Mentoring in Schools E-Book

Haili Hughes

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Forewords by Professor Rachel Lofthouse and Reuben Moore. With low early career teacher retention rates and the introduction of the Department for Education's new Early Career Framework, the role of mentor has never been so important in helping to keep teachers secure and happy in the classroom. Haili Hughes, a former senior leader with years of school mentoring experience, was involved in the consultation phase of the framework's design - and in this book she imparts her wisdom on the subject in an accessible way. Haili offers busy teachers a practical interpretation of how to work with the Early Career Framework, sharing practical guidance to help them in the vital role of supporting new teachers. She also shares insights from recent trainee teachers, as well as more established voices in education, to provide tried-and-tested transferable tips that can be used straight away.

Leseprobe

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Praise for Mentoring in Schools

Mentoring matters, and we need to get it right. The guidance in this well-researched and thoroughly informative book will undoubtedly help, as Haili Hughes guides us as to how effective mentoring from expert colleagues can provide our new and novice teachers with the platform to thrive, succeed and grow.

Chris Moyse, Head of Staff Development, Bridgwater and Taunton College Trust

This is a superb resource for mentors at a time when the role has finally been given the recognition it deserves and is therefore more important than ever. Haili combines a deeply reflective, evidence based approach with a fantastically practical and well-organised format. This makes Mentoring in Schools a book that lends itself both to a long, thought-provoking read and to the possibility of being dipped into at point of need.

Professor Samantha Twiselton, OBE, Senior Academic and Chair of the DfE Advisory Group for the ITT Core Content Framework

Like all great books, Mentoring in Schools will have impact beyond the intended audience. It is an excellent text not just for mentors but as a useful aide-memoire for our own knowledge, understanding and practice of the principles behind the Early Career Framework. Its compelling blend of research, excellent summaries and insights from focus groups will make this a standard text across the sector.

Mary Myatt, author of Back on Track and curator of The Soak

Mentoring in Schools is the book that so many schools and mentors have been crying out for: a comprehensive, no-nonsense guide to mentoring which should serve to both enhance the effectiveness and raise the profile of mentors in our schools, while simultaneously providing a rich and beautifully curated collation of research and resources to support them in their role. Haili’s detailed analysis of best practice alongside existing published research is combined to form an easy-to-navigate, deftly articulated and essential guide to the role of mentor. A long overdue handbook for those carrying out this vital work in supporting our early career colleagues.

Emma Turner, Research and CPD Lead, Discovery Schools Trust, and founder of #NewEd B

In Mentoring in Schools, Haili Hughes exemplifies the ways in which effective mentoring can ensure that new and trainee teachers have an exciting and empowering start to their teaching roles, providing them with the tools to sustain a fulfilling career in education. Drawing on her experience in academia, Hughes combines the voices of new teachers through qualitative interviews, with a systematic approach to the new Early Career Framework, illustrating what effective mentoring looks like on both a cultural and practical level.

Packed with precise and clearly explained pedagogical theory, this book is a great text for managing mentors, ITT providers and teaching and learning leads to get their teeth into when considering the efficacy of both their beginner teacher provision and their in-house mentor training. To argue the tantamount importance of the mentoring role, and for anyone keen to take this role seriously, Mentoring in Schools is a vital companion to refer back to again and again.

Emma Sheppard, founder of The MTPT Project

Mentoring in Schools provides a succinct exploration of what is required to be a successful mentor in a school. Haili guides readers through the Teachers’ Standards, offering the prospective or established mentor a wealth of strategies and interventions with which to support their mentee. Utilising her own original collection of relevant case studies, as well as her own extensive experience, Haili offers excellent advice and guidance to anyone charged with mentoring the next generation of teachers. Above all, Haili is an excellent writer and her passion for the profession clearly translates into the pages of this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone embarking on that special journey of supporting a teacher colleague.

Tom Rogers, history teacher, blogger, and director of TeachMeetIcons and Edudate

Haili’s book provides mentors with a handy step-by-step guide through the Early Career Framework, enabling them to provide support and instruction to their mentees. It provides a wealth of research, explanation, examples, practical advice and activities to underpin some of the most effective approaches in ensuring high expectations for all and improving teaching.

Mentoring in Schools will prove invaluable to all mentors, whether they are experienced in or new to the role, providing a clear guide to those working with early career teachers and indeed anyone who could benefit from some mentoring regardless of stage. It is certainly a book I would recommend to all who want to reflect on their practice as a mentor.

