Extending the mentor role in initial teacher education: embracing social justice

Abstract

Purpose -The paper explores how mentors can act as change agents for social justice. It examines mentors' roles in initial teacher education in the lifelong learning sector (LLS) and how critical spaces can be opened up to promote a flow of mentor, trainee teacher, learner and community empowerment.Design/methodology/approach -Two thematic literature reviews were undertaken: one of UK LLS ITE mentoring and the other an international review of social justice in relation to mentoring in ITE and the first year of teaching. Bourdieu's concepts of capital, field and habitus (Bourdieu, 1986) are used as sensitising tools to explore LLS mentors' practices and the possibilities for increasing the flow of 'pedagogical capital' between mentors, trainee teachers, learners and communities, in such a way that would enable mentors to become agents for social justice.Findings -LLS mentors and trainee teachers are uncertain about their roles. In the UK and several countries, mentoring is dominated by an instrumental assessment-focused approach, whereby social justice is marginalised. In contrast, what we call social justice mentors establish collaborative democratic mentoring relationships, create spaces for critical reflection, support trainees to experience different cultures, develop inclusive critical pedagogies, and generally act as advocates and foster passion for social justice. 2Research limitations/implications -While the literature reviews provide timely and important insights into UK and international approaches, the existing literature bases are limited in scale and scope.Practical implications -A model for mentoring that promotes social justice and recommendations for mentor training are proposed.Originality/value -The paper addresses the omission in policy, research and practice of the potential for mentors to promote social justice. The proposed model and training approach can be adopted across all education phases.

Mentoring for educators’ professional learning and development

“…Hobson and Malderez (2013) also referred to clarity of role, stating that schoolassigned mentors have two conflicting roles -assessing and supporting -thus leading to judgementoring. This phenomenon has been reported in several studies, attributed to the uncertainty about mentoring purposes and roles (Duckworth and Maxwell, 2015). Hobson and Malderez (2013) argued that one of the main causes of judgementoring is the requirement for mentors to also act as assessors and gatekeepers to the profession, especially in the absence of appropriate provision of mentor development opportunities in preparation for fulfilling both roles and for doing so without compromising the other.…”

Judgementoring and how to avert it: introducing ONSIDE Mentoring for beginning teachers

“…Secondly, Duckworth and Maxwell (2015) state that their review of literature on mentoring in teacher training programmes in the FE sector in England "demonstrates the prevalence of a "judgementoring" approach" (p. 17). This conclusion is supported by the findings of Project 3, in which the following viewpoint expressed by a beginner teacher who had worked with a number of mentors was not uncommon:…”

“…8 In such a scenario, beginning and more experienced teachers will naturally associate mentoring with evaluations of and judgements on their teaching. Furthermore, such a scenario encourages a stigma to be attached to being mentored, which is likely to exacerbate the tendency toward fabrication as strategic silence and strategic avoidance, as the following excerpt from an interview with an FE college's head of professional With regard to the English FE sector, Duckworth and Maxwell (2015) conclude that policy reforms (DfES, 2004) have imposed a model of mentoring that emphasises subject support and the assessment of teaching competence … and has led to judgemental rather than developmental approaches to mentoring … aligning with Hobson and Malderez's (2013) conceptualisation of "judgementoring" in the schools sector. (Duckworth and Maxwell, 2015, p. 8) On the other hand, and less directly, the involvement of mentors and others in routine formal evaluation of the work of beginning teachers (and teachers in general) in England has been encouraged by the government's role in embracing the 'Global Educational Reform Movement' (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2010) and what Ball (2003) Notwithstanding other likely contributory factors, such as the failure of many schools and colleges to employ sufficiently rigorous methods of mentor selection (based on appropriate selection criteria such as potential to provide non-judgemental support), the fourth major cause of the widespread enactment of judgementoring is the frequent absence (well-established in the mentoring literature) of appropriate provision for mentor education and training.…”

Mentoring as Two-Way Learning: An Australian First Nations/Non-indigenous Collaboration

“…Alongside other collaborative work, our developing relationship usually involves counter-storytelling where we establish our common bonds, points of difference and enter the third spaces. In the type of co-mentoring we are proposing in this paper, we each bring to the table, our own "pedagogical capital" (Duckworth and Maxwell, 2015). Since social change and personal transformation are .…”