Section archive - Mentoring & Supervision

This article aims to describe a qualitative action research study into the collective experiences of establishing a mentoring culture within a research triad consisting of a university professor together with a doctoral student and a master’s level student who served as research assistants (RA). The authors believe the establishment of the mentoring culture facilitated the identification of individual needs within the triad, which in turn allowed for increased confidence, adaptive support, and appropriate skills development necessary for all members to contribute to the successful completion of the project. The authors concluded that the application of the model to graduate RAships with multiple participants might lead to enhancement of working environments and professional growth due to multiple contact-points and exposures to specific tasks or skill-sets around which the work is organized.

This paper examines seven literacy coaches’ digital note-taking practices using mobile technology and their influence on reflective practice. The study investigated the coaches’ transition from note-taking by paper and pencil to the note-taking application Evernote. Findings suggest that successful integration and future acceptance of mobile technology for reflective practices depends not only on its usability, but also on the types of professional development provided to the user.

The purpose of this article is to explore why mentoring is preferred over coaching when supporting pre-service teachers, compared with other stages in a teacher’s career where coaching is more readily available. The findings point towards an imbalance in the use of mentoring and coaching within education, with a particular underuse of coaching for pre-service teachers. Some mentoring interventions are founded on a deficit model; therefore mentors of pre-service teachers could be helped and supported to make greater use of a mentor-coach integrated asset-based approach, which encourages the use of reflection and self-directed learning.

The focus of this study is the practice of mentoring as perceived by key participants, and the backdrop is the changing training context. Particularly, this research aims to understand mentoring of student teachers as a practice-based learning process situated within the school as a workplace, and for the purposes of sustaining the working practices and staffing of that workplace. Experiences of mentoring in this specific case study of initial teacher education vary but there are common constraints and affordances. This research suggests that the wider value placed on mentoring within the workplace-orientated context of initial teacher education matters. Furthermore, the socio-cultural context within which mentoring occurs also has a significant impact, and indeed the extent to which the mentors are afforded the necessary time and mentor education to fulfil their role.