Book. Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook of Good Practice
Book
Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook of Good Practice
Sarah FletcherKogan Page2000£16.99ISBN: 0749431830Keywords:Mentoring, Schools
Mentoring can bring great benefits to the mentor, protégé and organization as a whole. Among the benefits which mentors report receiving are better awareness of what new employees experience, the acquisition of new skills, an improved network of contacts, a better understanding of other people's working styles, an improvement in coaching skills and the satisfaction of passing knowledge on to others. Examples of the benefits which protégés report from mentoring programmes include outstanding career advice, enhanced performance, increased visibility in the organization, a better understanding of the organizational culture and structure and feelings of greater support and friendship. Within an organization, mentoring can improve communication and help to merge different cultures.
Such benefits do not arise by accident. Careful planning and implementation are needed. In particular, should formal mentoring be available to all employees, or only certain groups? Should participation, on the part of the mentor and protégé, be compulsory or voluntary? How should the mentor and protégé be paired? What training should mentors and protégés receive? How should potential conflicts between mentor and protégé be handled? How long should formal mentoring sessions last? What can help to get the relationship off to a good start? What should happen if the mentoring relationship is not mutually satisfying? What can be done to ease the tensions that can arise between institutional structures and the values that motivate individual mentors? How can mentoring programmes be evaluated?
These are among the questions answered in Mentoring in Schools: A Handbook of Good Practice. The author, who believes that mentoring is central to the process of improving learning for pupils and teachers, moves readers through the values, skills and understandings that are vital in enhancing the quality of mentoring in teacher education. She brings together theory and practice through a focus on the importance of relating mentoring to the process of improving the quality of learning for both the reader and his or her students. There are plenty of case studies and real-life examples of a wide range of experiences.
The book targets both experienced and novice mentors. It reflects the current situation in initial teacher education with its emphasis on meeting the TTA standards for qualified teacher status. As the author concedes, it is less a cover-to-cover commitment than a dip-in-and-read-as-you-need-it guide. A Website linked to the text provides teachers with the chance to make the book part of a living process of improving professionalism in education.
