Mentoring is ... pause for thought

"Mentoring is a long term relationship that meets a development need, helps develop full potential, and benefits all partners, mentor, mentee and the organisation". - Suzanne Faure

"Mentoring is a protected relationship in which learning and experimentation can occur, potential skills can be developed, and in which results can be measured in terms of competencies gained". - Audrey Collin

Mentoring is "A mutual relationship with an intentional agenda designed to convey specific content along with life wisdom from one individual to another. Mentoring does not happen by accident, nor do its benefits come quickly. It is relationally based, but it is more than a good friendship…mentoring is not two people who just spend time together sharing". - Thomas Addington and Stephen Graves

"Mentoring is a supportive learning relationship between a caring individual who shares knowledge, experience and wisdom with another individual who is ready and willing to benefit from this exchange, to enrich their professional journey". - Suzanne Faure

"Mentoring is an important adult relationship since it creates a legitimate and special space where people can take chances by trying to be authentic about, and find meaning within their real-life professional experience". - D Doyon

"The purpose of mentoring is always to help the mentee to change something - to improve their performance, to develop their leadership qualities, to develop their partnership skills, to realise their vision, or whatever. This movement from where they are, ('here'), to where they want to be ('there'). - Mike Turner

"Mentoring involves primarily listening with empathy, sharing experience (usually mutually), professional friendship, developing insight through reflection, being a sounding board, encouraging" - David Clutterbuck

"Mentoring is an intense work relationship between senior and junior organisational members. The mentor has experience and power in the organisation, and personally advises, counsels, coaches and promotes the career development of the protégé" - Anne Stockdale

…and thoughts on what it takes to be a mentor

A mentor is…"an accomplished and experienced performer who takes a special, personal interest in helping to guide and develop a junior or more inexperienced person". - Stephen Gibb

"A mentor should have the qualities of experience, perspective and distance, challenging the mentee and using candour to force re-examination and reprioritisation without being a crutch". - Christopher Conway

"A mentor facilitates personal and professional growth in an individual by sharing the knowledge and insights that have been learned through the years. The desire to want to share these 'life experiences' is characteristic of a successful mentor". - Arizona National Guard

"Mentors in the workplace are simply people who help other people succeed". - Neave Hospital Southern Minnesota

"A mentor is a more experienced individual willing to share knowledge with someone less experienced in a relationship of mutual trust" - David Clutterbuck

A mentor is…"A trusted counsellor or guide. Normally a senior person to the associate. A mentor is a counsellor, coach, motivator, and role model. A mentor is a person who has a sincere desire to enhance the success of others. A person who volunteers time to help the associate". - Air National Guard USA

"A mentor is someone who can patiently assist with someone's growth and development in a given area. This assistance can come in the form of guidance, teaching, imparting of wisdom and experience". - Chicago Computer Society

"A great mentor has a knack for making us think we are better than we think we are. They force us to have a good opinion of ourselves, let us know they believe in us. They make us get more out of ourselves, and once we learn how good we really are, we never settle for anything less than our very best". - The Prometheus Foundation

Mentoring Definitions 
collected by Andrew Gibbons


Which of the above comments about mentoring do you like? Choose one or two to respond to. Explain why you think it captures your approach to mentoring or how it might encourage you to develop. 

Developing your Mentor

Draw a chart with 3 columns.

Make a list in the left hand column of about 8 skills that learners need in order to achieve on a learning programme that you teach.  These can be subject related or generic, e.g. research skills. 

In the middle column, list 6 – 8 things that, in your experience, learners find most difficult in learning your subject. 

Finally, reflect on your answers and, in the right hand column, identify strategies that could be used to help learners to address these difficulties and to rehearse and develop their knowledge and skills.

In order to complete this task successfully you should:

1. list at least FOUR skills needed for success in your subject area
2. identify the key areas of difficulty likely to be experienced by learners in developing these
3. outline strategies you or other teachers have used to address these difficulties

Mentoring Strategies

A helpful guide to understanding how best to support your mentee is provided by Furlong and Maynard (1995).  They propose that new teachers pass through five stages of development:

Early Idealism
This stage is often present before the new teacher enters the classroom for the first time.  The intending teacher may visualise themselves having an excellent relationship with their learners, being successful in enabling learning and establishing and maintaining a highly effective and enjoyable learning environment.  Those entering post compulsory education often justify their choice of career by saying that they want to work with learners who are highly motivated and want to learn.  In other words, they anticipate that there will be no classroom management issues present.

Personal survival
During the first few weeks in the classroom the new teacher can feel overwhelmed by the workload of preparing for teaching and selecting, adapting or creating resources (as well as meeting deadlines for written assignments for their teacher training course).  In addition, they often feel disappointed and possibly even out of their depth when they encounter behaviour management problems or apparent lack of interest or motivation to learn.

Seeing the difficulties
By now, the new teacher is becoming more confident and is beginning to see what they are doing well and what they need to do to improve.  They develop an appreciation of the challenges of the job and begin to work on strategies to overcome them.  One characteristic of this stage is that the mentee is likely to request feedback on how s/he is doing against the assessment requirements of their programme, and may also expect to know where s/he stands in relation to graded observations.

