Mentoring for student teachers in Post-Compulsory Education in England and Norway

: Judgemental and developmental approaches

Abstract

This thesis presents a study of mentoring for student teachers in Post-Compulsory Education in England and Norway. The study sought to generate further understanding of judgemental and developmental approaches to mentoring and drew on both a qualitative and comparative research design. Twelve mentoring pairs participated (six from England and six from Norway). These pairs were recruited through three universities in England and two in Norway. Each mentor and mentee took part in two semi-structured interviews. In addition, each mentoring pair completed two audio recordings of mentoring meetings. Findings indicated that none of the mentoring enactments in England or Norway were ‘purely’ judgemental or developmental in nature. Three derivative versions of mentoring were instead identified: a hybrid of judgemental and developmental mentoring, a restricted version of developmental mentoring and a more extensive version of developmental mentoring. Mentees reported varying positive and negative consequences of the mentoring and none of the approaches were found to be realising the full potential of mentoring to support the student teachers’ learning and growth. A number of factors contributing to the use of judgemental and developmental strategies were identified. These included: mentors’ perceptions of mentees’ teaching competence, mentors’ perceptions of mentees’ qualities, and the way that mentors drew on formal assessments in the mentoring process. This study recommends that in the future judgemental and developmental approaches might be viewed as ‘archetypes’ of mentoring. Additional recommendations for policy, practice and research are offered, and a ‘personalised’ mentoring approach is proposed which seeks to maximise development opportunities for mentees by tailoring the mentoring process to their individual learning and support needs.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Andrew Hobson (Supervisor), Brian Marsh (Supervisor), Ivor Goodson (Supervisor) & David Stephens (Supervisor)