This paper will report original findings from the ‘Modes of Mentoring and Coaching’ (MoMaC) study, an investigation into the mentoring and coaching work associated with three national support programmes for teachers of secondary science in England, namely:

• the Physics Enhancement Programme (PEP);
• the Science Additional Specialism Programme (SASP); and
• The Stimulating PhysicsNetwork (SPN) (Shepherd, 2008).

The main aims of the research are to identify:

1. the nature and varieties of mentoring and coaching undertaken by PEP and SASP Regional Mentors (RMs), and SPN Teaching and Learning Coaches (TLCs); 
2. the impact of mentoring and coaching on the professional development and retention of mentees; 
3. the relative impact of the varieties of approaches to mentoring and coaching associated with the three programmes, and the mechanisms through which the benefits of those strategies are realized; and 
4. ways in which the impact of mentoring and coaching might be maximised, specifically in terms of benefits for mentees and their students.

The mentoring and coaching programmes examined in this study were introduced to help address specific issues relating to the teaching of secondary science in England, not least the paucity of qualified physics teachers in schools, yet the models adopted may have potentially broader relevance and applicability to teaching in general and to other contexts.

The study draws on existing literature in the fields of workplace learning (Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 2005; Eraut, 2007), school-based mentoring (Wang and Odell, 2002; Hobson et al., 2009), teacher identity (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009) and performativity (Ball, 2003). Previous studies have shown that socio-cultural models of learning, including mentoring and other forms of school-based support, can and do have a positive influence on teachers’ professional development (Cordingley et al., 2005; Day et al., 2006, Hagger and McIntyre, 2006). Yet there also exist, in different contexts within and beyond Europe, a number of constraints on the effectiveness of such support, ranging from a lack of access to colleagues with specialist subject knowledge to the broader climate of accountability and performativity which can lead teachers to adopt ‘strategic and positional’ identities (Hall, 1996) which are antithetical to the conditions within which their professional development is best fostered.

The MoMaC research team is seeking to explore the extent to which external mentoring and coaching add value to or compensate for the constraints on or limitations of existing mechanisms for the professional development of teachers, as well as to identify the circumstances in which teachers might most benefit from access to an external mentor or coach.

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