Issues in Mentoring

Trevor Kerry, Ann Shelton Mayes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138158375
• eBook ISBN: 9781136159343
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

As the initial training of teachers becomes increasingly school-based, and as schools and colleges develop formal induction programmes for their newly qualified teachers, the role of the teacher mentor is fast becoming a pivotal one in teacher education. Individual sections look at mentoring as it relates to:- * Initial Training * Induction * Assessment * Whole institution staff development Throughout, the emphasis is on the ways in which mentoring contributes at all points in the continuum of professional development. Anyone involved in mentoring in any setting - from the primary school to the adult education college - will find this book indispensable as a guide to reflection and a spur to action.

Part B

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Mentoring in initial teacher training

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Introduction

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Part A examined conceptions of mentoring. In Part B the focus is on mentoring in the context of initial teacher training.

This subject cannot be approached without visiting some political issues. The growth of mentoring is related (as seen already in passing in Part A) to the move towards school-based initial teacher training. But the decision to place greater emphasis on school-based training, as opposed to training located substantially in higher education institutions, has been one which in England and Wales has emanated from the government as a result of political rather than educational decisions.

In the first article of Part B, David Bridges looks at the political background of initial teacher training. He traces the origins of the notion of the school as the unit of educational responsibility, and applauds it. Indeed, he sees the notion as grounded in a maturing relationship – a partnership – between schools and initial training institutions: a notion which did not need a political intervention, least of all one which has distorted its focus.

This distortion Bridges sums up in his contrast between a corporate model of initial teacher training and what he labels the collaborative/professional model (see Table 4.1 on p. 70). If the corporate model is adopted then an individual school (as opposed to teachers/schools/the profession) becomes the locus for selection of students, for providing most, or all training opportunities, for assessment and for ultimate employment. Though it needs to be acknowledged that ‘partnership’ arrangements between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and schools for initial teacher training lie on a continuum between these two models.

Bridges argues that it is difficult to resist the implication that teachers whose roles have expanded to include that of curriculum developers and researchers, should play a prominent and effective role in initial teacher training (ITT). But he makes no secret of his reservations about the role of teachers in ITT; drawing attention to the different skills required in training adults and explicating practice (a point referred to by Elliott and Calderhead in Part A). There are also reservations related to the idea of ‘protected professionalism’ (see p. 72) and to the ‘distraction’ (p. 73) from their main concerns of teaching children.

Bridges also comments on the issue of how initial trainees learn. He seeks a more rigorous definition of experiential learning, on which much school-based training is allegedly grounded, and argues for ‘the collecting together and passing on of the fruits of other people's experience’ (p. 77) to quicken that process of learning – a role HEIs have previously fulfilled.

Though Bridges does not deal explicitly with the definitions and skills of mentoring he does offer a backdrop against which mentors are expected to act out their roles. These are dealt with more overtly in the next chapter by Beardon et al.

In the Beardon et al.chapter the scene is apppropriately set in the context of the political debate about standards in schools. But their summary of the issues cuts through the political motives of the main protagonists to set out a professional agenda (p. 83). This is followed by a predictive look at teacher training in the year 2000, which focuses on the key role which will be played by mentors. The full text of this chapter forms a pamphlet which makes proposals for reorganizing initial teacher training under a General Teaching Council and around training schools. The authors go on to identify the nature of training schools, the qualities required of staff, and the ways of achieving a transition from the present system of initial teacher training to their proposed one.

Here, however, you will find extracted those sections of the chapter which bear most closely on the mentor's role. In reading the chapters about mentoring from these four authors you will notice that some aspects of their proposals are not really very radical. For example, the contents of training (the basic skills listed on pp. 85–6) are likely to be replicated in every extant course. The qualifications and skills required of mentors themselves are, of course, highly desirable, if marginally idealistic. That mentors should be trained, and be awarded time for their work, are fair proposals that certainly are not currently fulfilled. But proposals, by their very nature, tend towards identifying the best possible scenario. What is open to debate is the degree to which the proposals can be achieved in practice.

From the ideal, Martin Booth moves us on to the real. Booth studied forty-five English, History and Geography students' views of the mentoring they received during a block teaching practice in secondary schools. The mentors and the mentoring process are given a generally positive, but not uncritical, reception by the initial trainees. A crucial mentor skill is identified as the ability to draw out professional learning in discussion, both formal (e.g. a weekly mentoring meeting) and informal. Mentors were especially helpful in aiding subject-specific performance but gave limited support in other areas (e.g. in handling special needs or information technology). These findings have implications for the selection and training of mentors. The student teachers emphasized the mentor as counsellor (p. 95), and certainly as a conveyor of professional attitudes: two qualities requiring care in the selection of mentors. But, it could be argued that mentoring should, more appropriately, involve a number of teachers with different areas of expertise.

