Teachers As Mentors

A Practical Guide

Terry Field, Barbara Field

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780750703161
• eBook ISBN: 9781135720452
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

School-based teacher education is being implemented and this book explores the changing role and function of the supervisory teacher in the classroom.; The ramifications of the changes to pre-service teacher training are enormous. The staffing of some parts of universities will be affected dramatically; the distribution of funds will change; the tasks of many teachers in school will be different as they find themselves becoming teacher educators rather than supervisors in their new role as mentors. In this highly readable book, the Fields, through a series of case studies, drawn from the UK and Australia, focus on the changing roles and responsibilities of those central to the preparation of the next generation of teachers.; Chapters consider the overall effect that mentoring will have on the teaching profession. The book looks at the skills required by teachers and, in particular, the beginning teacher; the experiences of teachers in-training undergoing education programmes; teachers' supervisory roles; and how universities will be affected by the changes.; Practical guidance is given for teachers becoming mentors and how mentoring can lead to professional development and as a way forward in teachers' careers.

Chapter 1
The Skills and Competencies of
Beginning Teachers

Barbara Field

There are two tasks to do before we try to identify the skills and competencies needed by a teacher to be a successful mentor under a school-based system of teacher education. There are two underpinning areas of understanding that will inform our judgment and conclusions. The first of these is the analysis of the various attempts to identify the skills and competencies necessary in a beginning teacher, and the second is the gaining of an understanding of the lived experience of student teachers as they practise in a school. This chapter deals with the first of these. Chapter 2 explores the experience of student teachers revealed through their own professional diaries and journals.

Introduction

The definition of a beginning teacher to be used in this chapter is a teacher who has completed a course of teacher education at a Higher Education Institution and is embarking, newly-employed, on a teaching career. The definition of ‘competencies’ is ‘the types of skill, knowledge and attitudes that will form the basis of effective professional practice’. Walker developed the following definition of ‘competence’:

The attributes (knowledge, skills, attitudes) which enable an individual or group to perform a role or set of tasks to an appropriate level or grade of quality or achievement (ie an appropriate standard) and thus make the individual or group competent in that role. (1992:1–2)

The point to keep in mind in the discussion of skills and competencies for a profession, as opposed to a trade or craft, is that often the skills and competencies for a profession cannot be assessed with any degree of objectivity or accuracy. It is easy to judge if an apprentice student can measure the thickness of a piece of copper wire to a certain degree of accuracy, and a mark can be awarded for the performance of the task; but it is not equally easy to judge if a student teacher has an understanding of the National Curriculum, and very difficult to give a mark or a grade to this. One skill can be observed. The other has to be inferred. Similarly, it is easier to judge whether a student teacher is able to write coherent lesson plans than it is to judge whether a student teacher has an understanding of the school as an institution.

In Australia, the National Training Board has been given the task of developing national standards of competency for trades. But the task of developing competency lists for the professions has been given to the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition (NOOSR). NOOSR is the group that assesses the qualifications of professional people who have been trained overseas and who want to practise in Australia. They have the experience of working with the more ephemeral skills and competencies that pertain to the professions. Nursing was the first profession for which competencies were identified, and the Nursing Competencies Assessment Project (NCAP) concluded that, ‘there are relevant and practicable methods for the compilation of valid lists of competencies for the profession’ (NOOSR 1990:17). However, they also acknowledge that ‘lists of competencies can never be set in stone. Knowledge and expertise change and grow. The professional is committed to lifelong learning—which is an attribute clearly identified in the lists of competencies’ (NOOSR 1990:17).

One of the reasons for the identification and assessment in the professions is the emphasis on quality assurance that has swept the professions in the last decade. Included in this movement has been world-wide interest in monitoring the quality of teaching, and one of the ways that governments have adopted for attempting to improve the quality of teaching performance is to list the skills and competencies needed to carry out the task effectively.

At the time of writing (1993), there are many groups in Britain and in Australia working on the identification of the skills and competencies of beginning teachers. Some of these are recorded in this chapter. They all acknowledge that the competence of a beginning teacher is different from that of a teacher at the end of the induction year or that of an experienced teacher. There are certain skills necessary for survival in the classroom at the beginning of a career in teaching. These skills mature and develop as the teacher grows in the profession. It is the skills for beginning teachers that mentor teachers must have in mind as they guide the practising students towards professional competence. A student teacher cannot be expected to act with the degree of competence of a teacher of ten years’ experience. Learning to teach is a process and there are stages that the student teacher and the beginning teacher must be allowed to move through.

The identification of competencies is a beneficial exercise that can enhance the educational processes that should lead to the attainment of these competencies. A knowledge of the skills and competencies for beginning teachers could be used as an important focus for mentor teachers. A framework of competencies can give guidance for the teacher education program in the school. For the mentor teacher, reflection on lists of skills and competencies for beginning teachers could be a fruitful way into identifying how the task of the mentor teacher now differs from the task of the supervising teacher in the past.

The accurate and fair assessment of competencies for a profession such as teaching is more problematic than the identification of such competencies. Usually, a list of competencies implies an accompanying list of levels of competence. For teachers writing reports on student teachers for a practice teaching session, this kind of quantitative assessment becomes difficult to determine. Parity across schools and different supervisors is difficult to achieve. However, given these problems, lists of competencies can prove useful as a focus for a School Experience Curriculum, and certainly it is necessary for mentor teachers to know the expectations for students at various levels of their program.

