Mentorship In The Primary School

Mentorship In Action

Robin Yeomans, John Sampson, Robin Yeomans, John Sampson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780750702638
• eBook ISBN: 9781135397258
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First Published in 1994. The growing interest in work of mentors within school-based initial teacher training courses in England and Wales is a phenomenon of the recent past. The development of innovative schemes within secondary education, such as the Oxford Internship scheme (Benton, 1990) generated a national debate about the nature of partnership between schools and higher education institutions, which the government joined when it introduced experimental forms of initial teacher education in the Licensed and Articled Teacher schemes (DES, 1988 and 1989). These were extensively school-based, and included both secondary and primary Mentor-like behaviour may come from many sources within a school, and the appointed mentor may engage in such unmentor-like activities as making formal summative assessments of students with career-shaping implications of 'passing' and 'failing'. This volume is an attempt to provide some illumination and indicate some of the central issues to be addressed. However, we hope that the following chapters will provide an informative base from which to launch research into these and other aspects of primary school student teacher mentoring, as well as being of value for those engaged in mentoring and mentor training.

Chapter 1
The Rise and Rise of the Mentor in British Initial Teacher Training

John Furlong

Introduction

As the Modes of Teacher Education (MOTE) project has recently reminded us (Barrett et al., 1992a; Whitty et al., 1992), initial teacher education in England and Wales is a sizeable industry. Currently 24, 000 students wishing to become teachers are recruited to higher education institutions (HEIs) each year and overall there are some 45, 000 students on 370 different initial teacher training (ITT) courses at any one time. During the last few years this major sector of higher education has changed a great deal. There have been changes in the courses offered: in addition to conventional BEd and PGCE courses, prospective students can now choose shortened courses, conversion courses, part-time courses and the Articled Teacher and Licensed Teacher schemes (Barrett et al., 1992b). The population entering these courses has also changed; currently 60 per cent of students on ITT courses are over 24 years of age while 29 per cent are over 31 (Barrett et al., 1992a).

But by far the most significant change to initial teacher education in the last ten years has been the growing insistence by the government that schools take on a greater and more consistent involvement in the training process. And it is this growth of school-based teacher education that has led to the development of the role of the ‘mentor.

The most recent government reforms in the area of secondary initial teacher education (DFE, 1992), are specifically intended to encourage a school-based approach. As well as increasing the amount of time students must spend in school, the new Circular envisages that schools and teachers will have a far more important role, taking ‘a leading responsibility’ in a number of areas, including ‘the training of students to teach their specialist subjects, to assess pupils and to manage classes’ (DFE Circular 9/92, para 14). These reforms within the secondary PGCE build on two earlier government-led experiments in school-based training — the Articled and Licensed Teacher schemes. At the time of writing, similar initiatives are being introduced in the area of primary initial teacher education (DFE, 1993).

A new model of initial training is therefore progressively being introduced in England and Wales. That model is intended to alter the relationship between HEIs and their local schools, lead to changes in the roles and responsibilities of college-based tutors and school-based teachers and alter the way in which the ‘partnership’ between them is managed. In this new vision of ITT, the role of the mentor is central.

However, even before the new government regulations began to be felt, many courses had taken preliminary steps to institutionalize the role of the mentor. By 1990/91 the MOTE national survey revealed that course leaders on slightly under half of all ITT courses in England and Wales reported that teachers involved in the supervision of students were being given a special title such as mentor or teacher tutor; on half of all courses surveyed, teachers were offered some form of in-service training to support their work with students; on one-quarter of all courses mentors or their schools received some form of payment for their work. More detailed case study evidence from the MOTE research confirms Wilkin’s (1991) suggestion that rhetoric does not always meet reality in this field; nevertheless the MOTE data indicates a growing recognition throughout ITT that practising teachers in schools must play a central role in the training process and that that role must be recognized.