Hitting a plateau
Teachers who have reached this stage have generally found a way of teaching that works for them and are beginning to feel much more confident.  They may be reluctant to try out more new ideas and may believe they can teach in the same way from now on, regardless of the individual or collective needs of their learners.

Moving on
This is the stage at which the teacher can become a true reflective practitioner, someone who is able to cope with externally driven change and be truly focused on meeting their learners’ needs rather than on the delivery of syllabus content.  A key feature of such a teacher’s approach to their work would be a commitment to continuous improvement of their practice.

Furlong and Maynard point out that the mentor’s role changes to match the specific needs that may be present at each stage.  On the chart below, note down the strategies you might need to use to support your mentee and facilitate their progression to the next stage

Possible mentoring strategies:

                                            

·         Personal survival

·         Seeing the difficulties

·         Hitting a plateau

·         Moving on

                                              

In order to complete this task successfully make a response in each of the four boxes in which you suggest mentoring strategies and reflect on the likely needs of the mentee  (Draft your ideas in word first; when you are satisfied with what you have written, cut and paste them as comments.) 

Mentoring Models

Activity - what happens if ...

A particularly important part of your role as a mentor is to facilitate your mentee’s growth by providing an appropriate blend of challenge and support.  This means that you should encourage them to apply theories and models of good practice that they are learning on their teacher education programme, or suggestions that you offer them from your experience.  At the same time you will enable them to analyse and reflect on their own learning and teaching, as well as that of others, in a spirit of constructive criticism and in a non-threatening atmosphere.  It is vital that you use your own experience to provide the right balance of challenge and support at each stage of the mentee’s development, just as you would with your own learners.

Daloz (1986), shows the effect that different combinations of challenge and support can have on the trainee teacher’s growth.  His model is based on two intersecting axes, representing challenge and support that move from high to low, thus creating four quadrants, as shown here.

What do you think if the right balance between challenge and support is not achieved. Describe what happens using the four combinations below. 

High Challenge / Low Support
Low Challenge / Low support

High Challenge / High Support

Low Challenge / High Support

Mentoring Relationship

Reflection Activity 4: Avoiding the pitfalls

What would you do if…..   Scenario 1.    You have observed your mentee recently and noted that there were problems with ensuring that all the students are fully engaged in learning.  When you discuss the session afterwards and give clear evidence of the problem from your notes, your mentee becomes agitated and refuses to accept that anything can be done about students who are unmotivated and don’t want to learn. Following this dialogue, you provide comprehensive, positive and constructive feedback in written form, giving concrete suggestions for development.  You suggest that your mentee reflect on this and consider changes that could be made.  The next time you observe a session, no changes have been made and, at the feedback session afterwards, your mentee says that he is beginning to feel that teaching is ‘not for him’. Scenario 2.    You have agreed with your mentee that you will meet for half an hour once a week at an agreed time to review progress, discuss any issues arising from the past week and agree times for lesson observations, co-planning sessions, etc.  You have also agreed that at other times you will keep in touch via email and have also given your mentee your mobile number. It is now halfway into the autumn term and you receive an email message indicating that your mentee, who is on an in-service programme, feels unable to cope with the pressures of the classroom.  Your mentee starts phoning you frequently to ask for help, and each time you do your best to suggest possible strategies.  After two more days, your mentee phones you late in the evening in a distressed state and keeps you talking for over an hour.  Scenario 3.    Both you and your mentee are delivering different modules of a vocational learning programme to the same group of students.  Your mentee has been using some very effective active learning strategies to which the students have responded with enthusiasm.  Feedback gathered from the students indicates that, whilst they have no serious criticisms of lessons delivered by you and other members of the teaching team, they particularly enjoy your mentee’s lessons. After completing these three scenarios, re-read and reflect on your responses before continuing.  Once you are satisfied with your responses, post one of them on the Reflection Activity 4 blog and the other two into your diary. In order to complete this task successfully you should: Write a response of at least 100 words to each of the three scenarios

Mentoring: an introduction

The Qualities and Role of a Mentor: Activity 1

Before trying out this activity read the article: Why do teachers in training need mentors?

The role of the mentor benefits both partners in the mentoring transaction. Both mentor and mentee have something to gain.

What do you bring to the mentoring role?

Write a list of at least 5 qualities that you think you can (or could) bring to the role of mentor.

(Draft your ideas in word first; when you are satisfied with what you have written, cut and paste them as comments.) 

Many different words have been used to describe mentoring in the context of teacher education.  A selection of these is given below.  

Reviewer  * Guardian  * Friend  * Leader  * Role-Model   *  Protector  *  Guide *  Expert  *  Motivator  *  Facilitator *  Diagnoser *  Developer-of-talent   *  Instructor  * Advocate   * Colleague   * Assessor  *Appraiser  * Counsellor  * Teacher  * Consultant  * Coach

Identify at least 3 aspects of the mentor’s role using the words above

(Draft your ideas in word first; when you are satisfied with what you have written, cut and paste them as comments.)