| Mentoring has recently received attention as a professional development tool for experienced teachers, as well as a means of reducing attrition among new teachers. However, studies of mentoring have focused on the mentee, and on mentors' reports of the ways in which their work has shaped their thinking; they have not explored the mentor teacher as a unit of analysis, to investigate the assumptions and understandings that experienced teachers bring to their work as mentors. The current study focused on the experience of three new mentor teachers, in the context of a university-based mentoring program in Southern California. Through semi-structured interviews, observations of mentoring meetings, and monthly conversations based on video recordings of the mentor teachers' classroom teaching, it documented the teaching, as well as thinking about teaching, of the mentor teacher participants. Thematic analysis revealed that each mentor teacher participant brought different sets of assumptions to the mentoring role, the process of reflection, their mentoring relationships, and the experience of being observed. These are all central aspects of mentoring discussed in the relevant body of literature. The mentor teacher participants' interpretations of these aspects of mentoring were detectable in their approach to classroom teaching, and did not change during the course of their first year as mentors. These findings suggest the need for longer studies of mentoring dyads, and for mentoring programs to consider whether and how mentor teachers should be selected for the role, and matched with their mentees. |
