Mentoring Prospective School Principals in Indonesia

Abstract

This study portraits the mentoring skills of school principals in order to gain information about which mentoring skills need to be improved. It also aims to explore the challenges to conducting mentoring. This study was informed by literature on mentoring and coaching. We used questionnaires and focus group discussions as methods of collecting data. The questionnaires were checked for validity and reliability prior to their distribution. This study involved respondents/informants from a district in East Java. The questionnaire respondents were 1002 teachers/prospective school principals (mentees), 445 school principals (mentors), and 34 supervisors, while the informants in the FGDs were 20 mentees, 10 mentors, and 10 supervisors. Via Microsoft Form of Office 365, the questionnaire survey data were analyzed and compared descriptively, while the focus group discussions' data were analyzed with open coding. Relevant quotes were independently identified to strengthen the findings. This study points to the need for improvement of certain mentoring skills, especially key skills such as listening, questioning, clarifying, and paraphrasing skills. Improvement is also needed for conversational framework elements such as determining goals, picturing reality, and evaluating, as well as way of being elements such as being non-judgmental. This research's findings also point to the challenges to conducting mentoring, mainly the mentors' lack of self confidence in mentoring due to their lack of professional knowledge and mentoring skills. The implication of this study is a need to conduct mentoring training for mentors to improve their knowledge and mentoring skills prior to mentoring the mentees. Further research on other districts or provinces can expand this study since the respondents/informants of this study were only those from a single district in East Java. Hence, this research's findings are non-representative of the overall portrait of mentoring skills in Indonesia.