Zoe Enser, Lead English Adviser, The Education People, and author and blogger

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This book is dedicated to the informal mentors I have had in recent years who have guided and supported me – giving me encouragement, support and opportunities both online and in person. Debbie Kidd, Rachel Lofthouse, Sam Twiselton and Jenny Webb – thank you. F

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Contents

Title PageDedicationForeword by Professor Rachel LofthouseForeword by Reuben MooreAcknowledgementsIntroductionAbout the focus groups – what makes a good mentor?Chapter 1: Set high expectationsWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryChapter 2: Promote good progressWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryChapter 3: Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledgeWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?Further reading – developing subject knowledgeSummaryChapter 4: Plan and teach well-structured lessonsWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?Summary iiChapter 5: Adapt teachingWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryChapter 6: Make accurate and productive use of assessmentWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryChapter 7: Manage behaviour effectivelyWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryChapter 8: Fulfil wider professional responsibilitiesWhy is this standard important? What does the research say?Focus group findingsHow can I help my mentee meet this standard?SummaryBibliographyAbout the authorCopyright

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Foreword by Professor Rachel Lofthouse

No profession wants to lose its newest recruits before they have developed the confidence, wisdom and expertise to feel comfortable meeting the dynamic challenges of their workplace and are ready to lead and mentor colleagues and those still training. If the school sector is to sustain a diverse and expert workforce, education leaders and policy makers need to be aware of the knock-on effects that follow the loss of teachers early in their career. We cannot populate critical leadership roles with the very best teachers if those same teachers are now in management positions in retail or publishing, are working as freelance tutors, or have concluded that they cannot maintain positive personal and family lives while slogging up the career ladder.

Depending on which year you pick up this book, you will be able to look up the current teacher retention statistics. Perhaps one impact of the coronavirus pandemic will be more teachers holding on to their jobs for longer as the economy takes a hit. However, there has been a trend – and not only in the UK – for teacher retention in the first five years to be a problem. Some people argue that this is no different than in other employment sectors. They suggest that in the future most people will be serial job-swappers, building up a portfolio career over long working lives, and that as such we should worry less about retention and focus instead on ensuring there are always new trainees in the pipeline. But this overlooks the value of schools as multi-generational communities; the role of teaching ‘elders’ in passing on the tacit knowledge that underpins the profession; and the wisdom that is needed to enable complex, nuanced decision-making to benefit staff, learners, families and the wider communities which are intricately bound to our schools. All of these are compromised if teachers leave before they reach their full potential.

I have a personal bias which has threaded through my professional and academic life. I enjoyed learning to teach and I enjoyed working collaboratively with a range of expert colleagues during my PGCE and first few years in post. Not one of them was the perfect teacher, and they would be the first to admit it, and not one of them expected me to be, either. They were all advocates for the subject (in my case, geography), they actively engaged in subject communities and cared passionately that students gained a sense of purpose and achievement from learning geography. They were good people to be around and they each had a sense of humour and of perspective. They were my allies in the staffroom. They had my back and they pushed ivme forward. They appreciated the knowledge I had gained from my recent degree and they encouraged my creative thinking to support the success of the department. They trusted me to make decisions and were generous with their advice when sought. I made it through my first four years and then on to a second school as a head of department where I gained the opportunity to become a mentor. I was not a perfect mentor, but mentoring over the ensuing five years created a fertile space through which my own professional identity really evolved. As a teacher educator and researcher, understanding and developing mentoring and coaching has been a constant endeavour.

New teachers benefit from being offered the space to grow, reflect, continue to observe others and work collaboratively with colleagues. Mentoring is at its most powerful when it is built on positive personal relationships between novice teachers and those with more experience. Expert colleagues become good mentors (formally or informally) when they allow new teachers to test out their emerging identity and build their confidence through affirming their professional development and growth. Good mentors ensure new teachers recognise that they should never feel isolated and to be assured that help can always be found in the profession. Learning to teach and staying in teaching is necessarily a social process, and we need to look for ways to foreground this dimension in our work with new teachers.

So far, so good. Mentors matter and many teachers enjoy mentoring. However, not all mentoring creates a positive professional learning environment. We typically conflate being a good teacher with being a good mentor, and while they are not mutually exclusive, they are also not inevitable. Being an expert colleague who mentors early career teachers means being aware of how novices learn in and from complex workplaces. It also requires the creation of reflective and productive spaces in which current practical and urgent tasks and dilemmas can be grounded in a robust professional knowledge base and where beliefs and values can be shared and shaped.

Will the introduction of the Early Career Framework be the moment when mentoring lives up to its potential to transform the profession? My response is that we need to guard against this opportunity being missed. This requires that mentoring is not just a sticking plaster or another tick-box activity. Mentoring needs to be situated in a professional educational landscape in which new teachers and mentors challenge professional working practices that are restrictive, too often performative and sometimes even punitive (not to mention fractured, unforgivably busy and underfunded).

