External mentoring for new teachers: mentor learning for a change agenda
International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education
ISSN: 2046-6854
Article publication date: 4 September 2017
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report on a qualitative study of the learning and development of 70 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: first, the manifest themes that appeared at declarative level, and second, 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 generalisability 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.
Keywords
Citation
Daly, C. and Milton, E. (2017), "External mentoring for new teachers: mentor learning for a change agenda", International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 178-195. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-03-2017-0021
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited