The
Critical Interaction Between the Induction & Mentoring Programs
© 2008, Barry Sweeny
 The
research on transfer of training (Joyce and Showers, etc.) and the
principles of effective professional development teach us that initial
training experiences are not sufficient by themselves to ensure
improved teacher performance. If teachers are expected to improve,
they must have the support of experts and their peers through mentoring
and coaching to help them transfer their knowledge gained in training
into their classrooms and then adapt that knowledge to work in that
unique context with their individual skills set.
Only then can they eventually develop
mastery of the strategies they have learned.
That is why effective induction and mentoring programs
(indeed, all staff development activities) need to be an integrated
process of group instruction, planning, and practice combined with
individual follow up support in the classroom for implementation.
Next, this approach must be integrated with
the research and expert knowledge base on novice teacher needs,
AND the expectations of today's focus on standards of professional
practice. The lack of experience of beginning teachers means that,
for accelerated professional growth and quick succeess in the classroom,
they need:
- Orientation in advance of need to prepare them
to succeed the firt time
- Training in theory, essential structures and
knowledge, planning time and support, and then practice
- Opportunities to see what excellent practice
looks like and then, to debrief and apply what was observed
- The support and ideas of their peers so peer
knowledge can vicariously be appropriated and trial and error
learning limited
- Structured and faciliated opportunities to compare
their own practice to standards of effective practice, and then
to set growth goals and plan ways to achieve that growth
- Structured and faciliated opportunities to collect,
compare and reflect on artifacts of their own practice and of
student work for evidence of their own growth and improved student
results.
- The support, encouragement, challenging, accountability,
and integrating influence of an on-going relationship with an
experienced teacher mentor.
Orientation, workshops/training, and support groups
are almost always group activities, conducted most effectively when
there are common needs for the members of the group.
Classroom visitations, professional growth goals,
plans and portfolios and mentoring are best done as one-to-one activities,
conducted when the needs of the participants are unique.
Mentoring is the linking activity (note the arrows
in the diagram) which helps the new teacher to make sense of and
to integrate all the other slearning and experiences into the new
teacher's classroom to benefit students through improved professional
practice.
Induction is the whole picture and mentoring is
the one critical, central strategy among several other induction
program strategies.
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