How do we do our best as expert colleagues to ensure that the early career years of those joining our profession are happy and rich in opportunities for professional development? We need to make sure that we do not dilute mentoring by assuming that anyone with adequate teaching experience can step into the role untrained or vunsupported. We must not treat mentoring as the Cinderella role, done diligently on the sidelines of our core purpose as teachers and leaders, with few resources and little advocacy of its significance by those in more powerful positions. We must ensure that as professionals we treat professional learning seriously – we assume it is complex and know it is vital. If we get this right, enhanced mentoring could be the remaking of the profession.

Professor Rachel Lofthouse Professor of Teacher Education and Director of CollectivED Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University vi

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Foreword by Reuben Moore

It is a real privilege to be able to write a foreword to such a valuable book for the sector. Supporting new teachers to have a strong start is critical to the profession itself and to the young people we serve. If colleagues do not have it, they are more likely to leave, they may struggle for longer than is necessary, they may burn out, or, at the very least, they may not pass on the best of their professional training and development to their pupils. Strong starts are critical.

Teaching is a complex business. Many try to simplify it and this can be useful up to a point. However, there is an issue of ‘altitude’ in the simplification. For example, we could simplify each move by a teacher in their interaction with pupils or materials, or even with concrete or defined actions. This will create a simple statement for each move but the ‘list’ could fill many books. If we choose a different altitude to keep it simple, we risk listing a few platitudes which are of limited use to new teachers planning lessons on a weekend. As a member of the advisory group that supported the development of the Early Career Framework, this was one of the challenges we had to wrestle with, along with a few others.

I recall that when I was a new teacher myself, I watched really experienced teachers who made it look simple. In fact, it sometimes looked like magic. By some magnificent sleight of hand, the teacher explained complex concepts that the pupils not only understood but could also manipulate and apply to new situations. Yet, in my early attempts in the classroom, this never seemed to work for me. Some of the differences lay in the time they had spent in honing that explanation over the years, the number of pupils they had taught, the expertise gained and the experience reflected upon. All of this mattered. Those expert teachers had thought deeply about their work, engaged with the research, and gained feedback from peers and other experts. They understood through their pupils’ assessments what had been understood and what had not, and who was ready to move on and who was not. Therefore, being a good teacher takes time. If new colleagues starting out have to bear so many challenges until they have gained this knowledge, what happens if some give up before that day arrives? We know that many do withdraw before that day. Anyone’s resilience would be severely tested if you felt that you were not getting better.

The Early Career Framework is an attempt to prevent this, to provide a precise research informed structure that gives a strong starting point for colleagues in their early years in the profession. It provides insights that encourage new teachers by viiimaking the chance of success in the early years of teaching more likely. Let us be clear, though: no one document or, indeed, book or piece of research can provide everything the new teacher needs in order to thrive quickly and become expert. However, we have to start somewhere; if we do not, then we are at risk of hindering a generation of colleagues in their support of our young people. The introduction to the Early Career Framework describes a minimum entitlement and this cannot be understated. The framework is not the entirety of what new teachers should learn. Expert educators in our schools and universities bolster this minimum entitlement significantly, but it is a concrete and defined starting point. The other thing to say is that some will read it and find little that is new – again, that is no mistake. We have some great places, people and opportunities for those early in their career to develop. However, the challenge is that access to these places, people or opportunities is not universal. Everyone deserves access to these development opportunities, not just those in the right places.

The Early Career Framework provides a guide, an entry point and an entitlement to colleagues in their early years in the profession so they can develop more quickly towards expertise than they would have done alone. Teaching is a team sport and therefore new colleagues should have the support of mentors and others in school and beyond to help; the Early Career Framework can make this support more precise and therefore more likely to be adopted into the new teachers’ everyday work.

This book is such a valuable asset to any new teacher or their mentor, and Haili Hughes is a great guide to the framework. She has years of experience in schools both being supported by those who are more expert and also in leading the development of others. She also has an excellent insight into research through her own further study in her several master’s degrees and current doctorate study. Haili guides us through the framework methodically, focusing on underpinning research while also gaining insight from new teachers about challenges and issues. She provides practical and evidence informed advice to sidestep those pitfalls identified in the findings. It is a really effective structure, as it is both practical and holistic. Haili brings her insights from numerous schools and settings, as well as what must be hundreds of interviews, to bear on this topic. It is done authentically, acknowledging the challenges of the role of a new teacher. The book succeeds in not making the reader feel like a failure, while at the same time demonstrating an ambitious bar for mentors to strive towards, which will in turn help our young people to achieve through great teaching by all colleagues.

