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After many years working with mentors for beginning teachers, both through a formal, Ministry-sponsored program, known in Ontario as the New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) and through a university-based Faculty of Education practicum, the authors cultivated an understanding of the value of both mentoring and the communities that foster it. The authors observed that pre-service mentors are not offered the same level of support as their induction mentor counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to explore the aforementioned gap by bringing together a small group of pre-service mentor teachers with several highly trained induction mentors from the NTIP program in two full days of professional development: one day of learning and community building among mentors, and the second day of collaboration by pre-service mentors alongside their teacher candidates (TCs). The authors learned that pre-service mentors need and desire professional learning and community mentoring support to develop foundational understandings about the role of mentors and the skills and strategies that support an effective mentoring practice. As a result, the authors advocate for sustainable professional development that leverages existing programs and the clarification of the pre-service mentoring role through continued study and collaboration over time.

This qualitative study was designed to explore, understand, and interpret pre-service mentor teachers’ experience of professional learning about mentoring and the role of the mentor, including their responses to participating in a like community of learners. This study brought together educators serving as pre-service and induction mentors to engage them in formal professional learning about mentoring, within an environment that created the conditions for collaboration and community in the context of learning about mentoring.

This study surfaces the insights related to the types of knowledge and skills that mentors developed in this study in addition to pointing toward the knowledge and skills they perceive to be necessary to their effective participation in their roles as mentors. The study also identifies both the value that pre-service mentors perceived as a result of being invited into a learning space and the dynamics of professional learning and dialogue in collaboration with their induction mentor counterparts and their pre-service mentees.

This research study explores a research gap in the area of mentoring as it relates to pre-service mentors or cooperating teachers. Its unique feature involves bringing together two previously segmented groups of mentors: pre-service mentors supporting developing TCs and induction mentors supporting novice teachers. It describes the value and impact of mentoring as understood by pre-service mentors, in particular identifying the reciprocal benefits they experienced. The authors also investigate and shed light on the value and impact of pre-service mentor participation in a community that is intentionally created to support their professional learning about their role. It provides recommendations for practice and indicates areas of potential research.

This study surfaces the potential benefits of professional learning and community for pre-service mentors who play an integral role in supporting TCs in the completion of their education degrees. It makes practical recommendations which point to uniting pre-service and in-service mentors as participants in learning communities that build leadership capacity and advance mentoring knowledge and skills to impact the mentoring relationship. This study advocates for a restructuring existing practice in the area of pre-service mentoring to encourage professional learning and interaction that connects the work of pre-service and in-service mentors, bridging two currently separate mentoring communities.

This study offers a re-visioning of mentoring as a community endeavor. It advances the notion that, supported by a targeted program of professional development and participation in communities of inquiry, knowledge creation and mobilization, mentors can build their mentoring and leadership capacity and extend their professional impact.

Scotland's Teacher Induction Scheme, which covers new teachers in the state sector, was introduced in 2002, before which there was a 2-year probation period. This chapter covers teacher probation prior to 2002; the components of the Teacher Induction Scheme; allocation of induction year teachers; the Standard for Full Registration; support and professional learning and tensions in the scheme, namely mentors' dual support and assessment roles, the vulnerable position of induction year teachers and the role of universities in teacher induction. While there have been some minor changes to the Teacher Induction Scheme and the Flexible Route (originally called the Alternative Route) to Registration, there has not been an official review or overhaul since their introduction in 2002. Therefore, this chapter concludes with suggestions on possible future developments.

Mentoring can improve novice teacher effectiveness and reduce teacher attrition, yet the depth and breadth of mentoring can vary greatly within and between schools. The purpose of this paper is to identify the extent to which a school’s administrative context is associated with the focus and frequency of novice teacher-mentor interactions.

By estimating logistic regression models, the author identified the association between novices’ perceptions of their working conditions and the content and frequency of interactions with their formally assigned mentors.

When novice teachers perceived positive administrator-teacher relations in their schools and reported that administrative duties did not interfere with their core work as teachers, they were more likely to frequently interact with their mentors around issues of curriculum.

Studies of new teacher induction need to more fully account for elements of school-level organizational context which influence novice teacher-mentor interactions, specifically related to administrative decision making and climate. Future research should seek to identify the extent to which formal policy related to new teacher induction is supported by broader elements of the organizational context.

In addition to implementing sound formal policies related to teacher mentoring, school administrators should seek to foster a school climate that promotes administrator-teacher and teacher-teacher collaboration to promote improved teacher mentoring.

This study builds upon previous research by drawing attention to the association between broad measures of school-level administrative context related to the quality of working conditions and teacher mentoring.

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.

The purpose of this article is to identify and examine root causes of the failure of school‐based mentoring to realize its full potential.

The article draws on the re‐analysis of data from two major mixed‐method empirical studies carried out in England. It focuses on data generated from interviews with beginner teachers and mentors in both primary and secondary schools.

The findings point to a failure to create appropriate conditions for effective mentoring in England at the level of the mentoring relationship, the school, and the national policy context.

Implications of the findings include the need to achieve a greater degree of informed consensus on the meaning and purposes of mentoring in teacher education, and to ensure that mentors of beginner teachers are appropriately trained for the role.

