Expectation Congruency and Psychosocial Support in Formal Agriculture Teacher Mentoring Relationships

Abstract

Educational leaders have widely implemented mentoring and induction programs to support beginning teachers as they enter the profession. A variety of contextual factors within the mentoring dyad and program may impact the mentoring relationship and subsequent support received by the beginning teacher. The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship among mentoring Expectation Congruency, Interaction, and Psychosocial Support received by agriculture teachers participating in Beginning Teacher Mentor/Induction program. Researchers collected mentoring relationship data from 83 first and second year agriculture teachers participating in a statemandated mentoring and induction program, with a 95.35% response rate. We used a hierarchical multivariate linear regression to determine the proportion of unique variance in Psychosocial Support attributable to differences in Expectation Congruency, Interaction time, and covariates identified through a review of literature. Researchers concluded differences in Expectation Congruency and Perceived Similarity each explained a large (d >1.0) proportion of variance in Support received by beginning teachers in the Acceptance, Counseling, Friendship, and Role Model functions. Variation in interaction time did not explain significant proportions of variance in support received for any psychosocial support constructs.