Reuben Moore Executive Director, Teach First

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to all of the newly qualified teachers who took the time to speak to me about their experiences – both positive and negative. Understandably, many of them wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of what they were discussing. However, the following teachers were happy to be named: Daniel Bradish, Melissa Burfitt, Abby Camilleri, Selina Clarke, Gaby Coleman-Carey, Julia Di Mambro, Chloe Dodd, Natasha Froggatt, Elise Galvin, Susan Gee, Sam Green, Paige Mudge, Danielle Payton, Rebecca Powell, Neelam Rajput, Anuradha Sharma, Isabel Squires and Harpreet Virk. x

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Introduction

Speak to anybody who has left the profession after a few years and, more often than not, they will cite a lack of support as one of the reasons they felt unable to continue as a teacher. Mentoring matters – and a well-designed mentoring programme facilitated by a knowledgeable, enthusiastic mentor makes a massive difference to an early career teacher’s feelings of success (Holloway, 2001). This is why the Early Career Framework (ECF) is one of the most exciting developments in education for many years as it promises a quality of support and provision for all early career teachers, which will no doubt help to reverse some of the worrying figures that see one in five teachers leave schools within two years (Weale, 2019). The ECF has improved the support package for new teachers by extending their funded training entitlement to a structured two-year package of high quality professional development.

As part of the government’s drive to recruit and retain teachers, the framework aims to increase the resources and improve the opportunities that are open to early career teachers by providing a comprehensive entitlement to what new teachers will need to learn about and how to learn about it during those first crucial years. It contains sections on behaviour management, pedagogy, curriculum, assessment and professional behaviours, and is underpinned by academic research. In addition to the training materials and opportunities, new teachers will also be entitled to 5% of their time away from their classrooms to focus on their professional development, for which schools will receive funding. But perhaps most significant is the allocation of a dedicated mentor to advise, support and guide the new teacher, who will also receive training and professional development in order to help them fulfil their role successfully. There are several ways into the profession, whether that is through the traditional PGCE university route or through the school-centred initial teacher training provided by providers such as Teach First. This is why there are two forewords to this book, from Rachel and Reuben, who represent both routes and can vouch for the vital work contained within it.

I was lucky enough to be invited to one of the Department for Education’s round tables when the policy was being refined and formulated, and I was inspired by the hard work, research and dedication which had gone into its creation. What became clear during this experience was how important mentors would be in supporting new teachers and that, more so than ever before, school leaders would need to acknowledge this and give them the necessary time to dedicate themselves fully to the role. The framework is clear and thorough and should complement the Teachers’ 2Standards (Department for Education, 2011) that the newly qualified teacher (NQT) has to evidence; they are not an extra job as they align so closely and support early career teachers in finding ways of meeting them. The framework, and the rationale for its formulation, can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-career-framework.

Mentoring can be defined in many different ways: Merriam-Webster’s Ninth NewCollegiate Dictionary (1983) defines it as someone who is a wise and trusted teacher or counsellor, whereas Mentor Scout describe a mentor as someone who is willing to use their time and expertise to develop and guide another person who may be less experienced than them.1 Mentors need to have certain qualities that can help their mentees to develop and flourish. Kerry and Mayes (1995) define some of these as the ability to nurture, to be a role model, to encourage and counsel, to focus on the mentee’s professional development and to sustain a caring relationship over time. This is where the ECF comes into its own, as these essential qualities of a successful mentor are made explicit in the very nature of the recommendations of what new teachers should learn.

What is great about the standards in the ECF is that the ‘Learn that’ and ‘Learn how to’ criteria are all based on evidence informed research. Presently, it seems like there is a cultural and philosophical gulf between teachers and educational researchers, but this needn’t be the case. It is important that teachers explore what research has to offer them, and the framework gives specific links for books and articles they can access to get them started. Of course, education is a polarising subject, filled with differing opinions on what constitutes ‘good’ teaching. This book is not an agreement or testament to these strategies and claims, and nor does it seek to diminish or decry the opinions of those who don’t agree with them, but it is a clear and accessible guide on how mentors can use the research contained in the framework practically to help their mentee to develop and to meet the standards. What is more, it places mentors as the agent of change in their schools, as they are the ‘expert colleagues’ from whom new teachers can learn. With this power comes great responsibility, so I have used principles from the instructional coaching model to guide mentors in how best to support their mentees.

