Mentoring in Schools as "Learning Organizations": Organizational Innovation by Mentoring in German Teacher Education

• In Event: Reenvisioning Mentoring for Equitable Outcomes: Changing Philosophies, Practices, and Systems

Abstract

Objectives
This qualitative research project focuses on the question if mentoring in teacher training supports innovation in schools as "learning organizations".
Conceptual framework
In Germany, trainee teachers must undergo a dual teacher induction training based in two different kinds of organizations (KMK, 2012). Next to teaching at school, they are being assessed at teacher training seminaries (Gergen, 2021). At their training schools, trainee teachers are being accompanied by mentoring teachers, whose marginalized main purpose is to endorse the trainee teachers’ preparations and reflections of lessons. While their mentoring functions are largely unknown, mentors find themselves faced with contradictory requirements caused by their status as educators between the organizational demands of school education on the one hand and adult education on the other (Terhart, 2018; Tippelt, 2018). Theoretically, mentors in teacher training fulfill all necessary conditions of so-called “reflective practitioners” (Schön, 1983). This leads to the presupposition that (self-)reflection of their own and their mentees’ lessons has a reciprocal impact on mentors' professional developments as well as on their schools' developments as "learning organizations" (Göhlich, Schröer & Weber, 2018).

Methods and mode of inquiry
Methodologically, this study makes use of Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2014) based on knowledge sociology. Reconstructions of narrations of a sample of 12 interviewed mentors (6 career starters and 6 experiences teachers) aim at the habitualized (Bourdieu, 1987) and incorporated orientation knowledge structuring actions quite independently from the subjectively expressed sense of statements.
Thus, the key research question asks how mentors in teacher induction training express their guiding norms and orientations.


Results and substantiated conclusions
Three main aspects of scientific and scholarly significance of the findings could be identified and should be put forward as points for discussion:
Generally, the findings of the study show that unqualified mentors very rarely adapt to new impulses from teacher trainees and don't contribute to the innovation of school as an organization. This leads to the conclusion that mentoring in German teacher education needs to be reformed if an equitable education system is to be cultivated.
On an individual level, the concept of mentors as “reflective practitioners” in German teacher training should be reconsidered since the mentors’ foci of interest are on lesson planning and on classroom management rather than on reflections of their own or their mentees’ lessons. This could involve a reconsideration of the marginalizatin of mentoring in German teacher training, e.g., providing more opportunities for reflection in the mentoring tandem at school.
On an organizational level, the lack of an impact of mentoring on schools' organizational development should be reconsidered since the mentors' counseling and mentees' learning seem to be strongly marked by socialization and habitualization in the organizational field. This leads to the supposition that mentoring in German teacher training supports a solidification of organizational structures at schools rather than innovation. These hypotheses should be put forward in a symposium and discussed with a wider audience.

Author

• Andrea Maria Gergen, Philipps-Universität Marburg