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This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as “street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice.

To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time.

Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools.

The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves.

There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy.

The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context.

School-university partnerships (SUPs) probe a range of P12 challenges and interests, with teacher residencies being chief among them. Because historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have impressive track records (Hill-Jackson, 2017) and knowhow (Marchitello & Trinidad, 2019; Petchauer & Mawhinney, 2017) in preparing teacher candidates to work effectively in diverse schools, this paper seeks deeper understandings of the types of SUPs for teacher residency collaborations employed by traditional versus HBCU programs.

This article draws upon the self-study as a methodology to review a SUP for a teacher residency at an HBCU in the southwestern United States to illustrate an equity-centric model.

Leveraging an equity and third space perspective, three separate approaches to the SUPs are unpacked to establish the outline for this proposal: ceremonial, conventional and communal teacher residency approaches.

A novel typology of three distinct approaches to SUPs for teacher residencies is outlined to establish the extent to which equity is foregrounded among teacher residencies.

This article aims to contribute to a clearer understanding of the importance of mentor preparation and provide recommendations for effective mentor preparation programmes based on the literature.

A narrative review of a range of literature focussing on the importance and characteristics of effective mentor practice and preparation.

Many mentors working in educational contexts lack adequate preparation, and a shift in mentoring practice from a mentor as expert approach, which mentors are likely revert to without training, to a more collaborative relationship in line with educative mentoring is recommended. Relationship building, working collaboratively and encouraging critical reflection are essential mentoring capabilities, and can be supported by participation in effective mentoring preparation programmes. Characteristics of these programmes include: providing time for mentors to reflect on their personal capabilities and attitudes; strengthening their knowledge about mentoring and learning a range of approaches and tools.

Implications for mentor preparation include consideration of curricula that focus on the nature of effective mentoring relationships, provision of effective observation-based feedback and the facilitation of critical reflection. Blended learning models appear to have potential and organisational leaders need to recognise and value mentoring to ensure that it is prioritised.

This article makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature of effective mentor preparation programmes.

Education, and especially the life of a teacher, is constantly evolving. Teachers' roles and responsibilities have become more complicated and multifaceted over time. Therefore, they have to invest a great deal of time, energy, and effort to navigate the demands and complexities of their role. In the last 20 years, education has changed in response to increased workload, the rise of high-stakes testing and accountability, social-emotional and behavioral challenges among students, school safety concerns, equity concerns, and now the coronavirus pandemic. These factors have been linked to high stress and teacher burnout, which leads to more teachers leaving their jobs (Arvidsson et al., 2019). Nonetheless, those who endure the flames of burnout do so because they are resilient in the face of adversity and persistent in their commitment to the call of teaching and learning. This chapter examines the effects of stress and burnout among three alternatively certified teachers and the behaviors and strategies these educational first responders employ to build resilience and persistence in their service to the students who shape our future.

This study explores how one novice teacher navigated his first-year teaching sixth-grade social studies.

One-sixth grade novice teacher was observed during his unit on the Islamic Empire. The teacher was interviewed before the unit began to understand his approach to combating Islamophobia and interviewed again after the unit so he could reflect on the unit and discuss if he believed he had accomplished his original goal. Classroom artifacts (handouts, slide decks, etc.) were collected.

The findings highlight the various forces that impacted the decisions the teacher made in the classroom. Lack of support from administration and various colleagues left the teacher feeling overwhelmed and unable to accomplish his goals. While the teacher started the unit with a clear purpose for teaching against Islamophobia, he ultimately taught a unit where students memorized discrete pieces of information.

This study adds to previous research on the need for providing administrative support for novice teachers to be able to teach in ambitious ways by highlighting the numerous shortcomings.