When the education of student teachers is shared between schools and Higher Education Institutions with most of the time being spent in schools, the question of the division of responsibilities will always arise —which institution is responsible for the student teacher’s attaining each of the skills and competencies? Which are combined responsibilities? Who teaches the students to write lesson notes, for example? Who is responsible for classroom management strategies? Can these be taught out of context? Who teaches the subject method? These are some of the questions that have to be resolved in the partnerships that are developing between schools and university Departments of Education. There are some answers to these questions in Chapters 5–8.

Lists of Competencies for Beginning Teachers

The various lists of competencies for beginning teachers that have been produced by government bodies in the last two years are, of necessity, of generic competencies. The notion of generic competencies is problematic. It implies that the skills and competencies ‘apply in all settings and contexts, at all levels and to all modes of teaching’ (NPQTL 1993:3). The competencies are meant to apply to all beginning teachers, from early childhood teachers to senior secondary teachers. The notion assumes that there are core skills in what is required in competent teaching irrespective of subject content, student’s characteristics and specific school context. We are making that difficult assumption in this chapter with the acknowledgment that teaching is a complex process and that sensible judgments cannot be made about a teacher’s attainment of any competence without taking into account the social context, the individual characteristics of the teacher and the nature of the students to be taught. There are, of course, specific competencies that apply to the specific subject areas in the curriculum. These are being researched by subject specialists. We are dealing here only with generic competencies.

One advantage of a list of skills and competencies for beginning teachers is that such a list makes public the nature and tasks of teaching. It makes explicit the areas of competency expected of a beginning teacher. It opens to scrutiny the practice of teachers as measured against the list. In an era when accountability and quality control are of such importance, this can be an advantage to the employer, the pupil and the teacher. The improvement of teaching that can be effected within the framework of the competencies will also improve the learning that takes place, and this, after all, is what our schools are about—effective learning.

Competencies considered important enough to be included are usually demonstrable or at least observable. If they cannot be operationalised or observed, it becomes very difficult to assess them, or report on them, objectively. The following lists of skills and competencies should be scrutinised for this demonstrability. For example, the first sub-heading in the list from the Ministerial Advisory Council The Ethics of Teaching has been criticised for not being demonstrable (see p. 16). How does one demonstrate belief, especially if the demonstration is to be measured?

Most Higher Education Institutions with a program of Initial Teacher Education would have, in their guides for supervising teachers, a list of generic target skills and competencies expected of the student teacher. The University of Cambridge Department of Education has a comprehensive check list headed Teaching Competences (1992–1993). It has detailed elements under nine headings. Only the headings are given here, but the detailed elements under each are most searching:

1. Relationships with pupils (In both the pastoral and the teaching context)
2. Subject knowledge (Students’ competence in their own field of knowledge)
3. Planning (Preparing individual lessons and curriculum units)
4. Class management (Organising the learning environment)
5. Communication
6. Assessment (Assessing, recording and interpreting pupil performance)
7. Reflecting on practice (Evaluating one’s own teaching and modifying professional practice)
8. Professionalism (Setting and maintaining appropriate standards of professional behaviour)
9. Personal qualities

Government Departments of Education are joining in the devising of lists of competencies. One government document that has outlined skills and competencies for beginning teachers is the former Department of Education and Science’s (DES) Reform of Teacher Education. This was published on 28 January 1992, following the North of England Conference speech by Kenneth Clark, then Secretary of State for Education, in which he outlined proposed changes to initial teacher education. In Annex II to the DES document, the competences expected of newly qualified teachers (that is, of those students graduating from a pre-service or initial teacher education program) were listed.

Circular 9/92 from the Department for Education (DfE) (June 1992) was a follow-up publication to the discussion document above, and under the heading ‘Competences expected of newly qualified teachers’ it lists almost exactly the criteria of the DES document. The few changes¹ were mainly a result of government documents that had appeared after the publication of Reform of Teacher Education and of responses to the call for consultation. The Circular 9/92 list is produced in full below:

2.2 Subject Knowledge
Newly qualified teachers should be able to demonstrate:
2.2.1	an understanding of the knowledge, concepts and skills of their specialist subjects and of the place of these subjects in the school curriculum;
2.2.2	knowledge and understanding of the National Curriculum and attainment targets (NCATs) and the programs of study (PoS) in the subjects they are preparing to teach, together with an underst...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Skills and Competencies of Beginning Teachers
• Chapter 2: Towards Understanding the Lived Experience of Practising Student Teachers
• Chapter 3: The Past Role of the Teacher Supervision As Socialisation
• Chapter 4: The New Role of the Teacher Mentoring
• Chapter 5: Towards Empowerment: An Approach to School-Based Mentoring
• Chapter 6: Towards More School-Based Initial Teacher Education
• Chapter 7: Integrating Theory and Practice In Teacher Education: The UEA Model of Action-Research Based Teacher Education
• Chapter 8: The Mentoring Scheme of Warwick University and Its School Partners— One Year On
• Chapter 9: An Overview
• References
• Contributors