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The researcher emphasised with current research the need for an induction programme for beginning teachers in the South African context to overcome the challenges experienced by beginning teachers while bridging from pre-service teaching to in-service teaching and to introduce and illuminate the design of a new multimodal induction model.

The researcher followed a narrative approach by discussing previous research regarding the insufficient pre-service training beginning teachers received and the lack of a structured induction programme in the South African context.

Research has shown that South African beginning teachers have faced similar difficulties as beginning teachers worldwide, but South African beginning teachers are not subjected to formal induction programmes. While the South African Department of Basic Education offered guidelines for the beginning teacher orientation programme, there is almost no evidence in the literature that schools follow such guidelines.

The implications of this paper give other researchers in this field a broader perspective on how the new multimodal induction model can make a measurable contribution to the school, the mentor, the beginning teacher and, most importantly, the learner.

The Department of Basic Education in South Africa and Principals need to follow the guidelines of this multimodal induction model to retain beginning teachers and improve the performance of learners.

This is a new model developed by the researcher to explore the benefits of promoting excellence in the teaching profession through a technology-rich, integrated induction programme to increase the productivity, retention and leadership of beginning teachers, enhance and prevent the loss of human capital, with the ultimate goal of improving learners' growth and performance.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to present an Australian mentor preparation program designed to prepare experienced teachers to mentor beginning teachers and second, to identify and discuss mentor teachers’ personal and professional outcomes and the wider contextual implications emerging from the Mentoring Beginning Teachers (MBT) mentor preparation program.

This case study, situated within Queensland, Australia, draws on qualitative data collected via interviews and focus groups with mentor teachers who participated in a large-scale systemic mentor preparation program. The program positions mentoring as supportive, based on a process of collaborative inquiry and encouraging critically reflexive praxis with the mentor professional learning focusing on reflection, dialog and criticality.

Initial findings show the outcomes of the mentor preparation program include building a common language and shared understanding around the role of mentor, consolidating a collaborative inquiry approach to mentoring and providing opportunity for self-reflection and critique around mentoring approaches and practices. Some findings, such as a greater self-awareness and validation of mentors’ own teaching performance, have confirmed previous research. However, the originality of this research lies in the personal and professional impacts for mentor teachers and the wider contextual impacts that have emerged from the study.

The study highlights the impact of the mentor preparation program on the professional learning of teacher-mentors and contributes to the current lack of empirical research that identifies the personal and professional impacts for mentors and the wider contextual factors that impact effective mentoring in schools.

The originality of this research lies in the personal and professional impacts for mentor teachers and the wider contextual impacts more broadly that have emerged from the study.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mentoring experience through positioning theory lens. It discusses, specifically, the mentoring experience of beginning teachers and mentors in a school in Singapore.

This study uses a case study approach. The data are collected mainly through interviews with beginning teachers and mentors.

The findings suggest that beginning teachers who had an emotionally assuring mentoring experience had mentors who positioned themselves as emotional providers. Those who had a professionally fulfilling mentoring experience had mentors who positioned themselves beyond the providers of emotional support. Beginning teachers who had a less satisfying experience had mentors who positioned themselves as physically and emotionally unavailable. Mentors who had a professionally frustrating mentoring experience had beginning teachers who challenged their positioning. Those who had a personally enjoyable and professionally satisfying mentoring experience positioned themselves as not averse to learning from beginning teachers.

The findings suggest that schools may want to give more attention to mentor preparation, and it should not be a one‐off exercise. The findings also suggest that it may be a good idea to also consider a pre‐mentoring session for both mentors and beginning teachers before they embark on the mentoring proper.

Although this study is at best a research in progress, it, however, signifies the first step towards initiating a dialogue in this aspect as there are hardly any studies that mentoring particularly in the context of Singapore. For the teaching profession in Singapore, this is especially a significant first step.

