Mentors in Schools (1996)

Developing the Profession of Teaching

Hazel Hagger, Donald McIntyre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351346436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1996 this book brings together the work of teams in six universities involved in school-based partnerships for teacher education. Professionals from Oxford University, the Manchester Metropolitan University, Keele, Sussex, Swansea and Leicester University come together to explore the distinctive work of school-based teacher educators, discussing the role of the teacher mentor in both primary and secondary schools. Topics covered include: mentoring in the primary school, issues in the managing of mentoring, working with new teachers, and mentoring and continuing professional development.

All involved in school-based teacher education – whether as mentors, teacher trainers in higher education, school senior management, advisers, or inspectors – should find the range of experience presented here invaluable in their own work.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Donald McIntyre and Hazel Hagger

Among the many useful books that are being published about school-based teacher education, this one marks a new step forward. That it is a research-based book, telling us about realities of mentoring in schools, is important; but that alone is not what makes it so distinctive. This book is special not only because it is based on research but also because that research has in large measure been commissioned and/or conducted by school-based teacher educators themselves. It is true that the book has been written by people working in universities: they too were actively involved in the research and indeed did much of the planning and coordination of it. But, in that people working in schools themselves conducted much of the research, or determined what the research would be about, we claim that this book reflects a significant step forward towards genuine partnership between schools and universities in initial teacher education. That people in schools are doing half or more of the work of initial teacher education does not necessarily imply partnership; but when people in schools play an equal part in deciding what questions need to be asked and in determining the answers to those questions, we shall know that we have real partnerships.

Much of the credit for that distinctive characteristic of this book must go not to the authors but to the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust which proposed and supported this programme of research. In the autumn of 1992, the Trust contacted six university departments of education (UDEs) – Keele, Leicester, Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford, Sussex and Swansea – inviting them to bid for funds to support a research and development initiative on mentoring. The Trust made it clear that the kind of initiative it sought would involve:

● active participation of school staff working in partnership with the universities

●research aimed at developing the quality of mentoring and at confronting problems which schools faced in the provision of good mentoring

● arrangements for the sharing of problems and of expertise among mentors at local and national levels.

It was in our view to the credit of the UDEs that they decided to collaborate rather than to compete, and to make a joint proposal to the Trust. The Trust’s guidelines were found useful in shaping the proposed project and did not impose any unwelcome constraints. The joint proposal was based on a common framework within which the six UDEs would pursue distinctive but complementary research concerns. Three overarching themes were proposed:

Learning the new roles for school-focused teacher education

The central role is that of the mentor: research and development might be concerned with mentors’ knowledge, their problem-solving, the effectiveness of learning through shared experience, with complementary roles such as those of professional tutors in schools and of HE staff.

Mentoring and the continuum of professional development

Mentoring in relation not only to initial teacher education (ITE) but also, for example, to induction, continuing staff development, and development in promoted roles: similarities, differences and interactions between phases.

Mentoring and institutional structures

Mentoring and the whole school context for teacher learning. Mentoring and school management structures, local management of schools (LMS), resourcing, etc. Implications of school-focused teacher education for HE facilities and departments of education.

At the local level, each UDE was to pursue its research in partnership with schools and would establish a Local Mentoring Forum for sharing expertise. At the national level, the initiative was to be centrally coordinated by a Project Management Group representing the Trust and the six UDEs. Three national seminars were to be held at six-monthly intervals, leading up to a national conference at which the work and achievements of the project would be publicised and disseminated.

These general proposals, and the specific proposals from each of the six universities, were accepted by the Esmée Fairbairn Charitable Trust and the project got under way during the summer of 1993. Most of the research data-gathering and the development activities were concentrated within the 1993–94 academic year. The national seminars were held in the autumn of 1993 and in the spring and autumn of 1994, and the final national conference took place at Keble College, Oxford in March 1995.

As intended, a great deal of fruitful sharing of insights and much constructive and vigorous debate has occurred through the distinctive provision for Local Mentoring Forums and for national seminars. We shall not however be attempting in this book to give accounts of these activities, nor of the Keble Conference. Instead, this book seeks to provide succinct reports of what we have learned from the six mutually complementary research projects; and, since versions of these reports formed the basis of seminars at the Keble Conference, we are able in our concluding chapter to take account of the discussions which the reports stimulated on that occasion.

The six research projects

Manchester Metropolitan

Because both teacher educators’ own initiatives, and also government requirements, for a shift towards school-based initial teacher education (ITE) happened first in the secondary school sector, British ideas of mentoring in ITE have tended to be shaped in that context. The MMU project was therefore concerned with the distinctive issues that arise for mentoring in primary schools. With five mentors from diverse primary schools as key members of the research team, it explored the implications of primary school contexts, tasks, structures and cultures for the work of mentoring, and sought to identify sources of distinctiveness in primary school mentoring.

