Recruiting and Retaining Special Educator Mentor Teachers: Motivators and Challenges

• In Event: Beyond Survival toward Thriving: Emerging Research on Fostering Holistic Teacher Wellbeing

Abstract

Purpose:
Mentor teachers play a key role in shaping new teachers’ professional experiences and career decisions (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Yet there is little research on the recruitment and retention of special education mentor teachers. Our study addresses this gap by exploring what motivates special educators to fulfill this important role and the challenges they experience in doing so.
Theoretical framework:
We draw on the self-determination theory of motivation (SDT; Gagné & Deci, 2005) and the jobs-demands resources model of organizational functioning (Bakker & Demerouti, 2023). We draw on SDT to acknowledge that motivation to mentor may arise from both autonomous and controlled sources; we draw on the jobs-demands resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2023) to understand mentor retention as a function of the balance between job demands and the resources available to meet them.
Methods:
We conducted an exploratory qualitative study, guided by these research questions: 1) What motivates special educators to be mentors? 2) What are the challenges that they experience in this role? After IRB approval, we recruited current and former university-affiliated teacher mentors via email. All eight consented participants had served as a formal mentor for at least one special education student within the past ten years; all were White females with 10 to 32 years of teaching experience.
Data sources:
Our team included two teacher educators, a doctoral student, and a current undergraduate education student. We conducted/recorded semi-structured interviews via Microsoft Teams. Using N-vivo, we indexed all interview excerpts deductively using the parent codes of motivation, challenges, and resources/advice. We created and discussed individual memos about potential subcodes and engaged in iterative rounds of inductive coding, meeting frequently as a team to reach consensus on coding.
Results:
Mentor teachers expressed a wide variety of motivations. They wanted to grow and shape the field of special education, motivated by their prior experiences as a mentee—whether good or bad. Some were motivated by a love of helping people and a desire to be a “forever student” and collaborative learner. A few were motivated by an external factor, such as the extra help a mentee provided.
Mentor teachers also expressed many challenges associated with the role. These challenges included lack of role clarity, misalignment between their own disposition or role expectations with the reality of the mentoring role, and structural barriers. Mentoring was most challenging when mentees were not making adequate progress and/or meeting their professional responsibilities.
Significance:
Despite their important role in shaping the future of the SET workforce, little is known about mentor teachers’ own motivation for taking up this role and continuing in it. This study addresses this gap in the literature and has important implications for university and K12 school leaders’ efforts to recruit and retain mentors for novice teachers.

Authors

• Kristabel Stark, University of Vermont

• Shana J. Haines, University of Vermont