Instructional coaching has been in the spotlight recently, as it has shown promising results in schools, with a recent meta-analysis by Kraft et al. (2018) revealed positive effects of coaching on instructional practice. Furthermore, Gregory et al.’s (2016) qualitative evaluations revealed that it can help teachers to connect faraway, standards-based policy with their day-to-day teaching strategies. Instructional coaching suits the ECF perfectly as it is based around the idea of a teacher working 3with another trained expert to help them learn, adopt new teaching practices and provide feedback, while combining teaching and content expertise. There is no standard coaching model for this approach, but Jim Knight’s (2016) was particularly useful when writing the practical guidance in each chapter. The summing up section at the end of each chapter is also influenced by his ideas about teachers needing to collaborate with their mentors and learn from their expertise. It follows the principle that coaching is a cycle, with student engagement and learning at the centre of it. There needs to be time for planning and observations, as well as time to enact change and reflect at the end of it. In addition, success factors need to be specific, which is why this model works so well with the statements in each standard. Instructional coaches must also be knowledgeable and bring what Knight (2016) refers to as a research-based ‘instructional playbook’, so they can be the expert colleagues that this book refers to them as, who bring the best practice pedagogy into their schools and pass their expertise onto their mentees.

About the focus groups – what makes a good mentor?

To write this book, I conducted several different types of qualitative research as I was keen to see where mentoring may have previously gone wrong or to highlight where there had been successes from which new mentors could learn. Just over a hundred NQTs were interviewed in a mixture of telephone, online and in-person discussions on their experiences of being mentored and how their needs had been met in relation to the competencies detailed in each standard. Their answers were illuminating and really helped to guide the practical advice for mentors in each section. One of the questions asked was about what makes a successful mentor, and some of the results have been published here as a basis for mentors to work from in defining their role and also as a glorious celebration of what a rewarding job it can be.

First and foremost a mentor has to be approachable. If a mentor isn’t approachable then, as an NQT in a new school and new role, I would not have the confidence to do basic things such as ask questions to expand my knowledge but also take risks. There have been times this year where I went to my mentor and said, ‘I have an idea – it is either going to be brilliant or completely flop, but I’m going to give it a try.’ The only reason I felt I could do this on an observation was because I knew if it went 4badly then my mentor and I had a good enough professional relationship to address it in such a way that I can learn.

Having a ‘good’ mentor can make or break your teaching career. A good mentor is impartial, tries to limit subjectivity when analysing lessons and sets the expectations or targets prior to the lesson. For example, my NQT mentor and I used Rosenshine’s principles (2012) to guide our lesson observations, and feedback sessions were delivered in a coaching style. This opened up the conversation to positive and constructive discussion, which I think a lot of trainees would benefit from.

[A good mentor] has an attitude that everyone can improve their teaching – even them.

I’ve found that more experienced teachers make excellent mentors. Teachers with experience know the exam boards inside out, they’ve taught the texts numerous times and have more of an insight into what works and what doesn’t work. That’s not to say that a young mentor wouldn’t be as successful, but I feel that they just don’t have the same knowledge/experience of pedagogy. It needs to be someone who is genuinely passionate about teaching (the last thing an NQT needs is someone who has lost all passion and enthusiasm for teaching and who radiates negativity).

A mentor should not ask you to do something they wouldn’t be prepared to do themselves. Equally, they should prompt you with questions that make you think, rather than just give you the answers.

Someone with time – everyone is busy, but if the mentor has dedicated and demarcated time to mentor, then as the mentee this helps you not to feel guilty for using up more of their precious time.

I believe that a good mentor will not just have the subject-specific knowledge and experience in the classroom to help with those more tricky/challenging scenarios, but they also have to be an approachable person. If your mentor isn’t approachable and compassionate, then how will you be able to build a confident foundation in seeking advice and constructive criticism? Even being able to come and vent at the end of a stressful day, or getting them to come and observe to give advice, this is something that stems from that initial relationship.

A good mentor remembers how overwhelming it can be to enter the world of teaching and helps the new teacher to navigate their own way through with success. A 5good mentor needs to recognise where the new teacher is at the beginning and throughout, all the time asking: what skills do they have that they can make good use of to build up their confidence? What situations/settings/interactions do they need to experience more of in order to better understand how a good teacher could respond? Anecdotally, from my fellow trainees, I think very often where the mentor–trainee relationship falls down is when the mentor is too aggressive or prescriptive in trying to mould the new teacher into exactly their vision of a good teacher, a mimic of themselves, taking the agency away from the new teacher.

This sounds cheesy but a good mentor acts like your mini cheerleader! This doesn’t mean that they unequivocally praise you, but they give you that little boost to build your confidence.