiences and positive school cultures in our surveys. This combination of sample schools enables us to examine leadership practices that have worked irrespective of contextual challenges and identify school leaders’ signature pedagogies for mentor development. Our sample consists of a total number of 27 mentors and 15 headteachers (including co-headteachers). Out of 27 mentors, 5 (18%) were senior leaders (e.g., deputy headteachers), 14 (52%) were middle leaders (e.g., head of subjects), and 8 (30%) were classroom teachers.

The case study evidence points to the significant role of school leadership in creating the optimal organisational cultures and conditions that develop, nurture and retain skilled mentors and through this, ensure the effective mentoring of a school’s new teachers. The conceptualisation of the research assumes that while mentors play a unique role in their schools, they are part of their schools’ teaching staff and influenced in their retention decisions by most of the same conditions as their teaching colleagues, along with conditions unique to their mentor roles. As importantly, they are the school’s formal (with designated leadership responsibilities) or informal leaders who often have an outsized influence on the job satisfaction and well-being of their colleagues, as well as the school’s pedagogy. Analysis of the interviews provides rich narratives of mentors’ professional learning experiences and how and why such experiences have influenced (or not) the development of their knowledge, skills and practice at school. We have found three key sets of beliefs, values and moral underpinnings of practice that most headteachers have described as part of the signature pedagogy of leadership: Valuing, supporting and investing in professional development of staff, Creating a culture of respect and care in the school, and Setting expectations and modelling professional practice. Evidence points to the importance of leadership in creating and embedding organisational structures and cultures that enable mentors to grow and make a difference to the learning and practice of their early career colleagues. In so doing, they become an integral part of the organisational learning structure and culture which shapes the professional and moral underpinnings of practice in school.

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