The Native Speaker Mentors: A Qualitative Study on Novice Teachers’ Professional Development

Abstract

Mentoring is a professional development strategy for helping novice teachers adjust to the challenges of teaching and develop into quality educators. It offers a bridge between teacher preparation and the remainder of an educator's career (Wang and Odell, 2002). In the context of English as a Second Language (ESL), much research has gone into the benefits of mentoring particularly on the novice teachers, the relationship of mentor and the novice teachers as well as the impacts of mentoring on the novice teachers. However, what is lacking is research that examines the influences of pairing native English speakers’ mentors with non- native novice teachers on the novice teachers’ learning experience. This study explores the influences of a mentoring programme, the “Native Speaker Programme” on Malaysian novice ESL teachers’ professional development. The “Native Speaker Programme” aims at enhancing the capacity of non-native English teachers by placing Native English Speaking (NES) mentors to train non-native English Language teachers in primary schools. Employing a multiple case study, the data collection techniques of this study include semi-structured interview, observations and personal document analysis. Drawing on the construct of Furnished Imagination by Kiely and Askham (2012), the findings of the study discuss novice teachers’ professional development through the exploration of the influences of the programme on the novice teachers’ knowledge construction.