Mediated by the Particularities of School Culture: Beginning Teachers' Perspectives on Their Socially Constructed Mentoring

• In Event: Lives of Teachers: Beginning, Navigating, and Looking Back

Abstract

Located in the Republic of Ireland, the focus of this study centres on the perspectives of nine beginning elementary teachers on their mentoring experiences, during their initial year of school-based practice, post-graduation. Calculated to help offset the paucity of research evidence on beginners’ perceptions of mentoring, as transacted within the organisational cultures of their schools, a three-cycle, individual interview design is the principal data collection method employed. Horizontal or cross-case analysis is used to identify common patterns that recur across the nine cases. The empirically-based evidence from Ireland, presented in this paper, has implications for how the mentoring of beginning teachers should be conceived of and transacted. Framed within existing mentoring-related literature, the scholarly significance of the study is outlined.

Author

• Daniel O'Sullivan, University College Cork