Beginning teachers’ perceptions of mentors and access to communities of practice

Samantha Shields,Megan Murray

doi:10.1108/ijmce-01-2017-0004

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore beginning teachers’ perceptions of the role of the mentor in the early stages of developing a professional identity. The beginning teachers in the authors’ study are defined as having been awarded qualified teacher status at the end of an initial teacher education programme or having completed their first term as a new teacher with responsibility for a class of pupils. Design/methodology/approach The research design was a qualitative, inductive study. The concepts of communities of practice, legitimate peripheral participation and power dynamics within a community underpinned this study. The data set was collected over a period of 18 months, through six focus groups and 40 questionnaires with beginning teachers across 34 schools altogether. The data set was analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings The findings indicated that the ways in which mentors use their power to recognise (or not) the legitimacy of beginning teachers as being part of the school community influences the development of beginning teachers’ professional identities. The thematic analysis of the data indicated the different types of support that mentors may provide: “belonging”, “emotional”, “pedagogical” and “space”. Research limitations/implications Further research into how mentors perceive their role in supporting new entrants into the profession is needed. Originality/value These findings are pertinent in England, as the increase in school-based initial teacher training provision will intensify the role of school mentors. These findings will be of value to other countries that are moving towards an increase in school-based teacher training.

Highlights

There has been a progressive move towards school-based teacher education in England since the early 1990s, such as the introduction of School Centred Initial Teacher Training (Department for Education, 1992; 1993), the Graduate Teacher Programme (Department for Education and Employment, 1996) and expansion of Teach First (Department for Education, 2010)
Findings and discussion The analysis of the data revealed many incidences where beginning teachers recognise factors that influence their sense of belonging, competence and overall identity. Some of these instances contribute to a positive, strong professional identity; at other times, events cause beginning teachers to doubt themselves. In most of these cases, there is an element of power exhibited by the mentor that supports or inhibits the development of a strong professional identity
Four types of support that are important to beginning teachers emerged from the data, and these were subsequently developed into four themes: (1) “Belonging” support

Summary

Introduction

There has been a progressive move towards school-based teacher education in England since the early 1990s, such as the introduction of School Centred Initial Teacher Training (Department for Education, 1992; 1993), the Graduate Teacher Programme (Department for Education and Employment, 1996) and expansion of Teach First (Department for Education, 2010). IJMCE 6,4 beginning teacher is supported by a school mentor (who is a more experienced teacher) during school placements Studies such as those of Maguire (2001) and Sewell et al (2009) have identified power imbalances between mentor and mentee. Our study builds upon the work of Maguire (2001) and Sewell et al (2009), arguing that mentors have a direct impact on the development of the professional identity of beginning teachers. Other research, such as that of McIntyre and Hobson (2016) and Cameron and Grant (2017) indicate that mentors who are external to a school can have a different effect on trainee teachers

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