Mentoring English Teachers in the Secondary School

A Practical Guide

Debbie Hickman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429955006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Secondary Education

This practical guide will help school-based mentors of trainee or newly qualified English teachers in developing their own mentoring skills, whilst providing the essential guidance their trainees need as they navigate their new role in the secondary classroom. With analytical tools for self-evaluation, this is a key resource that will support and inspire mentors and help them identify both strengths and skill gaps to develop confidence and knowledge in their mentoring position.

By providing practical tools such as tasks, feedback guides, further readings and examples of dialogue with trainees, this volume covers the knowledge, skills and understanding every mentor needs. Key topics explored include:

• 
  
  

• Roles and responsibilities of mentors;

• 
  
  

• How to develop a mentor–mentee relationship;

• 
  
  

• Developing beginning English teachers' subject knowledge and expertise, including planning for pupils' learning;

• 
  
  

• Managing workload and student teacher well-being;

• 
  
  

• Developing collaborative practice;

• 
  
  

• Developing the wider, professional role of the teacher.

Filled with tried-and-tested strategies based on the latest research, Mentoring English Teachers in the Secondary School is a vital guide for mentors of English teachers, both trainee and newly qualified, with ready-to-use strategies that support and inspire both mentors and beginning teachers alike.

SECTION 1

What is mentoring?

1Models of mentoring

Gill Golder, Alison Keyworth and Clare Shaw

Introduction

Your job as a mentor is to develop a positive working relationship with a beginning teacher to enable them to grow and develop both professionally and personally. How you go about this will be influenced by a number of factors, such as your own experience of being mentored in the past and your common-sense opinions of the role. These are important starting points, but you are likely to grow as an effective mentor when you also base your approaches on evidence. This chapter (and this book) are designed to support you in considering the evidence to underpin your practice.

The chapter starts by looking at different definitions of mentoring. It then looks at the importance of the context in which you are working as a mentor, highlighting a number of documents from England and other countries that impact on your mentoring practice. The chapter then considers three mentoring models a mentor could adopt to inform their practice. These models underpin various roles you undertake and hence the other chapters in this book.

Objectives

At the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

•Have a greater understanding of what is meant by the term ‘mentoring’ for a beginning teacher;

•Have an appreciation of the key context in which you work that may influence the manner in which you act as a mentor in school;

•Have an awareness of the plethora of mentoring models that exist;

•Compare and contrast three developmental mentoring models and how these could be used to support your role as a mentor.

Task 1.1 Mentor reflection: Reflecting on your understanding of mentoring

Reflect on what you understand by mentoring by considering the following questions:

How would you define mentoring?

How does your definition inform your practice as a mentor?

How do the various policy and guidance documents relevant to your context influence your mentoring practice?

Do you base your mentoring practice on personal experience or on a model or models of mentoring? If a model, which? Why?

Definitions of mentoring

Mentoring is widely used in many contexts for the purpose of helping people to learn and develop, both professionally and personally. There are numerous and frequently contradictory definitions of mentoring, with accompanying models of how mentoring is best approached (Haggard, Dougherty, Turban and Wilbanks, 2011). Whilst different models might utilise different terminology and vary in emphasis regarding the role of a mentor, what remains consistent is the view that mentoring is a supportive, learning relationship. The mentor, with his or her more extensive experience, is there to support the learner’s development. The quality of the relationship between mentor and mentee is extremely important.

The terms mentoring and coaching are at times used interchangeably. Both aim to develop the professional competencies of the client or colleague. Although mentoring and coaching have much in common, an important difference between the two is the focus of developmental activities. In mentoring the focus is on development at significant career transitions whereas in coaching the focus is on the development of a specific aspect of a professional learner’s practice (CUREE, 2005).

Montgomery (2017) suggested that definitions of mentoring often involve the concept that advice and guidance to a novice, or person with limited experience, is given by an experienced person. In this way, mentoring can be seen to be hierarchical; a top-down approach largely based on a one-way flow of information.

