Mentor for a Month: A Case Study at a State University

Abstract

Starting to work in a new workplace is a challenge for almost anyone regardless of their experience. The same situation applies to teachers when they start their jobs and/or when they move within schools. There are new rules, regulations, student profiles, expectations, and school cultures to become familiar with. Oftentimes, the teacher has to struggle with all these new circumstances alone. Hence, he/she may feel alienated and overloaded. The ideal case would be to assign a mentor for each and every newly arriving teacher, so that he/she could make a smooth transition between the two phases of his/her career. The present study took place at a state university in Gaziantep, Turkey. Having continued for six weeks, it aims at building a bridge between the new teacher and his/her new workplace in order to inform him/her with first-hand knowledge and experience; thus, guiding him/her throughout the beginning stages in the new institution. It also tries to find out what both sides, namely the mentor and the mentee, think about that application. As data collection procedure, a semi-structured interview was conducted with a randomly selected instructor who has been working at the institution for 24 years and an instructor who has been performing the job for seven years but teaching at the mentioned institution for a month only. The two teachers first observed each other for two weeks, and in the remaining four weeks' period, they started to come together at regular intervals-twice every week-to talk about the topic determined by the researchers. The sessions were audio recorded by the two instructors and then transcribed by the researchers. The mentee was also asked to keep a weekly journal about her reflections on what she has been going through. At the end of the study, the researchers came together with the two participating teachers and interviewed them about their beliefs related to the study. Content analysis was carried out to reach the emerging constructs both from the audio recordings and the journal. The findings revealed that both teachers believed in the importance of mentoring a new teacher at least at the beginning of his/her post at the new school and both teachers agreed that it was a fruitful experience for both of them since they had learnt useful clues, different techniques, and new points of view from each other. The results are discussed in the light of relevant literature. The findings of the study are expected to contribute to the literature as well as shedding light on how to enhance the practical applications of mentoring studies by administrators of schools, policy-makers, and individual teachers as a kind of a professional development activity.