Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School

A Practical Guide

Grace Healy, Lauren Hammond, Steve Puttick, Nicola Walshe, Grace Healy, Lauren Hammond, Steve Puttick, Nicola Walshe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367743222
• eBook ISBN: 9781000541045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School supports both new and experienced mentors in developing their knowledge and skills in mentoring in geography education. Within the book, chapter authors critically consider how mentoring has been conceptualised and represented in policy and academic debate, as well as examining how mentoring in geography education has been experienced and perceived in practice.

Chapters in the book explore a range of perspectives, experiences and aspects of mentoring geography teachers, including:

• Critical engagement with educational policy and practice

• Perspectives from beginning geography teachers

• Mentoring as a professional development opportunity

• The value of engaging with the geography education community in teacher education

• How mentoring meetings and conversations can support beginning geography teachers in their growth and development

This book is a vital source of support and inspiration for all those involved in developing the next generation of geography teachers. The themes of justice, agency and voice - raised and engaged with implicitly and explicitly throughout this edited collection - are of critical importance to mentors, beginning teachers and geography education more broadly in developing and enacting a progressive vision of mentoring.

1IntroductionMentoring matters in and for geography education

Nicola Walshe, Grace Healy, Steve Puttick and Lauren Hammond

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157120-1

Introduction

Mentoring is a significant part of how teachers are educated. It is hard to overstate how much it matters in and for geography education. Mentoring matters to the development of the next generation of those working in geography education – including student teachers, early career teachers, established teachers and heads of department, as well as those working in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and researching in the field. Mentoring also matters to the recruitment and retention of geography teachers; to the professional development of those who mentor; to the future of geography education; and ultimately to ensuring that the children and young people who are taught engage with the best possible geographical education.

Mentoring has been conceptualised in many different ways, leading Colley (2003) to claim that as a practice, mentoring is ‘ill-defined, poorly conceptualized and weakly theorized’ (p. 13). Yet Kemmis et al. (2014) suggest that this is not ‘so much about a lack of theories, but rather a plurality of theories’ (p. 154). Indeed, various models and approaches to mentoring have been discussed (e.g. Maynard and Furlong, 1995; Langdon and Ward, 2015; Hobson, 2016; Lofthouse, 2018), and whilst the policy and spatial context shape the practice of mentoring (Brooks, 2022; Healy and Walshe, 2022), different views of mentoring, such as ‘mentoring as supervision, mentoring as supporting and mentoring as collaborative self-development’ (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 162), often coexist within countries and contexts. There is also general agreement that mentoring is distinct from coaching due to the significance placed on mentors being experienced in, and knowledgeable about, the role the mentee is undertaking to enable them to set targets with, assess and support the mentee (Lofthouse, 2019).

Three influential models of mentoring are: the apprenticeship model (learning to teach under supervised practice), the competency model (learning to teach through attention to predefined competencies) and the reflective practitioner model (learning to teach where reflection on practice is at the heart of the learning process) (Maynard and Furlong, 1995). Maynard and Furlong (1995) argue that each model is partial and inadequate for contributing to a beginning teacher’s development by itself, but that by drawing together the different models, this allows for ‘a view of mentoring’ (p. 78) that provides scope for mentors to be responsive to beginning teachers. Throughout the book, chapter authors draw upon, implicitly and explicitly, various models and approaches to mentoring, and illustrate how these can manifest themselves in respect to certain aspects of mentoring, or in relation to the particular stages of beginning teachers’ development. Whilst models different from those set out by Maynard and Furlong (1995) might be used, the principle of critically drawing upon these models and approaches to shape and reflect upon your mentoring practices can support and inform your mentoring of beginning geography teachers.

Within this book, chapter authors from a range of school and university-based contexts, predominantly (but not exclusively) geography educators in England, engage with a range of these different approaches to mentoring, exploring the importance of knowledge, experience and the desire to support beginning teachers’ and other colleagues’ professional development through mentoring. In the book, chapter authors often draw upon the richness of their own geographical context through critical engagement with policy, theory, practice, research and experience (and the relationships between them). If you are reading this book from beyond the same spatial-temporal contexts, we hope these arguments and analyses also support you to critically reflect upon your own expertise, experience and context: what similarities do you notice across these contexts? What unique external conditions are shaping your mentoring?

When we think of ‘who’ is being mentored, there is a wide range of terminology that is used in practice, literature and policy; for example, novices, interns, trainee teachers, student teachers, learner teachers, beginning teachers, newly qualified teachers (NQTs) and early career teachers (ECTs). In this book, chapter authors use beginning teachers as an all-encompassing term when discussing the mentoring of geography teachers. However, where authors refer to research, theory and experiences that apply to a particular stage of teacher education, this is reflected in the use of trainee and student teachers for mentoring within ITE, and ECTs for mentoring within the first two years after that. The language and meaning ascribed to mentors matter too, with chapter authors in this book referring to mentors, school-based mentors and teacher educators, and also addressing mentors directly as the reader.

In this introductory chapter, we set out the context and significance of mentoring in geography education before examining the roles of theory and practice in mentoring in geography education. Following this, we present an overview of the three sections of Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School – section one: Mentoring in geography education; section two: Perspectives and experiences in geography mentoring; and section three: Being a geography mentor. In doing so, we begin to set out the importance of the academic and policy case for the value of mentoring in geography education, alongside the embodied and personal nature of mentoring.

Introducing the case for subject mentoring

Whilst the significance of school-based mentoring is increasingly internationally recognised in education policy (e.g. England; Carter Review, 2015; DfE, 2016, Darling-Hammond, 2017), there has been limited attention to the role and importance of subjects in school-based mentoring (Hammond et al., 2019). Using the English context as an example, we now introduce the case for subject mentoring. If you are reading from outside of the English context (or indeed after a few years past the book’s publication in England), we encourage you to reflect on the specifics of your context. In England, whilst the Early Career Framework (ECF: DfE, 2019) provides a focus on the mentoring and development of early career teachers, it can be seen to neglect the significance of subject-specific support (Rowe, 2019). However, within the geography education and geography teacher education communities, it is important to recognise, and celebrate, that a strong argument has been made for the importance of geography to teaching and teachers (Brooks, 2017; Lambert, 2015; 2018; Healy et al., 2020).

Through drawing on the discipline of geography, their education as a geography teacher, communities of practice of which they are a part of, and subject associations and learned societies (Kinder, 2022), mentors can support less-experienced colleagues, and also continue to develop their knowledge and practice as teachers of geography. Brooks’ (2016, p. 12) narrative research with geography teachers found that geography was a fundamental element of what she conceptualised as a ‘professional compass’, which enabled the teachers to navigate the institutions and policy contexts that they worked within, and to make informed decisions about their teaching and careers more broadly. Here, we echo Brooks’ (2017) suggestion that the notion of a meaningful professional compass is helpful not only for teaching geography, but also for mentoring in geography education.

Whilst this book makes a case for subject-specific mentoring and turning to geography education discourse, chapter authors also engage with research and debate situated within and at the boundaries of the disciplines of geography and education more broadly. For example, Morgan (2022) engages with the work of David Harvey throughout his chapter as he explores the question: What sort of mentoring for what sort of geography education?, whilst Palombo and Daly (2022) begin their chapter by outlining the principles and characteristics of educative mentoring, before then applying this approach in geography education. The nature of the discipline and school subject of geography also means there can be value in looking to discourse from other subject-specialist communities, because of the curricula overlap and interplay that exist with other subject areas. For example, alongside drawing on literature exploring the knowledge base of teacher educators, Childs (2022) brings our attention to science education discourse that provides rich examples of mentors developing their practice.

In all routes into teaching, mentoring is critical to beginning teachers’ experience and development as mentors are the teachers’ primary point of contact and support during their school placements. However, as teacher education in England has become increasingly fragmented and there has been an increase in school-led provision (DfE, 2017; Whiting et al., 2018; Biddulph and Kinder, 2020), the role and influence of subject mentoring have expanded. The remit of mentors is also increasing in England through the introduction of the Early Career Framework (ECF); the DfE (2019) sets out that the ECF will ‘underpin an entitlement to training and support for early career teachers’ (p. 5). These changes in both policy and teacher education landscapes mean that it is of the utmost importance that mentors are supported and developed in their subject mentoring. In examining this further, we now move on to critically consider the importance of both theory and practice in mentoring and mentor development.

The role of theory and practice in mentoring and mentor development

In arguing for the value and significance of partnerships between schools and HEIs (higher education institutes) in (initial) teacher education, Brooks and McIntyre (2020, n.p.) assert that educating is:

a professional, thoughtful and intellectual endeavour that should draw on research as well as practical experience and that educators should use research as a matter of course to underpin, challenge and illuminate their practice.

We hope this book provides opportunities for you, as a mentor, to reflect on your own practice through theoretically informed and research-engaged analyses. One example of the use of theory to illuminate practice is through Palombo et al.’s (2020) use of Bernstein’s (2000, p. 168) conceptualisation of ‘reservoirs’ of knowledge and ‘repertoires’ of practice to consider what strong subject mentoring in geography looks like. Palombo et al. (2020) argue that mentors should support mentees to draw upon the reservoir that is geographical knowledge to inform, critically reflect upon and expand their repertoire of practice. This is an ambitious and challenging vision for mentoring: as a mentor you can enable mentees to benefit from the research and teaching of others within the wider geography education community. This kind of mentoring seeks the longer-term development of beginning geography teachers’ professional agency beyond the limits of their own experience (Healy, 2021). The influence of mentors also has the potential to extend beyond the formal period of mentoring. As a mentor, you have an opportunity to cultivate an ethos that enables geography teachers to understand the importance of reflecting and learning throughout their career in ways that will sustain and nourish their subject expertise (Brooks, 2016).

Throughout this book we want to highlight learning opportunities for you as a mentor to ‘deepen and enrich your professional knowledge and research-engagement’ (Burn and Mutton, 2018, p. 61) which also enables you to support mentees’ induction into the wider conversations within the field of geographical education (Brooks, 2018). As you mentor you can help beginning teachers develop ‘an informed understanding of the theoretical and research-based principles that underpin current practices’ (Burn and Mutton, 2018, p. 60), which provides them with the capacity to interrogate their own practice and adapt to the different school contexts they might find themselves teaching within throughout their professional career.

Introducing Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School

Mentoring Geography Teachers in the Secondary School comprises 14 substantive chapters organised into three key sections. Across each section of the book, chapter authors conclude their chapters with points for discussion. These discussion points either draw upon specific points or more holistically connect aspects of the chapter together to leave you with questions to frame your thinking and reflection after reading the chapter. Within the second and third sections of the book, you will find tasks that link directly to the text they are positioned by. Tasks have been constructed carefully by chapter authors to provide opportunities for you to reflect on your own knowledge and practice in mentoring geography teachers, supporting...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of tasks
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• An introduction to the series: Mentoring Trainee and Early Career Teachers
• 1 Introduction: Mentoring matters in and for geography education
• Section 1 Mentoring in geography education
• Section 2 Perspectives and experiences in geography mentoring
• Section 3 Being a geography mentor
• Section 4 Conclusion
• Index