McNair and After

This growing recognition of the importance of the contribution of schools to the preparation of new teachers represents a considerable change of perspective on the part of teacher educators. The SPITE survey of university-based teacher education undertaken in 1981 (Patrick et al., 1982) revealed a very different picture, showing little collaboration between schools and universities in the support of students. At that stage, neither the concept nor the title of the mentor was widely used. Yet it is important to recognize that the idea that teachers, acting as mentors, should be involved in the training process is not a new one. As Gardner (1993) has documented, training in the nineteenth century was largely school-based, though in the early part of this century it was progressively replaced by a predominantly college-based system. However, as long ago as 1944, the McNair Committee, (McNair, 1944), appointed by the then Board of Education to look into the ‘supply, recruitment and training of teachers’, concluded that the key to more effective teacher training was to give the practical side of preparation greater weight. Specifically, McNair proposed that the staff in schools (i.e. mentors) in which students were placed on teaching practice, ‘should be primarily responsible for directing and supervising (them)’ (para 261). It was also suggested that in order to achieve more effective training, training institutions would have to ‘relinquish a measure of responsibility in the training of their students’ (para 270).

But the McNair proposals fell on deaf ears and it has taken a further fifty years for such ideas to come to the forefront of educational policy. The reason for McNair’s failure, as I have argued elsewhere (Furlong, 1992), was because its highly pragmatic vision of initial training was out of sympathy with the models of professionalism that dominated educational debate before and after the last war. As Gardner (1993) demonstrates, the development of college-based courses at the beginning of the century had already indicated a move away from a practically based notion of professional training. Such a movement reached its height during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when the discourses of liberal and progressive education came to dominate professional debate and policy making.

For example, the liberal educationist view of the professional teacher is someone who themselves has a fully rounded liberal education. They must themselves be ‘rationally autonomous’ adults if they are to develop this characteristic in their pupils and this is therefore the most important aim of teacher education. It is education rather than training that is needed. Teacher education must also address the pedagogic and curriculum planning skills necessary to foster rational autonomy in pupils. An unanalyzed notion of‘teaching skills’ is insufficient. Liberal educationists therefore argued that students needed to spend substantial periods of time in the academic study of education through the disciplines of sociology, psychology, philosophy and history. These disciplines, it was suggested, would ‘equip students for intelligent and informed discourse about educational issues, sharply distinguished from practical expertise’. Studying the disciplines was ‘part of the education of the scholar who happened to be a teacher (Bell, 1981, p. 13).

Progressive education, which was also highly influential at the time, also emphasized the contribution of higher education over that of the school. From the progressivist perspective, the ideal teacher is someone who has a deep understanding of the individuality of children and the way they develop and can adapt his/her teaching strategies to the children’s needs and stages of development. Initial teacher education must therefore develop such understandings in students and cultivate appropriate forms of pedagogy and curriculum planning. Initial training, from this perspective, therefore emphasized the study of developmental psychology, certain aspects of sociology that related to ‘educability’ and the application of specialised, child centred teaching strategies. Such teaching strategies, it was believed, were not always present within the schools to which students were sent on teaching practice. In helping students learn how to ‘apply’ the progressivist approaches they had learned in college, it was therefore college tutors who had the most important role. Far from being mentors, classroom teachers were often represented as a reality from which student teachers had to be protected.

Given the dominance of these views of teaching and teacher education, it is hardly surprising that McNair’s proposals to increase the role of the school fell on deaf ears.

The Growth of Central Control

In explaining the change of perspective that has encouraged the widespread development of the role of the mentor, it is essential to acknowledge the part played by the government, for during the last ten years the government has been highly interventionist in initial teacher education, pursuing policies that have led to the development of school-based training. But why is it that the government itself has taken the lead in this field; why have they increasingly come to insist that mentors in schools should take on more responsibility for initial training? Before answering that question it is necessary to pose a prior question, for one must ask how is it that the government itself has come to take such a detailed interest in what was previously an autonomous sector of higher education? Governments do not presume to specify in any detail the character of professional training offered to solicitors, accountants or doctors. Why therefore, during the last ten years, should they have developed such a close interest in the training of teachers?