A field study involving beginning teachers in elementary schools documents a hesitation by beginning teachers to ask for assistance and a hesitation by experienced teachers to offer it. Reasons given by both beginning and experienced teachers for this apparent barrier to professional consultation suggest that the beginners fear being seen as incompetent and their experienced colleagues fear being seen as interfering. This barrier is related to the more general work situation of the elementary teacher, with its high emphasis on autonomy in the selection and implementation of teaching methodologies.

The aim of the researchers in this endeavor is to identify the challenges and obstacles faced by beginning teachers in higher education. This study also explores practical implications and what adaptation can be utilized in order to have high performance of the beginning teachers.

Researchers have applied qualitative and quantitative technique to collect and interpret data. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted from the 40 beginning teachers of the case study university in order to identify various hindering factors of high performance.

Research results indicate that by addressing the 11 major hindering factors of beginning teachers' high performance, i.e. less teaching exposure, overburden, strict evaluation, lack of training, insufficient material and supplies, lack of effective communication, student counseling problems, classroom discipline problems, difficulties in assessing students' work, least expectations of career in teaching and misbehavior of students, the performance level of beginning teachers in higher education can be enhanced.

The current research addresses the most neglected area about teachers' performance management, that is problems of higher education teachers in their early careers. This exploration of beginning teachers' hindering issues can play a vital role in developing human resource development strategies in universities. The present research can prove to be a significant initiator for beginning teachers as they will get a glimpse of what problem areas they could face.

The purpose of this paper is to explore beginning teachers’ perceptions of the role of the mentor in the early stages of developing a professional identity. The beginning teachers in the authors’ study are defined as having been awarded qualified teacher status at the end of an initial teacher education programme or having completed their first term as a new teacher with responsibility for a class of pupils.

The research design was a qualitative, inductive study. The concepts of communities of practice, legitimate peripheral participation and power dynamics within a community underpinned this study. The data set was collected over a period of 18 months, through six focus groups and 40 questionnaires with beginning teachers across 34 schools altogether. The data set was analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA).

The findings indicated that the ways in which mentors use their power to recognise (or not) the legitimacy of beginning teachers as being part of the school community influences the development of beginning teachers’ professional identities. The thematic analysis of the data indicated the different types of support that mentors may provide: “belonging”, “emotional”, “pedagogical” and “space”.

Further research into how mentors perceive their role in supporting new entrants into the profession is needed.

These findings are pertinent in England, as the increase in school-based initial teacher training provision will intensify the role of school mentors. These findings will be of value to other countries that are moving towards an increase in school-based teacher training.

The purpose of this paper is to present how the social learning theory of Bourdieu (1990; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990) can be a valuable tool to investigate mentoring relationships of beginning teachers with their more experienced colleagues. Bourdieu’s work provides a lens to magnify the social exchanges that occur during the mentoring relationship, so that what tends to be hidden in the “logic of practice” (Bourdieu, 1990) is drawn into view. The paper shows how the mentor is ascribed power that enables domination, and how this tends to result in cultural reproduction. A case study is used to identify aspects of social and cultural learning that demonstrate this process.

The paper draws on a year-long narrative inquiry of beginning secondary teachers’ mentoring experiences in the state of Victoria, Australia. The data were generated through in-depth interviews and participants’ diary entries to answer the research question “What personal, professional knowledge is developed through beginning teachers’ early experiences with induction and mentoring?”

The researcher found that attention to minutiae of mentor/mentee interactions can suggest how symbolic violence shapes personal, professional knowledge.

This small-scale study has some limitations. However, as an illustration of organisational learning, with strong connections to Bourdieu’s theoretical work, it can provide some illuminating insights into how policy can be enacted at the micro-level. In particular, there are implications for how mentor teachers engage in their roles and understand the potential impact of their interactions with beginning teachers.

This study applies Bourdieu’s framework of cultural reproduction as an analysis tool for a qualitative study of the mentoring of beginning teachers.

The purpose of this exploratory article is to address the questions of teacher attrition and retention by examining the policies supporting beginning teachers in different jurisdictions (provinces and territories) in Canada through teacher induction and mentorship programs.

