Reflection on your ability to hold weekly mentoring meetings

Mentors need to develop their self-reflection skills and knowledge about teachers’ professional development. The ability to analyse and question your mentoring practice is an important element of your professional development. If the mentoring of a beginning teacher is viewed as an act of professional learning, then it is possible to argue that the mentoring process is similar to the learning process but that the 'learner' is not the pupil but the beginning teacher.

One way to engage in this reflection is to make judgements about your own developmental needs so that you can better support a beginning teacher to make steady progress. It is possible to explore your mentoring meetings from multiple perspectives. For example, you may wish to consider it from a structural perspective in terms of have you been given a timetabled period of time in which to carry out the weekly meetings? Or from the management perspective in terms of do you have adequate time and space in which to plan, conduct and evaluate the weekly meetings? Alternatively, you may wish to reflect on the effectiveness of the meetings from an outcome perspective by reflecting on the extent to which a beginning teacher is making progress in their classroom practice and more widely as a teacher (which may be, in part, as a consequence of the regular weekly meetings). Another way is to look at the effectiveness of the weekly meetings from the perspective of the impact that a beginning teacher is having on the attainment and achievement of pupils they are working with. Finally, you may wish to adopt a more personal development perspective in terms of how the experience of mentoring a beginning teacher generally and through weekly meetings have explicitly impacted on your own personal development by asking questions such as what characteristic of an effective mentor have I embodied this week? By engaging in such critical professional reflection, you might also see the development and growth of your mentoring skills in your relationship with a beginning teacher you are mentoring. Task 9.5 asks you to reflect on your mentoring skills and associated mentor-mentee relationship development.

Task 9.5 Mentor's reflection

Return to Task 9.1 and reflect on the questions again. Assess your answers in light of your reading of this chapter. Identify aspects of weekly meetings that have developed as you have interacted with this chapter and undertaken weekly meetings worked on the areas that require further development. As you do this, reflect further on the questions below:

• • To what extent have you developed, within your weekly meeting practices, structural, managerial and professional development perspectives as you support the beginning teacher?
• • How do you intend to tackle the dual role of a mentor and an assessor during weekly meetings, given that you will be building a close working relationship with the beginning teacher over time?
• • What provision have you made for your own support in terms of a critical friend?

[A critical friend is ideally an experienced mentor who can act as a sounding board. They can help you to think through issues as they arise over the course of the mentoring process, provide friendly advice and pose critical questions to support your mentoring practice.]

Summary and key points

This chapter highlights the vital role of the weekly meetings in the mentoring process and in the development of a beginning teacher. It characterises weekly meetings as a safe space where reciprocal professional dialogue and reflection take place for the purpose of supporting a beginning teacher's professional growth in terms of their classroom practice, awareness of their specific role as a teacher and their wider roles and responsibilities to the school community. This part of the formal mentoring process ought to result in the growth and development of you as a mentor as well as the beginning teacher.

This chapter asked you to take into account the following points:

• • Regular mentoring meetings are the prime conduit through which beginning teachers can effectively gauge their development and progress.
• • A crucial aspect of these meetings is the building of a professional mentor-mentee relationship that is mutually respectful and trusting.
• • The effectiveness of weekly meetings is underpinned by active listening and reflective questioning of the policy context (both internal and external) and how this impacts on classroom practice in general and the development of a beginning teacher's practice in particular.
• • Critical professional reflection is the most useful tool used in the mentoring process as it acts as a conduit for professional dialogue between the mentor and beginning teacher.
• • These mentoring meetings should evolve over time, in a way that a beginning teacher can evidence and feel that they are moving forward in their practice. They should be able to see that they are becoming less dependent on the mentor by taking more responsibility for the direction, context, content and conduct of the weekly meetings.

Further resources

Luft, J.A. (2009) 'Beginning secondary science teachers in different induction programmes: The first year of teaching', International Journal of Science Education, 31 (17), pp. 2355-2384. This article provides an insight into how different types of induction programme facilitate the development of beginning secondary science teacher's development over the course of one year. Some data informs the different styles of mentoring meetings and its application by the mentors, duration of meetings, effective and ineffective meetings from the beginning teacher's perspectives and the significance of meetings on a beginning teacher's performance. Reading this article could help you to understand the positive impact of science-specific mentor-mentee sessions (meetings) on a beginning teachers’ classroom practices.

Wright, T. (ed) (2017) How to be a Brilliant Teacher Mentor: Developing outstanding trainees. Abingdon: Routledge.

This book is an informal and highly accessible guide to mentoring that provides ideas that could support your work as a mentor. The book offers advice on giving effective feedback, dealing with critical incidents, developing reflective practice and what to do if relationships break down. Chapter 2 of Wright's book titled 'inputs and outputs' (pp. 1-27) could extend your awareness of ways you could provide constructive, clear and timely feedback to a beginning teacher during a lesson de-brief and extend the discussions on effective pedagogical teaching methods during weekly mentoring meetings.

Appendix 9.1 An example template of a weekly meeting record document

(Source: Adapted from Golder, Arthur, Keyworth and Stevens (2019, p. 230) and from Table 9.3 above)