The history of increased government involvement in the field of initial teacher education is familiar enough to those in HEIs. Intervention first began in 1984 with the issuing of DES Circular 3/84 (DES 1984). It was with this Circular that the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Sir Keith Joseph, established the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) which was charged with the responsibility of overseeing initial teacher education in England and Wales on his behalf. In retrospect, the substantive changes introduced by Circular 3/84 do not seem particularly radical: college and university lecturers responsible for pedagogy’ in ITT courses had to return periodically to schools to undertake ‘recent and relevant’ school experience; teachers had to be involved in the process of interviewing students; the time that students must spend in schools during their training was defined for the first time. In retrospect such proposals seem relatively modest though the governments interest in establishing a closer involvement with schools was clearly signalled. However, constitutionally, the Circular was revolutionary (Wilkin, 1991). For the first time it established the right of the Secretary of State to have a say in the detailed content and structure of initial teacher education in this country. In establishing the mechanism of increased central control the Circular was of fundamental significance.

Since 1984 there have been three further Circulars that have extended and elaborated central control and in each case the role of schools in the training process has been significantly enhanced. Circular 24/89 (DES, 1989a) reformed the organization and powers of CATE while at the same time introducing far more detailed specification of the content and form of ITT courses. The time that students must spend in school was more carefully specified as were the requirements of ‘recent and relevant’ experience for teacher trainers. The amount of time students had to spend on ‘subject study in their first degree or in the BEd was also specified and a list of topics to be covered in the ITT curriculum was set out. As has already been noted, 1992 and 1993 saw the introduction of yet further changes. With Circular 9/92, CATE was reformed yet again and further detailed proposals for secondary courses of ITT were introduced (DFE, 1992). Circular 14/93 introduced similar changes to primary courses (DFE, 1993).

Two further government initiatives of the late 1980s — the Articled and Licensed Teacher schemes — have also been highly influential in the establishment of school-based training and particularly the role of the mentor. The Articled Teacher scheme is a school-based PGCE. Students, who must be graduates, spend two years, rather than one year, in training, 80 per cent of the time being spent in school. The Licensed Teacher scheme is somewhat different. Here, trainees, who do not necessarily have to be graduates, are recruited to specific vacancies in schools. They are granted a licence’ to teach and provided training in and out of school appropriate to their particular needs. In both schemes, the role of school-based mentors has been seen as central. In the majority of schemes, designated mentors have been appointed, paid and provided with training for their role (Barrett and Galvin, 1993).

As the MOTE study has demonstrated, the size of the Licensed and Articled Teacher schemes is very small. In 1990/91, 1.6 per cent of all new entrants to ITT were recruited to Articled Teacher schemes (Barrett et al., 1992) and about 2.4 per cent of new entrants were recruited to Licensed Teacher schemes (Barrett and Galvin, 1993). Yet despite their size, the two schemes have been highly influential for they have been given a high profile by the government. Each has been generously financed and widely publicised. As a consequence, these school-based schemes have been seen as a test bed for the development of new government policy in this field. It certainly seems that much of the philosophy behind the most recent government directives on ITT, Circulars 9/92 and 14/93, is drawn from experience within the Articled Teacher scheme.

But why has the state made such determined efforts to intervene in what was in the past a relatively quiet backwater of higher education? Why has it felt it so important to take control of the structure and content of initial teacher education? The answer to this question must be sought in the changing relationship between the state and the teaching profession as a whole. As Grace (1987) has demonstrated, that relationship has gone through a number of distincdy different stages throughout this century. In the first part of the century, between 1900 and 1920, Grace suggests that relations between the state and the profession could be characterized as ones of ‘cultural and professional condescension’. It was not until the 1920s, with the threat of significant teacher and trade union radicalism, that the state adopted a more conciliatory attitude towards the profession. It was during this period that the Conservative President of the Board of Education, Eustace Percy, recognized that the best guard against the politicization of education was to give teachers a reasonable sense of independence. It was the beginnings of what Grace characterized as legitimized professionalism’: reasonable pay, reasonable conditions, an end to the Revised Code which gave central control over the curriculum, in return for a non-political professionalism. This legitimized professionalism’ reached its height in the social democratic consensus of the post-war period. Between the 1940s and the early 1970s teachers achieved significant control over the curriculum. They did not achieve the major economic rewards, nor the professional autonomy of other professions but in that most central aspect of their professionalism, the curriculum, they were granted substantial freedom by the state. Indeed their control over the curriculum became the most significant aspect of their claim to be a true profession.

