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The views of 46 mentors of first-year teachers were obtained regarding practices that they viewed as essential for their success in mentoring teachers. Specifically, they were queried about teacher involvement/support, staff development, administrative support, and resource materials. Almost all of the mentor teachers believed a teacher-mentoring program that had well-defined goals was absolutely essential to the retention of beginning teachers. Slightly over half, 56.6%, of the mentor teachers considered that staff development that provided strategies to serve students in special populations better was absolutely essential to the retention of beginning teachers. Mentors commented that the most difficult part of their duty were scheduling conflicts with the mentee, little support from administration, and no guidelines or training in what they were expected to do. Additional comments made by mentors consisted of the need for more time for the new teacher to grow professionally with less emphasis on TAKS scores. They also stated that standardized state testing was hurting schools because too much time was being spent on student test scores.
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Introduction

 

Croasmum, Hampton, and Hermann (2000) documented that mentor programs have been developed throughout the nation’s schools in an effort to address the attrition rate of first-year teachers in American schools. The efficacy of these mentoring programs is still under investigation. Gold (1999) documented that the teacher attrition rate for beginning teachers in his school district was 18% when they did not have an assigned mentor and only 5% when they had a school district assigned mentor. Evertson and Smithey (2000) reported that pairing mentors who had undergone training to be a mentor with beginning teachers yielded beginning teachers with higher-level teaching skills. Beginning teachers who were not paired with mentors lacked these higher-level teaching skills. Darling-Hammond (2003), in an examination of the effectiveness of mentoring programs, wrote that beginning teacher retention rates were increased.

Recent research into teacher induction, of which mentor programs are the primary method of teacher induction (Fideler&Haselkorn, 1999), has documented its efficacy in (a) making the transition of beginning teachers easier, (b) reducing teacher turnover, (c) and increasing work satisfaction (Andrews&Quinn, 2005; Archer, 2003; Bullard, 1998; Feinman-Nemser, 2003; Fuller, 2003; Holloway, 2001). It is clear that beginning teachers need time to become proficient teachers. Researchers (e.g., Claycomb&Hawley, 2000) have reported that 3 to 7 years of experience in teaching is needed before teachers attain a level of proficiency. It is the first years of teaching that are the years where beginning teachers gain the most proficiency. Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) documented that beginning teachers make“important gains in teaching quality in the first year and smaller gains over the next few career years”(p. 449).

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Source:  OpenStax, Mentorship for teacher leaders. OpenStax CNX. Dec 22, 2008 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10622/1.3
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