It is interesting to compare and contrast Booth's school-based study with a similar piece of research among In-service FE teachers following programmes of initial training. An appointee to an FE institution (in contrast to a school) does not need to be already in possession of a PGCE or equivalent, but initial training courses are provided. In this case, Maurice Rothera, Stephanie Howkins and James Hendry studied two cohorts of initial trainees to explore the role of their subject mentors. While many of the trainees found that they preferred their mentors to be located in the same institution (60 per cent), drawn from the same subject area (83 per cent) and of a more senior status (41 per cent), these figures show that other models were also perceived to work well. What mattered most was the quality of trainee-mentor interaction in guiding course work (83 per cent rated this highly), and the detailed, constructive and practical advice given in teaching practice reports (93 per cent). But the study raised an ambiguity in the mentor role to which it will be necessary to refer again: that of mentor as support and formal assessor. Two-thirds of those questioned accepted the duality of the role mainly on the grounds that the mentor had the most detailed and accurate knowledge of them – while one-third emphasized the guidance-without-judgement role as paramount.

This research by Booth in schools and Rothera et al. in FE gives a generally positive response to mentoring from the mentee's per-spective. The chapter from Kate Jaques is taken from the mentor's perspective and highlights the stresses and tension the role can create. These problems revolve around several key issues:

● understanding the nature of the mentor role;

● coping with a close interpersonal relationship with the mentee;

● feeling adequately trained and briefed;

● being realistic about the attitudes of staff not selected to be mentors;

● accepting responsibility for making judgements and assesssments, and for communicating these to the trainee;

● coming to terms with the demanding nature of the role, knowledge and emotional commitment.

So where does this leave us in understanding the mentor role? Clearly it is not a simple issue: for both mentor and mentee have roles to play, and these are complementary and require reciprocal behaviours. Mentors interact not just with mentees but with other professional colleagues; and expectations are imposed on them by government, by headteachers and by other staff. Mentees may be slow to learn, or may lack insight, fail to take advice or fall short of professional standards. There is a genuine emotional difficulty in failing another adult with whom the mentor has developed a close working relationship. This emerges as a major stumbling block in carrying out the role of formal assessor. An important issue, therefore, emerges for assuring the quality of these judgements. How do school-based training schemes build in checks and support for assessment? The suggestion offered by Jaques is the role of the HEI tutor. An alternative model would look for other staff within the school to carry out this verification role. Such a model fits within the partnership framework and gives each partner a role in quality assurance.

In Part B, there has been a transition from the ideal systems by Beardon et al. to the realities of mentoring explored by Jacques. And the caveats are continued to a degree in the next chapter, taken from an article by Chris Watkins and Caroline Whalley.

Watkins and Whalley leave behind concerns about the mentor role itself in order to tackle issues for schools to manage. It is important to return here to the concept of the ‘mentoring school’. Much of the debate so far in this part of the book has been the tacit assumption that there is a tripartite relationship in initial teacher education: between an HE tutor, a school-based mentor and a mentee. Inpractice, that is often the case. But it is also argued that the most effective mentoring can happen only when a school as a whole takes on the full implications for being a conducive learning environment for initial teacher training: where all staff have a reflective approach to their work; where professional knowledge and standards are shared; and where team work is the norm. Such a school is a ‘mentoring school’. Watkins and Whalley also (p. 126) identify that the ‘gains’ of mentoring benefit not just the mentee but the school when the process is conceived in these terms. This is indeed an important principle and one to which, for example, the Open University's PGCE scheme of mentoring is inextricably wedded.

Next in Part B we revisit an issue raised earlier: the assessment of the initial trainee. The tension in combining the functions of assessment and support within the mentor role have been noted. In this extract Peter Lucas proposes a model involving pupils themselves as a source of evaluative data. This reinforces the argument that teacher education must stress pupil learning. In fact what what is proposed is a triangulation of view between trainee teacher, pupils and supervisor. Whether that supervisor is also a mentor is an open question worthy of more rigorous consideration.

Finally, in this part of the book there is a return to the mentor process in the American literature of business management. This is to raise an issue which is not well documented in the UK educational literature: the role of women in mentoring. Murray Reich's study sounds cautionary notes in attempting to identify mentors and match them with mentees and asks whether women accrue different benefits from being mentored. This is an issue relevant for mentoring with ITE and induction.

Chapter 4

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School-based teacher education

David Bridges

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INTRODUCTION

The 1980s saw a substantial shift of attention and resources in inservice education from higher education-based courses to school-based in-service programmes and from LEA held and managed in-service budgets to budgets under the control of schools. The most visible manifestation of this was the introduction of five professional development days when staff were required to attend school, when pupils were not present, for staff development. The 1990s have seen the extension of this shift in responsibility to the initial training of teachers, with the introduction of the articled and licensed teachers schemes and in 1992 of the requirement for substantial proportions of initial training courses for secondary schools (24 weeks of the 36-week postgraduate course) to take place in schools (DFE 1992).

These developments in the in-service and in the initial training of teachers are separable in recent history and have tended to be trea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Open University MA in Education
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Editors' biographies
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part A Concepts of mentoring
• Part B Mentoring in initial teacher training
• Part C Mentoring in induction training
• Part D Mentoring and assessment
• Part E Mentoring: professional development and institutional aspects
• Name index