Teachers are an adaptive group of professionals and in this chapter, we explore the ways that teachers can develop themselves as leaders, even in the absence of strong support or leadership. We explore the manner that these skill sets and strengths can be cultivated, providing lived examples of how the authors have developed themselves. The ways that teachers can follow in the footsteps of the authors is outlined in clearly defined steps. By drawing on previous literature, we provide seven strong claims of developing middle leadership knowledge and skill sets beyond your school. Much of this development and community development work that develops and sharpens leadership skills can be explored through online fora and social media tools. These tools allow skill development, professional learning, and exposure to a broad range of education stakeholders and groups; for future pathways in school leadership roles and leading beyond school gate.

This research seeks to explore the potential of Lesson Study as a vehicle to support professional development (PD) in a rural, Irish primary school. Lesson Study was utilised to design and implement integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) lessons with young children (ages 4–7 years).

Three teachers were introduced to and participated in four cycles of Lesson Study over the course of one school year. Qualitative data were generated from interviews, collaborative weekly meetings and observation sheets.

Analysis suggests that Lesson Study supported the development of a culture of collaboration and provided an opportunity for teachers to share their knowledge. Findings also reveal that Lesson Study motivated teachers to reflect on their role within the classroom and enabled them to move away from teacher-led approaches. Although teachers perceived Lesson Study to be a beneficial form of PD, factors constrained their engagement, including practical, cultural and sustainability challenges.

The study explores the adaptability of Lesson Study in first level education in the context of STEM education. It reveals teachers’ first experience of Lesson Study, given its stark contrast to more “traditional” PD experiences they are accustomed to. This article will, therefore, be of interest to teachers, school leaders and policy makers.

This paper contributes initial findings to a currently under-researched area, Lesson Study in a rural context. This study also combines Lesson Study with STEM education, which has not been widely explored.

By engaging levels of W/writerliness, this paper aims to identify how English Language Arts teachers’ personal and professional W/writerly identities impact their performance of pedagogical agency.

In this narrative inquiry, the author draws on theories of writing identity and agency to analyze how four mid-career English teachers’ personal beliefs around writing intersect with their professional practice. Data sources include interviews, journal entries and classroom observations.

Nuanced differences in teachers’ W/writerly identities produce more substantial differences in their pedagogy, especially impacting their performance of agency to (re)define successful writing outcomes and to balance process and product in their writing instruction.

This paper presents one method to expand preservice and in-service English Language Arts (ELA) practitioners’ approaches to teaching writing even alongside limitations of their teaching context by (1) emphasizing their ownership over their own writing in university methods courses; (2) leading teachers on an exploration of W/writerly identities; and (3) investigating ways teachers can transfer their personal and professional learning to students via their own pedagogical agency.

The study extends the work of scholars in the National Writing Project, suggesting that nuanced exploration of ELA teachers’ W/writerly identities in preservice and in-service settings could increase their sense of agency to work against and within cultures of standardization.

This study aims to develop a self-reflection scale useful for teachers to improve their skills and to clarify the Japanese teachers’ characteristics during mathematics lesson observation (MLO). In MLO, it is important to understand the lesson plan in advance to clarify observation points, and we aim to develop a scale including these points.

Based on the pre-questionnaire survey, nine perspectives and two situations for MLO were extracted. From these, a questionnaire for MLO was created. The results obtained from 161 teachers were examined, and exploratory factor analysis was conducted. ANOVA was conducted to analyze the effect of differences across the duration of teaching experience on the identified factors.

We developed a self-reflection scale consisting of 14 items with three factors: [B1] focus on instructional techniques and evaluation, [B2] focus on proactive problem-solving lesson development and [B3] focus on the mathematical background of the learning content. While duration of teaching experience showed no effect, three factors of the self-reflection scale for MLO showed a significant effect. Further multiple comparisons revealed the degree of focus was [B2]>[B1]>[B3].

Teachers who use this developed scale may grasp the strengths and weaknesses of their own MLO, which leads to self-improvement. The perspectives emphasized in lesson observation are the same when creating lesson plans and implementing lessons, leading to lesson improvement. Furthermore, based on the characteristics of teachers revealed, new training programs regarding MLO can lead to higher-quality lesson studies.