Swansea

Like that at MMU, the Swansea project was especially concerned with mentoring in primary schools. A mentor was seconded for a half day per week from each of five primary schools throughout 1993–94. These mentors worked with university tutors in planning and supervising student teachers’ learning activities throughout the year. The particular focus of this work, and of the research based on it, was mentors’ understanding of the substantive content of subject areas of the primary school curriculum, and their thinking about their own contribution as ‘subject mentors’ to student teachers’ education in the content needed for primary school teaching.

Sussex

In keeping with the overall project’s emphasis on mentor development, the Sussex research also was embedded in mentor development activities. An explicit training programme for new mentors and professional tutors included days spent in two secondary schools working with their established ITE teams. In addition, mentor exchanges were set up to provide opportunities for inexperienced and experienced mentors in the same subject areas to visit each other in their respective schools. In the context of this training work, the experiences, thinking and practices of experienced mentors were made accessible not only to the beginning mentors but also to the researchers. The dominance of subject teaching in the work of secondary school mentoring led the researchers to focus particularly on the ways in which beginning teachers are inducted into school subject cultures.

Keele

This project was concerned with schools’ arrangements for, and management of, mentoring. It involved case studies of twenty schools together with a questionnaire survey of one hundred mentors. The Keele team’s attention had been drawn by the apparent wide variations among schools in their provision for student teachers. They aimed to investigate the validity of this impression, to explore the nature of the variations and to understand the sources of them. This then is a study of how whole schools take on and carry out responsibilities for initial teacher education, and of the ways in which the work of mentors relates to the organizational framework within which their work is set.

Oxford

The Oxford Internship Scheme is a school–university partnership scheme for secondary school ITE which was established in 1987, and thus offers a context within which some teachers have extensive experience of school-based ITE. Such teachers are well placed to identify important questions. The Oxford project therefore invited mentors and school-based professional tutors to submit proposals for suitable studies such as documenting existing good practice, investigating problems and trying out ideas for improved practice. A full-time researcher was appointed for one year to conduct the research under the direction of those proposing the investigations, and with the support of the university-based director of the project. Five such studies were proposed by the teachers and all of them were undertaken.

Leicester

The distinctive feature of the Leicester project has been its focus on the concept of mentoring in respect of three phases of professional development beyond ITE: newly qualified teachers, middle managers and headteachers. To what extent, they asked, does the notion and practice of mentoring differ across these phases? The views of mentors and protégés have been sought in relation to such issues as the appointment of mentors, the purposes and processes of mentoring, factors influencing the quality of mentor performance, and the implications of mentoring for whole school management structures and processes.

Some common themes

As already noted, the six UDEs planned that the individual projects would be shaped by a common framework and be mutually complementary. In retrospect, we believe that this has in practice been achieved, although in the course of the work the overarching themes have inevitably been modified, clarified and elaborated. In the concluding chapter we shall discuss thematically the problems that have been illuminated and the lessons which can be learned from the research findings of the six projects. At this point it may be helpful for us to identify the seven general themes in terms of which we shall discuss conclusions. We see these themes as being important for policy and practice and also as being dominant themes cutting across the reports of the different projects.

The concept of mentoring

It is not obvious why the term ‘mentor’ should have become so widely used in British education during the last ten years. It has been used in contexts other than schools, and also in North America, for rather longer, and it brings with it from these other contexts certain connotations which may or may not be helpful in the contexts with which we are here concerned. In relation to ITE in particular, one has to ask whether these connotations, for example of a very personal relationship and of informality and lack of structure, are helpful in thinking about the roles of school-based teacher educators.

To what extent are the different roles to which the term mentor has been attached in schools comparable? The Manchester Metropolitan project looks at mentoring in primary and secondary ITE contexts; the Swansea project introduces the new idea of ‘subject mentoring’ and explores the distinctive features of that kind of role; and the Leicester project examines the task of ‘mentoring’ at three different levels within school hierarchies, all of them concerned with the professional development of practising teachers. In ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Mentoring and Primary School Culture
• Chapter 3 Mentoring Subject Knowledge in the Primary School
• Chapter 4 Subject Perspectives in Mentoring
• Chapter 5 Issues in the Management of Mentoring
• Chapter 6 Working with Beginning Teachers: the impact on schools
• Chapter 7 Mentoring and Continuing Professional Development
• Chapter 8 Mentoring: Challenges for the Future
• References
• Index