The article identifies the practice of judgemental mentoring or “judgementoring” as an obstacle to school‐based mentoring realizing its potential and an impediment to the professional learning and wellbeing of beginner teachers. It also points to worrying indications that judgementoring may be becoming, through accrued experiences, the default understanding of mentoring in England.

Although the importance of teacher induction is widely acknowledged, how teachers experience inductions, particularly those conducted in under-resourced areas, remains underexplored.

This study narrates a novice teacher's induction experience in a Chinese high school, from the perspectives of professional capital and community, social realist theory, practice architecture and teacher agency. The participant, Ming, reflected on a broad array of formal and informal induction activities and participated during the induction period.

Through the three-dimensional narrative space, namely broadening, burrowing and storying and re-storying, five themes emerged from Ming's induction experience: (1) heightened awareness of the meaning of teaching, (2) interacting with various professional communities, (3) professional identity tension and development, (4) the discursive influence of various aspects of culture and (5) the influence on future professional development. Overall, this narrative study shows that teacher expertise and identity development play central roles in teacher induction, and context acts as an important mediating factor in teacher induction. These findings echo the importance of teachers' agency in inductions. The implications for facilitating novice teacher induction are also discussed.

This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of a novice teacher's induction experience in China from the perspectives of practice architectures, professional capital and professional community. The conclusion highlights the importance of professional capital and agency during Ming's induction period. This paper unpacks the complexity of teacher induction by revealing new ways of thinking about induction.

For decades, special education has been plagued by shortages of fully qualified teachers. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was designed to address the problem of teacher shortage by easing entry and promoting alternative routes (ARs). However, the law was not specific to special education, and the logic on which it is based fits the special education context poorly. Nonetheless, ARs have proliferated in special education. In this chapter, we consider the impact of NCLB generally and AR preparation specifically on special education teacher (SET) shortages. We describe the population of SETs, review research on special education ARs, and consider the problem of diversifying the workforce. We also review research on teacher attrition and policies designed to reduce it.

This paper aims to examine how – and whether – members of an industry cluster share knowledge through networking as a means to improving competitive advantage and, in particular, whether trust is present in the knowledge‐sharing process.

The research involved three surveys utilizing a relationship marketing orientation (RMO) that were conducted at intervals (in 2004, 2008 and 2010) in addition to interviews with key cluster members, which were also conducted over a seven‐year period.

Knowledge sharing and integration were found to mediate the relationship between RMO and competitive advantage in 2004 and 2010 but not in 2008. Lower mean scores for trust were also found in 2008.

The limitations are that the respondent numbers were small. It is recommended that one more survey is conducted in 2013 to determine whether the interventions reported here, the recruitment of new cluster staff and the continuing growth of the cluster, influence the comparative results over time.

Knowledge sharing and collaboration within industry clusters requires active and discerning facilitation, particularly where new members are concerned.

The paper adds value to the current research on industry clusters and knowledge sharing as surveys were conducted over a seven‐year period that tracked changes as the cluster grew. The findings highlight the necessity of focusing on member relationships/collaboration during times of growth and change.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from an initial year of mentoring and induction provided to new assistant principals (APs) served by the Kansas Educational Leadership Institute (KELI) and to identify program characteristics that support leadership development for first year APs.

The current research utilized surveys and interviews for data collection. The participants included 12 new AP mentees and five mentors currently participating in the KELI program. Two comparable questionnaires are designed to examine perceptions of both groups on the effectiveness of the program in general, mentoring/induction approaches used, and the appropriateness of the intensity of engagement required. The semi-structured interviews provide contextualized understanding of the same aspects examined in the surveys.

The findings reveal that mentees found mentoring/induction experiences with KELI highly valuable. The mentor-mentee matching mechanism together with other structured components in the KELI program such as mentor coaching training and multiple professional learning opportunities was instrumental for promoting a trustful relationship, reciprocal learning, and personalized and growth-based assistance that are key to successful mentoring/induction experiences.

The study findings will inform the research-based requirements in KELI’s model and further define effective components in serving the unique and varied responsibilities inherent in the AP position.

There is a need to identify elements in effective mentoring and induction support for new APs and to encapsulate best practices to further develop skills and dispositions for this important leadership position.

Teachers in the initial stages of their career need support. The quality of their development will depend strongly on the kind of support that is given to them during induction. In this chapter, the author explains how the induction years need to be seen as a distinctive part of the teacher education continuum, building on initial teacher education (ITE) and feeding into continuing professional development (CPD). The University of Malta's Faculty of Education proposed national strategy for induction of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) stresses the need for an effective design of induction programs in terms of the type of activities, the involvement of teacher education institutions and the role of the mentor – all of which can vary, depending on the learning needs of the NQT involved. Such programs will ensure that the support provided creates opportunities to relate back to initial teacher education and to prepare teachers for career-long continuing professional development. The aim of this discussion is to evaluate the current state of professional opportunities available for beginning teachers in Malta, and to discuss an effective approach which facilitates experienced teachers to build their capacities to play a key role, through mentoring, in their new colleagues' professional learning journey.