What Mentors Learn from Mentoring

• In Event: Mentoring Teachers: Navigating Real-World Tensions

Abstract

Purpose
This presentation reports on a longitudinal research study about the growth of mentors as they develop their full time role over four years. The findings about the challenging aspects of their work across schools contributed to the identification of tensions of mentoring which are the focus of this session.

Perspective and Methodological Framework
Few empirical studies have focused on how new teacher programs influence mentors over a span of years. (Author, 2010; Hobson, Ashby, Malderez, & Tomlinson, 2009). Mentoring is a professional role that requires knowledge and skills beyond those needed to be an exemplary teacher. The researcher took a developmental view of mentors by talking to mentors about what they were learning from their work and its challenging aspects. Rather than trying to document the quality or impact of their mentoring, mentors were encouraged to reflect on how they were acquiring the skills to be a good mentor and teacher leader through their mentoring.

Data sources
This presentation is based upon a longitudinal study in two urban school districts, Boston and Durham, in which experienced teachers were selected to work full time as mentors. Beginning in their first year of mentoring, twenty-one mentors were interviewed annually for three years. Structured interview questions asked mentors to consider the influence of being a mentor on their professional growth, how they approached the new school cultures in which they worked, their relationship with administrators, and leadership opportunities. All interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using coding software.

Conclusions
Being a full time mentor has a profound impact on the development and practices of accomplished, experienced teachers. Hearing the mentors describe their work in the context of the schools where they work provides a real sense of the complexity and difficulties of the mentor role. Mentors find that to be a good mentor, they must facilitate relationships not only with their mentees, but also with other people in the schools where they work. Mentors, similar to their mentees, face many dilemmas and tensions and do plenty of learning on the job, especially when they work in challenging contexts. Working in new schools, mentoring new teachers, and concurrently participating in sustained mentor training helps mentors shift their perspective from being a classroom teacher to that of an educator with a broader perspective. Research on mentors supports a shift from a perspective of mentoring as a one-way process intended to benefit novice teachers, to a more complex perspective in which mentors also benefit from the training and support they experience as part of a comprehensive induction program. Mentors come to see themselves as not only supports for new teachers, but using their enhanced skills, knowledge, and experience, they see how they can also support change in school systems.



References - Screen said there were too many words, so I omitted references. They appear in the summary.

Author

• Susan G. Hanson, New Teacher Center