Abstract:

Employability of new graduate teachers is a joint responsibility between teacher training institutions, the Department of Higher Education, the Department of Education, and students themselves. Mentoring of Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students’ needs to be an integral and compulsory component of teacher education programmes. In order to bridge the gap between theory and practice, the training institutions need to form partnerships with schools and the Department of Education as part of mentor teachers’ allocation of continuous professional development points as incentives.

Purpose: The study sought to examines the extent to which an investment in mentoring-coaching significantly increases graduates' teaching career readiness, using evidence from a small sample of PGCE students and their mentors.

Design/methodology/approach: The research was based on theories of social constructivism and sociological theory. This qualitative research relied on personal reports, semi-structured interviews of four mentors and four novice teachers and observation of the process of facilitation. Reflections and observations gave inside views of what happened during mentoring process.

Findings: The study shows that although the mentoring-coaching approach proves to be effective, it depends very much on the commitment from both mentors and mentees and on how employability is termed, driven and communicated by the university.

Keywords:

Mentoring, Learning Tool, Employability skills, Professional development.