External mentoring for new teachers: mentor learning for a change agenda

Abstract

Purpose -The paper reports on a qualitative study of the learning and development of seventy External Mentors during the first year of their deployment to support early career teachers' professional learning as part of a national initiative aimed at school improvement in Wales. Design/methodology/approach -The study adopted a narrative methodology that elicited accounts of External Mentors' learning experiences that were captured as textual data and analysed using an inductive approach to identify: i. the manifest themes that appeared at declarative level, and ii. the latent (sub-textual) themes of External Mentor learning and development. Findings -Four key themes emerged that indicate the complexity of transition to the role of External Mentor in high-stakes contexts. From these, eight theoretically-informed principles were derived which support mentors to embrace uncertainty as essential to their learning and development, and to harness the potential they bring as boundary-crossers to support the development of new teachers.Research limitations/implications -The study investigated the first year of a three-year programme and worked with one form of qualitative data collection. The research results may lack generalizability and a longitudinal study is necessary to further explore the validity of the findings. Practical implications -The eight principles provide a foundation for mentor development programmes that can support ambitious goals for mentoring early career teachers. Originality/value -The study addresses the under-researched area of the learning and development of External Mentors at a national scale.

Turning heads: The impact of political reform on the professional role, identity and recruitment of head teachers in Wales

“…To foster agency and develop professional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, ), the promotion of mentoring opportunities for HTs is imperative (Barber et al ., ). These could take the form of a national mentoring scheme for aspiring HTs with professionally trained mentors (Daly & Milton, ), who can support the transition into new headship roles. To realise this, the ‘arm's length principle’ must be realised to allow for the development of head teachers’ professional capital and not merely the narrower conceptions of capabilities, capacities or skills found in other models of professional training (Hargreaves & Fullan, ).…”

“…(2015) highlight the need for mentor development programmes that challenge mentors’ existing belief systems. In high‐stakes educational contexts, the professional learning needs of external mentors may benefit from being built around principles outlined by Daly and Milton (), which include harnessing diversity, working with an inclusive design, problematising notions of consistency, exploring complexity and developing an inquiry orientation, in order to support HT mentors in meeting agentive goals with their mentees.…”

The well-being of the early career teacher: a review of the literature on the pivotal role of mentoring

“…The mentor–mentee relationship itself, whether formal or informal, had a crucial and far-reaching impact on novice teachers’ induction; the culmination of positive and negative experiences within that dyad had a significant influence on how the interactions were received (Kutsyuruba, Walker, Matheson et al , 2017). Daly and Milton (2017) posited that mentors need to recognize the time it takes to build trust that then serves as a foundation for genuine engagement and reflexivity, for the mentor as well as the mentee.…”

Is there hope for action research in a ‘directed profession’?

“…There is strong evidence that professionals outside school networks and accountability systems contribute significantly to teachers' capacities to learn. Partners such as university teacher educators and external mentors (Daly and Milton, 2017) help to maintain the inquiring aspects of teaching by being able to introduce critical perspectives, bringing a 'broader range of knowledge reflecting the wider research evidence than is available in any single school or staff room … which allows for the prevailing orthodoxies and "taken for granted" beliefs and assumptions within the school culture to be challenged' (Cordingley, 2014: 25).…”