The Mentoring across Professions (MaP) Project: What can we learn from international good practice in employee mentoring and coaching?

This research sought to establish what teacher mentoring stakeholders might learn from successful and effective practice in other sectors – in the UK and internationally. The research team thus set out to identify: 1. effective employee mentoring and coaching practice in private and public sector organisations (excluding teacher mentoring schemes); 2. the impact of those employee mentoring and coaching schemes identified; 3. the various factors contributing to the effectiveness and success of the selected mentoring and coaching schemes. 1 On the other hand, research into the relatively rare phenomenon of ‘external mentoring’ for teachers in secondary schools found this to have significant benefits for the (predominantly early career) teachers supported (Hobson et al., 2012; Hobson & McIntyre, 2013; McIntyre & Hobson, 2016). 2 THE MENTORING ACROSS PROFESSIONS PROJECT We use the term teacher to refer to those formally tasked to facilitate learning in early years, primary, secondary and further education (FE)2 settings. We use the term mentoring to describe ‘the support given by one (usually more experienced) person for the growth and learning of another, and for their integration into and acceptance by a specific community’ (Malderez, 2001, p. 57). We take coaching to refer to one of a number of (potential) aspects of mentoring, and as having a narrower focus, notably relating to specific support for an individual’s skill development (Finn, 1993; Malderez & Bodoczky, 1999; Hopkins-Thompson, 2000). Given this, we normally use the term mentoring, in this report, to encompass mentors’ potential use of coaching. Nonetheless, we recognise that other scholars and practitioners use the terms mentoring and coaching differently. We thus use the term coaching, in this report, when it relates to a particular programme (notably the Sussex Police Leadership Coaching Programme – Chapter 9) or where it is used, by others, in a different way. With respect to the scope and contextual boundaries of the study, we did not seek to explore (for example) cross-cultural mentoring, cross-national mentoring, or the concept of reverse mentoring (Marcinkus Murphy, 2012).