Chapter 6: The Role of Mentoring in Early and Midlate Career Teacher Wellbeing

Increasingly, researchers are looking for new insights on how to protect the wellbeing of teachers (Bardach et al., 2022; Brady & Wilson, 2021; Hascher & Waber, 2021). As work intensification and teacher overload continue to increase internationally, teachers are experiencing more work-related stress, burnout, work–life imbalance, and higher retention rates (Boamah et al., 2022; Cherkowski & Walker, 2018; Kutsyuruba, Walker, et al., 2019). With the decrease in teacher retention (Perryman & Calvert, 2020), it is now more important than ever that teachers are attuned to the need to protect their own wellbeing (Aguilar, 2018) and that school administrators are aware of the mediating factors to facilitate teacher wellbeing (Huang et al., 2019). Specifically, one aspect that has proven to support teacher wellbeing that transcends all educational levels and contexts is the role of mentorship (Haidusek-Niazy et al., 2023; Kutsyuruba & Godden, 2019; Kutsyuruba, Godden, et al., 2019). This chapter offers a literature review on the role of mentoring for the wellbeing of teachers at different career stages. Upon a brief overview of the notions of wellbeing and mentoring in education, we describe the psychological, relational, and professional benefits of mentorship on early and mid-late careers teachers’ wellbeing in K–12 contexts internationally.