Abstract:

Mentoring practice has been perceived as one type of in-service teacher education aiming at helping teachers to have capacity building with the ultimate goal of school improvement. Discussions on school-based mentoring practice have put their key emphasis on the professional development of novice teachers rather than their mentor teachers. However, school-based mentoring practice can also serve as a platform for mentor teachers to develop, re-examine and revise their knowledge and skills of mentoring when they interact with their mentees and fellow colleagues. They can build or enhance their professional competency and capitalize their leadership role when they enact their role properly.

Quality of mentors has been identified as a key factor to the success of school-based mentoring scheme.Studies in the area of mentor preparation are also rare.This is particularly important when mentor teachers generally lack of systematic training before they take up their mentoring responsibilities. More importantly, little research has been conducted into what mentor teachers need to help them perform their mentoring role effectively or how working with a less experienced colleague develops the mentor professionally. Viewing this, they key research question that guides this presentation is “What are professional needs of mentor teachers when they engage in school-based mentoring practice?” It will identify the professional needs of mentor teachers and examine what mentor teachers learn through involvement in mentoring practice.

In Hong Kong, mentoring practice has been listed as one type of continuing teacher development activities for both mentors and mentees since 2003. Even so, there has been little attention on the mentor education, the growth of mentor teachers and their professional needs when they take up their mentoring responsibilities. Findings of the study will contribute to school-based mentor preparation programmes in Hong Kong by pinpointing key areas where the skillsets and knowledge bases of the participants need to be supplemented for maximum effectiveness. They will be able to shed light on the global discussion on professional growth of experience teachers through addressing their professional needs.

This study applied a mixed method approach to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from 2014 to 2017. Data intended to identify mentor teachers’ views on their needs, their preparedness for the role, and what they learn through the mentoring process. Findings of this study are threefold. Firstly, two layers of professional needs of mentor teachers, in terms of structural and intellectual levels, have been identified. Secondly, mentor teachers who have strong external network are able to reflect on their professional needs in a more in-depth sense by risking taking and theorizing their pedagogical and mentoring knowledge and skills based on external inputs. Thirdly, influential factors, if any, contribute to the growth of mentor teachers as teacher leaders will also be identified. Possible suggestions on ways to improve school-based mentoring programmes will be further discussed.

Keywords:

Teacher learning, mentoring, in service teacher education, Hong Kong.