Mentoring Physical Education Teachers in the Secondary School

A Practical Guide

Susan Capel, Julia Lawrence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351671187
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Mentoring Physical Education Teachers in the Secondary School helps trainee and newly qualified mentors of physical education teachers in both developing their own mentoring skills and providing the essential guidance their beginning teachers need as they navigate the roller-coaster of the first years of teaching. Offering tried and tested strategies based on the best research and evidence, it covers the knowledge, skills and understanding every mentor needs and offers practical tools such as lesson plans and feedback guides, observation sheets, and examples of dialogue with beginning physical education teachers.

Together with analytical tools for self-evaluation, this book is a vital source of support and inspiration for all those involved in developing the next generation of outstanding physical education teachers. Key topics explained include:

• Roles and responsibilities of mentors
• Developing a mentor-mentee relationship
• Guiding beginning physical education teachers through the lesson planning process
• Observations and pre- and post-lesson discussions

Filled with the key tools needed for the mentor's individual development, Mentoring Physical Education Teachers in the Secondary School offers an accessible guide to mentoring physical education teachers with ready-to-use strategies that support, inspire and elevate both mentors and beginning teachers alike.

Section 1

What is mentoring?

1Models 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 (and this book) is designed to support you in considering the evidence to underpin your practice.

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, which 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 1.1Mentor 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 et al., 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, 2005a).

Montgomery (2017) suggested that definitions of mentoring often involve the concept that advice and guidance is given to a novice, or person with limited experience, 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 hierarchical structure. These include peer mentoring (Driscoll et al., 2009) and group mentoring (Kroll, 2016). In these approaches to mentoring, the flow of information is more bidirectional. Montgomery (2017) suggested that 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 1.2Mentor reflection: Understanding the term ‘mentoring’

1.Research the terms ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’.

2.List a variety of terms that you associate with coaching and mentoring.

3.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.

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 and also signposts you to examples of international equivalence documents to enable you to make comparisons internationally.

Table 1.1Key external drivers influencing mentoring work

	Policy/guidance document	Author and date introduced	Key purpose
Teacher Standards Documents	Teachers’ Standards (England)	DfE (2011)	Used to assess all student teachers working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) as well as newly qualified teachers completing their statutory induction period. ‘Providers of ITT should assess trainees against the standards in a way that is consistent with what could reasonably be expected of a trainee teacher prior to the award of QTS’ (DfE, 2011a, p. 6).
	The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Australia)	Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) (2011)	The Standards are designed so that teachers know what they should be aiming to achieve at every stage of their career; to enable them to improve their practice inside and outside of the classroom. ‘The Standards do this by providing a framework which makes clear the knowledge, practice and professional engagement required...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of tasks
• List of Case studies
• List of contributors
• An introduction to the series: Mentoring Trainee and Newly Qualified Teachers
• Introduction: A Practical Guide to Mentoring in Physical Education
• Section 1 What is mentoring?
• Section 2 You as a mentor
• Section 3 What a mentor does
• Section 4 Supporting the development of beginning physical education teachers’ knowledge, skills and understanding
• References
• Author index
• General index