This research study relied on the collection of documents as the primary method of data collection. Both policy documents as means of external communication and the informal responses to formal policies by various stakeholders were analyzed in a complementary fashion in this study. The study examined numerous government documents, websites, program/policy memoranda, newsletters, as well as academic reviews pertaining to beginning teacher induction programs across Canada.

Data analysis revealed significant policy variability across the provinces and localities, with comprehensive induction programs instituted only by the educational authorities in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Northwest Territories. A fundamental building‐block of the induction programs was the creation of a formal mentoring program that matched experienced teachers with teachers who were new to the profession and/or to the province/territory.

Policy makers should consider the implementation of structured induction programs that successfully inculcate new teachers into school cultures and result in decreased teacher attrition and increased retention of beginning teachers. Mentoring is at the core of successful induction programs. Evident in all policy‐mandated induction programs under study was the importance of the school principal's role in effective functioning of mentoring programs. This aspect of the principal's role should be further examined and researched to understand the administrator role in the implementation and functioning of effective induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers not only in Canada but worldwide.

In considering implementation of teacher induction programs, policymakers need to be aware that comprehensive, intensive support programs for new educators are both an effective and an efficient public investment. If mandated by policies at the macro levels as part of formal induction programs, mentoring programs have the potential to transform schools into collaborative places by establishing a culture of mentoring in schools.

Despite the perceived and actual benefits, government‐instituted induction programs for new teachers are not very common in Canada. While the discussions of such programs are certainly present in the educational literature, this exploratory pan‐Canadian review of induction and mentoring policies has the ability to inform provincial and territorial policymakers about the variability in institutionalizing those programs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore ways teachers undergoing induction via the Career Advancement and Development of Recruits and Experienced (CADRE) Teachers Project felt empowered and supported in their well-being through mentoring and coaching.

Surveys about CADRE Project impact were e-mailed to 675 current and former participants. Out of 438 surveys returned, researchers used homogeneous sampling to identify 341 teacher respondents. Researchers used qualitative thematic analysis to determine ways teachers felt supported.

Coaching and mentoring supported CADRE Project participants’ well-being through empowerment (theme). Sub-themes included: growth, collaboration, networking, improvement and resources.

Possibilities for future research include exploring the role of mentors/coaches, tracking teachers’ leadership roles and investigating the link between induction and teacher retention in more detail.

Opportunities for growth and collaboration are cornerstones of first-year teacher support. These support systems can lead to a sense of belonging, develop a mindset for continuous improvement and create long-term networking opportunities. The support teachers need to empower them and maintain their well-being changes with each first-year teacher phase.

Few studies exist on induction programs with the longevity of the CADRE Project. The high survey response rate with overwhelmingly positive responses suggests that CADRE is unique in its support of beginning teachers’ well-being through the first-year teacher phases, specifically due to the combination of mentoring and coaching beginning teachers receive.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the benefits of an unintended mentoring relationship between researchers and beginning teachers during a longitudinal, qualitative study. The study highlights the opportunity for teacher preparation to serve as a bridge to close the gap in learning between the relatively theoretical world of teacher preparation and practical world of classroom teaching.

The study analyzed extensive qualitative data relating to two beginning teachers over a five-year period. As a theoretical framework this study drew from Lave and Wenger's (1991) theories of legitimate peripheral participation and communities of practice. In addition, significant parallels were drawn to applications of figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998) which addressed the manner in which teachers were able to “figure themselves” into teaching contexts.

This study provides support for developing communities of practice to bridge the gap of support between teacher preparation and the teaching profession. The engagement and design of the support remains crucial as the study recommends creating a support network between two individuals with an established, trusting relationship and comparable theoretical groundings. Finally, the relationship must be built around non-evaluative, questioning strategies which encourage teacher inquiry.

Although the long-term relationship between university researcher and participant remains somewhat rare, it is important to highlight the mentoring potential – and associated benefits – of such relationships. The established trust and bridge of ideas between a researcher and a participant completing preparation at the same university are key factors in successful support. This study is relevant for teacher preparation programs and professional development organizations as they work to more effectively support beginning teachers’ transition into the profession.