Mentoring involves the use of the same models and skills of questioning, listening, clarifying and reframing associated with coaching. Traditionally, however, mentoring in the workplace has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses his or her greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff.

(CIPD, 2012, p.1)

In contrast, other definitions of mentoring follow a less hierarchal structure. These include peer mentoring (Driscoll et al, 2009) and group mentoring (Kroll, 2016). In these approaches to mentoring the flow of information is more bidirectional. Montgomery (2017) suggested they are more personalised as mentoring is adapted more effectively to an individual mentee’s goals and needs. Higgins and Thomas (2001) suggested that top-down mentoring had greater impact on short-term career outcomes and individually driven mentoring more effectively supported long-term career development. Whether the focus is on short- or long-term tailored development of a mentee, there are common aspects to all forms of mentoring. CIPD (2012, p.1) identified four characteristics of mentoring:

•It is essentially a supportive form of development.

•It focuses on helping a person manage their career and improve skills.

•Personal issues can be discussed productively.

•Mentoring activities have both organisational and individual goals.

In education, school-based mentors play a vital role in the development of student teachers and induction of newly qualified teachers. They also support other staff at points of career development. As with mentoring in other contexts, there is a focus on learning, development and the provision of appropriate support and encouragement. The definition of a mentor outlined in the National Standards for School-based Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Mentors in England (Department for Education (DfE), 2016b, p.11) is someone who ‘is a suitably experienced teacher who has formal responsibility to work collaboratively within the ITT partnership to help ensure the trainee receives the highest quality training’. However, in initial teacher education in many countries, including England, assessment of the beginning teacher is integral to the mentor’s role. This is supported by Pollard (2014), who suggested that the role of the mentor in ITT has developed because of three aspects: the complexity of the capabilities teachers need to meet; the focus on high professional standards in school; and the transfer of knowledge from one generation to another.

Task 1.2 Mentor reflection: Understanding the term ‘mentoring’

1.Research the terms ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’.

2.List a variety of terms that you associate with coaching and mentoring.

3.Make a list of common and unique characteristics for both.

The context in which you are working that underpins your mentoring practice

Mentoring is increasingly important in a range of fields, both in the UK and internationally, as a tool to support recruitment into a profession, retention in that profession, professional learning, networking and career development. In teaching, it is widely recognised that there is a strong relationship between professional learning, teaching knowledge and practices, educational leadership and pupil results (Cordingly et al. 2015). As such, there has been an increase in development of policy and guidance documents as well as frameworks, toolkits and factsheets produced over the past few years to support educators and others in fulfilling their roles as mentors.

As a mentor, it is important to recognise and embed current policy and statutory guidance into your mentoring practice. There are a number of key documents that underpin the mentoring process in initial teacher education and beyond in England and elsewhere. These constitute the key external drivers in shaping mentoring practice in school. Being aware of these is important, but knowing how to use them to support your work with a beginning teacher can add purpose and validity to what you do (there are examples of how to do this in other chapters in this book). They also enable you to recognise the value of being a mentor in school, as ‘effective professional development for teachers is a core part of securing effective teaching’ (DfE 2016a, p.3).

Table 1.1 highlights policy and guidance documents that influence the work you do in school with a beginning teacher in England but also signposts you to examples of international equivalence documents to enable you to make comparisons internationally.

Table 1.1 Key external drivers influencing mentoring work

	Policy/guidance document	Author and date introduced	Key purpose
Teacher standards documents	Teachers’ Standards (England)	DfE (2011)	Used to assess all student teachers working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) as well as newly qualified teachers completing their statutory induction period. ‘Providers of ITT should assess trainees against the standards in a way that is consistent with what could reasonably be expected of a trainee teacher prio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• TASKS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• An introduction to the series: Mentoring Trainee and Newly Qualified Teachers
• Introduction: A practical guide to mentoring in English
• SECTION 1 What is mentoring?
• SECTION 2 You as a mentor
• SECTION 3 What a mentor does
• SECTION 4 Supporting the development of beginning English teachers’ knowledge, skills and understanding
• REFERENCES
• Index