What makes a good mentor?

Just as trainees will have different strengths and weaknesses, so will mentors. We don’t want our trainees to become clones of their mentors, and you won’t want mentors to become clones of you. However, just as there are common characteristics of good teaching, so there are of good mentoring.

A good mentor is someone who…

Is able to share their expertise

This sounds straightforward. Experienced teachers, by definition, have expertise to share. In practice, however, most need support and training to make it accessible to others. Sharing expertise is partly about reflecting on one’s own practice.

There are two potential problems here:

1. Expertise is often ‘invisible’. The way an experienced teacher leads a question and answer sequence at the beginning of a lesson might seem prohibitively difficult for a trainee. For experienced teachers, however, it is probably second nature. Unless mentors can reflect on how they achieve what they do in the classroom , they will not be able to help the trainee. School-based training becomes training simply ‘by exposure’.
2. Mentors need to open up their own practice for scrutiny. For confident teachers, this should not be a problem, but it might be harder for others. You will need to give careful thought about how to foster a culture of open reflection.

Strikes a good balance between support and challenge

Unit 2 has already explored the importance of combining support and challenge. Too much of one without the other can lead to ineffective mentoring.

A supportive mentor will be sensitive to individual needs, will try to understand the different preconceptions trainees bring with them and will resist the common urge to clone. They will understand and accept that good teachers come in different forms (see Unit 2, section 2.2) and they will recognise trainees’ need to be valued and praised. Trainee teachers take an enormous risk when they embark on a teacher-training course. In a classroom full of teenagers they are exposed. The importance of positive reinforcement and acknowledgement of risk and effort cannot be underestimated.

Supportive mentors will also, crucially, provide opportunities for their trainee to succeed rather than setting up conditions likely to lead to failure. There is research evidence to suggest that trainees need a relatively protected environment, especially early on, in order to make progress and experiment with a range of ideas and strategies (Burn, K. ‘Collaborative teaching’ in Wilkin, M. (ed.) (1992) Mentoring in Schools, London: Kogan Page and Burn, K. ‘Collaborative teaching’ in McIntyre, D. (ed.) (1997) Teacher Education Research in a New Context, London: Paul Chapman). This runs counter to the argument that trainees simply need to learn to ‘survive’ in the classroom.

Crucial to a mentor’s ability to challenge trainees and move them forward is their ability to identify underlying factors which are hindering progress. Often the symptom of a problem masks the cause (see Unit 1, section 1.4 (i)). This is not something you can assume mentors will get better at with experience. The related activity provides materials that you might find useful to use with mentors. Your own school visits/observations will also be crucial here, because they allow you to model the process of analysing the roots of problems.

Understands that there are different ways of learning to teach

Schools provide almost limitless forms of training opportunities and a good mentor will draw on a wide range of strategies to meet particular trainees’ needs. It is important to stress with mentors that whilst the trainee’s experience of whole-class teaching and subsequent evaluation forms a central part of learning to teach, it is by no means the only way. Once an area for development or a problem has been identified, diverse learning opportunities can be provided to address them.

These learning opportunities can occur both inside and outside the classroom. Inside the classroom, for example, it might be profitable to explore collaborative teaching (link to unit 2, section 2.4) or to provide trainees with a clear focus when observing their mentors. Outside the classroom, mentors may wish to carry out some joint planning or ask their trainee to update a tired resource or carry out some joint marking.

Manages the training in a structured way

On one level, this is about being well organised. Like it or not, there is a certain amount of paperwork involved. Ask yourself the question ‘what evidence do I need to monitor the quality of the training being provided?’ This need not be an onerous task, but is one that needs communicating.

On another level, however, this is about taking a professional, structured approach to training, drawing on mentors’ knowledge about progression during the PGCE year (link to Unit 1), their knowledge of the school and of history, and their knowledge of the particular trainee. Certain opportunities need planning well in advance; others may emerge naturally during the placement. Having a structure must not, however, stifle flexibility. Most trainees experience dips in their progress or encounter certain issues that they find especially problematic. All training experiences must take account of this.