Expectations to mentoring as support for professional development

Abstract

Mentoring is acknowledged as a means to support professional development for teachers. However, mentoring has multiple meanings and may be practiced as supervision, support or collaborative self-development for new as well as experienced teachers. The aim of this Norwegian study is to get an understanding of what expectations newly-qualified teachers, their mentors and their leaders have to mentoring and professional development and thereby to identify what kind of mentoring is needed. Data is collected through questionnaires and focus group conversations. The result shows a discrepancy between school leaders’ expectations on one hand and those of mentors’ and newly qualified teachers’ on the other. While school leaders call for supervision and for teachers’ opportunities to join external courses, mentors and newly-qualified teachers ask for mentoring rooted in classroom- activities. One implication of the study is to introduce an induction period for novice teachers where they are gradually included in the organization. Another implication is to use educated mentors as resources for school development, not only for newly-qualified, but also for experienced teachers. Implications for politicians are to provide resources and for school leaders to provide space and protected time for mentoring and professional learning at all levels to ensure sustained school development.