Mentoring Design and Technology Teachers in the Secondary School

A Practical Guide

Suzanne Lawson, Susan Wood-Griffiths, Suzanne Lawson, Susan Wood-Griffiths

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138541108
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351011952
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection offers an evidence-based approach to mentoring and supporting design and technology teachers and educators in the secondary school and provides tried and tested strategies to support this role. Contributors offer tasks and reflections to inspire and motivate mentors to get the best out of beginning teachers in the early stages of their career. Key topics explored include:

• Helping new D&T teachers appreciate the fundamental nature of design and technology and how this informs both why it is taught and how it is taught.

• Understanding yourself as a mentor - beliefs, values and attitudes, and how your experiences influence your approaches to teaching.

• Observing design and technology teachers' lessons and offering tools for observation and analysis.

• Risk taking in the classroom: moving teachers forward from pedestrian to innovative practice.

Filled with practical guidance on lesson planning, risk taking, and learning conversation, Mentoring Design and Technology Teachers in the Secondary School offers advice and guidance to support mentors in developing inspirational D&T teachers of the future. This essential guide is perfect for mentors of beginning teachers, whether trainee, newly qualified, or those who find themselves teaching the subject for the first time.

1 Models of mentoring

Gill Golder, Alison Keyworth and Clare Shaw

Introduction

Your job as a mentor is to develop a positive working relationship with a beginning teacher to enable them to grow and develop both professionally and personally. How you go about this will be influenced by a number of factors, such as your own experience of being mentored in the past and your common-sense opinions of the role. These are important starting points, but you are likely to grow as an effective mentor when you also base your approaches on evidence. This chapter is generic to all of the books in the series, but in this book we will be focusing on design and technology (D&T) teaching. The chapters focus on generic and subject-specific issues relating to teaching in a subject that is predominately practical in nature (see Chapter 10) requiring pupils to solve real and relevant problems using food (see Chapter 5) and other materials (see Chapter 6). This book is designed to support you in considering the evidence to underpin your practice and we will return to some of the main concepts covered, in the final chapter.

The chapter starts by looking at different definitions of mentoring. It then looks at the importance of the context in which you are working as a mentor, highlighting a number of documents from England and other countries, which impact on your mentoring practice. The chapter then considers three mentoring models which a mentor could adopt to inform their practice. These models underpin various roles you undertake and hence the other chapters in this book.

Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Have a greater understanding of what is meant by the term ‘mentoring’ for a beginning teacher.
• Have an appreciation of the key context in which you work that may influence the manner in which you act as a mentor in school.
• Have an awareness of the plethora of mentoring models that exist.
• Compare and contrast three developmental mentoring models and how these could be used to support your role as a mentor.

Before reading further, undertake Task 1.1.

Task 1.1 Mentor reflection: reflecting on your understanding of mentoring

• Reflect on what you understand by mentoring by considering the following questions
• How would you define mentoring?
• How does your definition inform your practice as a mentor?
• How do the various policy and guidance documents relevant to your context influence your mentoring practice?
• Do you base your mentoring practice on personal experience or on a model(s) of mentoring? If a model, which one(s)? Why?

Definitions of mentoring

Mentoring is widely used in many contexts for the purpose of helping people to learn and develop, both professionally and personally. There are numerous and frequently contradictory definitions of mentoring, with accompanying models of how mentoring is best approached (Haggard, Dougherty, Turban and Wilbanks, 2011). Whilst different models might utilise different terminology and vary in emphasis regarding the role of a mentor, what remains consistent is the view that mentoring is a supportive, learning relationship. The mentor, with his or her more extensive experience, is there to support the learner’s development. The quality of the relationship between mentor and mentee is extremely important.

The terms mentoring and coaching are at times used interchangeably. Both aim to develop the professional or professional competencies of the client or colleague. Although mentoring and coaching have much in common, an important difference between the two is the focus of developmental activities. In mentoring the focus is on development at significant career transitions whereas in coaching the focus is on the development of a specific aspect of a professional learner’s practice (CUREE, 2005).

Montgomery (2017) suggested that definitions of mentoring often involve the concept that advice and guidance to a novice, or person with limited experience, is given by an experienced person. In this way, mentoring can be seen to be hierarchical, a top-down approach largely based on a one-way flow of information.

Mentoring involves the use of the same models and skills of questioning, listening, clarifying and reframing associated with coaching. Traditionally, however, mentoring in the workplace has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses his or her greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff.

(Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 2012, p. 1)

In contrast, other definitions of mentoring follow a less hierarchal structure. These include peer mentoring (Driscoll, Parkes, Tilley-Lubbs, Brill and Pitts Bannister, 2009) and group mentoring (Kroll, 2016). In these approaches to mentoring, the flow of information is more bidirectional. Montgomery (2017) suggested they are more personalised as mentoring is adapted to an individual mentee’s goals and needs more effectively. Higgins and Thomas (2001) suggested that top-down mentoring had greater impact on short-term career outcomes and individually-driven mentoring supported long-term career development more effectively. Whether the focus is on short- or long-term tailored development of a mentee, there are common aspects to all forms of mentoring. CIPD (2012, p. 1) identified four characteristics of mentoring:

• It is essentially a supportive form of development.
• It focuses on helping a person manage their career and improve skills.
• Personal issues can be discussed productively
• Mentoring activities have both organisational and individual goals.

In education, school-based mentors play a vital role in the development of student teachers and induction of newly qualified teachers. They also support other staff at points of career development. As with mentoring in other contexts, there is a focus on learning, development and the provision of appropriate support and encouragement. The definition of a mentor outlined in the National Standards for School-based Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Mentors in England (Department for Education (DfE), 2016b, p. 11) is someone who ‘is a suitably experienced teacher who has formal responsibility to work collaboratively within the ITT partnership to help ensure the trainee receives the highest quality training’. However, in initial teacher education in many countries, including England, assessment of the beginning teacher is integral to the mentor’s role. This is supported by Pollard (2014) who suggested that the role of the mentor in ITT has developed because of three aspects, the complexity of the capabilities teachers need to meet, the focus on high professional standards in school and the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another. Before reading any further, undertake Task 1.2.

Task 1.2 Mentor reflection: understanding the term mentoring

• Research the terms ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’.
• List a variety of terms that you associate with coaching and mentoring
• Make a list of common and unique characteristics for both.

The context in which you are working which underpins your mentoring practice

Mentoring is increasingly important in a range of fields, both in the UK and internationally, as a tool to support recruitment into a profession, retention in that profession, professional learning, networking and career development. In teaching, it is widely recognised that there is a strong relationship between professional learning, teaching knowledge and practices, educational leadership and pupil results (Cordingley et al., 2015). As such, there has been an increase in the development of policy and guidance documents as well as frameworks, toolkits and factsheets produced over the past few years to support educators and others in fulfilling their roles as mentors.

Table 1.1 Key external drivers influencing mentoring work

As a mentor, it is important to recognise and embed current policy and statutory guidance into your mentoring practice. There are a number of key documents that underpin the mentoring process in initial teacher education and beyond in England and elsewhere. These constitute the key external drivers in shaping mentoring practice in school. Being aware of these is important, but knowing how to use them to support your work with a beginning teacher can add purpose and validity to what you do (there are examples of how to do this in other chapters in this book). They also enable you to recognise the value of being a mentor in school, as ‘effective professional development for teachers is a core part of securing effective teaching’ (DfE, 2016c, p. 3).

Table 1.1 highlights policy and guidance documents that influence the work you do in school with a beginning teacher in England but also signposts you to examples of international equivalence documents to enable you to make comparisons internationally.

Now complete Task 1.3.

Task 1.3 The context in which you carry out your mentoring duties

Reflect on the context in which you carry out your mentoring duties. Ensure you are familiar with the relevant documents above (or, if you are working outside England, documents specific to your context). What aspects of these documents do you identify as being of most use to your work and why? Are there any implication specific to mentoring beginning D&T teachers?

Effective mentoring models

As alluded to above, there are a number of mentoring models which a mentor could adopt in order to support the growth and development of a beginning teacher. Attempts have been made to categorise different approaches to mentoring; for example, Maynard and Furlong (1995) suggested that there are three categories of mentoring: the apprentice model, the competence model and the reflective model. The apprenticeship model argues that the skills of being a teacher are best learned by supervised practice, with guidance from imitation of, experienced practitioners. The competence model suggests that lear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• An introduction to the series “A Practical Guide to Mentoring Beginning Subject Teachers”
• 1 Models of mentoring
• 2 Understanding yourself-beliefs, values and attitudes how your experiences influence your approaches to mentoring
• 3 What knowledge, understanding and skills do mentors of new D&T teachers need?
• 4 Helping new design and technology teachers get the big picture; understanding the fundamental nature of design and technology
• 5 Helping beginning design and technology teachers to analyse and develop knowledge, skills and understanding of food preparation and nutrition
• 6 Helping new D&T teachers to analyse and develop knowledge and understanding in design and technology (product design)
• 7 A skills audit: identifying gaps in beginning design and technology (D&T) teachers’ subject knowledge, skills and understanding
• 8 Helping D&T teachers plan, deliver and evaluate lessons
• 9 Helping design and technology teachers to plan practical activities (including health and safety)
• 10 Observing design and technology teachers’ lessons: tools for observation and analysis
• 11 Supporting the beginning teacher through professional conversations
• 12 Risk taking in the classroom – moving teachers forward from pedestrian to innovative practice
• 13 A stakeholder view of mentoring – reflections from those who mentor and have been mentored. What lessons can be learned?
• Index