The late 1970s, Grace argues, saw a return to the politics of confrontation’. A long-running dispute in the mid-1980s resulted in the removal of pay bargaining rights, the imposition of new contracts with defined hours of work and the introduction of appraisal. The curriculum also saw a range of measures which progressively challenged teacher autonomy culminating in 1988 with the establishment of the National Curriculum. With the coming of the National Curriculum, Grace foresaw that teachers would lose the central and most important aspect of their claim to professional autonomy.

It is against this background of the changing relations between the state and the teaching profession that the government’s progressive intervention in ITT needs to be understood. On a wide range of issues, the government has, since the late 1970s, sought to ‘reign in’ the autonomy of the teaching profession. State intervention in initial teacher education, as Wilkin (1992) argues, is the last, and certainly the most ambitious, attempt to challenge the autonomy of the profession. Through their growing intervention in ITT, the government are claiming a right to control more than the hours teachers work; they are claiming the right to control more than what teachers teach. Through their progressive intervention in this sphere, the government are claiming the right to have a say in the very construction of the professionality of the next generation of teachers, to determine what they learn, to determine how they learn it and to determine the professional values to which they are exposed. As such, state intervention in ITT represents an even greater challenge to professional autonomy than that foreseen by Grace in 1987; it goes to the very heart of professionalism itself.

But to recognize that state intervention in initial teacher education is part of a broader project on the part of the government does not explain why that intervention has taken the form that it has. It does not explain why it is that the government has progressively insisted that practical work in schools, under the supervision of mentors, should have greater prominence in the training process. In order to explain the direction of central government policy it is necessary to examine three very different influences on the policy process. These are the influence of the New Right critique of initial teacher training; the influence of HMI and DES reports and research on initial teacher education; and debates within the teacher education profession itself. These groups have all, in their different ways, increasingly argued for a growing role for schools in initial teacher education; where they differ is their vision of what the role of the mentor might be.

The View from the New Right

From the late 1960s onwards in Britain, a small group of New Right pamphleteers, loosely aligned around ‘neo-liberal’ free market philosophies, have mounted a sustained attack on many aspects of contemporary educational policy including initial teacher education (Hillgate, 1989; Lawlor, 1990; O’ear, 1988a and 1988b). Their views on current provision are trenchant. For example, the Hillgate Group (1989) accuse most courses of being intellectually ‘feeble and biased’ and being overly concerned with topics such as race, sex, class and even ‘anti-imperialis’ education. According to the Hillgate Group, these ‘preoccupations’ appear ‘designed to stir up disaffection, to preach a spurious gospel of “equality” and to subvert the entire traditional curriculum’ (Hillgate Group, 1989, p. 5).

Such views stem from a vision of education that stands in marked contrast to liberal and progressivist philosophies outlined earlier. From the New Right perspective, the central aim of education is the preservation of a refined cultural heritage. In the words of the Hillgate Group (1989), education ‘depends on … the preservation of knowledge, skills, culture and moral values and their transmission to the young’ (p. 1). If our cultural heritage is to be passed on to our children then teachers must themselves be thoroughly educated in the disciplines they teach...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Rise and Rise of the Mentor in British Initial Teacher Training
• 2 The Anatomy of a Development
• 3 Researching Mentors and Schools: Background, Methods and Contexts
• 4 How Mentorship Happens: Evolving Procedures and Practices
• 5 Analyzing the Work of Mentors: The Role
• 6 Analyzing the Work of Mentors: Strategies, Skills and Qualities
• 7 Relationships: Mentors and Students
• 8 Relationships: Exploring the Web
• 9 Induction, Acculturation and Education in School-Based Initial Teacher Education
• 10 Being an Effective Mentor
• 11 Conditions for Effective Mentorship Within the School
• 12 Sustaining the Quality of Mentorship
• 13 Implications for Primary School-Based Teacher Education
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index