School leadership mentoring

 

Professor Bill Mulford The University of Tasmania Tasmania, Australia

 

Mentoring has a long history and its use is currently undergoing resurgence in the area of school leadership. What are its functions and processes? What are the major issues to do with mentors and mentees? What are the benefits and pitfalls for mentors, mentees and the organisation?

1. The three functions of mentoring are:

• professional development - helping others to learn the knowledge, skills, behaviours and values of the leader's role;
• career development – this includes the issues of career satisfaction, awareness and advancement (for example, by helping the mentee establish networks);
• psychosocial development –this focuses on personal and social wellbeing, as well as role expectations, conflict and clarification/identity.

2. Several primary processes inherent in mentoring are:

• the first, and most basic, is that relating to personal developmental relationships – thus the need for the careful matching of mentor and mentee involving sustained dialogue;
• the second is active guidance, teaching and challenge – involving a confidential and trusting relationship and a non-supervisory process, where mentors are not required to assess the performance of others;
• the third involves the management and implementation of a planned curriculum, especially one that involves the active collaboration of others in the school.

These processes of personal relationship and active guidance involve an intentionality that is critical to the success of mentoring. Other mentoring processes include teaching/coaching, reflective mentoring, and sponsorship.

Teaching/coaching

• When informing is necessary, adult learners respond to demonstration and modelling approaches but, in general, they respond best to learning by doing.
• Mentees also need to be challenged to try new roles, responsibilities, and even the mentor's strategies and choices.
• Mentors need to know when to intervene and when to allow learning from mistakes to occur.
• Mentors need to be reflective and encourage open and honest reflection with their mentees. This process can be helped by keeping journals, shadowing, storytelling, and visioning.

Sponsorship involves:

• nominating mentees for desirable positions;
• creating opportunities to allow the mentee's skills to be seen by others;
• actively introducing interns to those in the education system who can help advance their career.

3. Mentor selection and matching to mentee are critical parts of any mentoring program.

At least four characteristics should be considered in mentor selection:

• successful and well-regarded school leaders, who have strong character reputations;
• commitment to mentoring and their own development as a mentor;
• commitment to being learners themselves;
• time to mentor.

Matching mentees with the right mentor on personality, expertise and educational interest is often difficult but is thought to work best when both choice and developmental needs are balanced. Not only should the selection and matching be intentional processes, but also the preparation of mentors should be planned and emphasised. Mentor training should cover:

• the content (the purpose and nature of the scheme);
• methods (teaching/coaching, reflecting, sponsoring);
• assessment of mentoring.

4. Benefits and pitfalls

The benefits of mentoring for the mentees can be summarised (in rough order of importance) as:

• support;
• sharing;
• professional development and networking;
• increased confidence and competence;
• improved reflection;
• exposure to new ideas and creativity;
• opportunities for challenging and risk-taking activities;
• protection from damaging situations;
• visibility with key personnel.

But because mentoring is an active, reciprocal learning process, mentoring has benefits for mentors as well. These (in order) include:

• the forming of long-lasting friendships/supporters, collegiality and networking;
• professional development;
• an opportunity to reflect and critically evaluate their own processes;
• personal satisfaction;
• the learning of new skills;
• a renewed interest in teaching;
• an increase in their importance to the larger education system.

The pitfalls of mentoring for mentees include:

• concern with expertise/personality mismatch;
• lack of time;
• unskilled mentor, including having their own agendas that do not include the best interests of the mentee;
• mentee dependence on the mentor;
• mentors trying to clone mentees in their own image.

The pitfalls of mentoring for mentors include:

• lack of time to perform role;
• mismatch arising from personality/educational issues;
• nature of communication skills required, especially listening;
• inadequate training;
• an overly cosy and comfortable relationship that results in a support of instrumental and conservative views and a perpetuation of the status quo (we need to be careful that we are not ‘supporting' our new school leaders by encouraging them to face the future by walking into the 21st century looking backward).

The organisational benefits of mentoring can include improved:

• interdependence and integration of organisational norms;
• productivity;
• retention and leadership continuity;
• interdepartmental communication.

The organisational problems of mentoring include:

• resource (time and money) rich;
• little research on the outcomes it yields for students;
• lack of rigour in the data, including being based mainly on self-reports (in contrast to observation and/or third party analysis);
• unless handled well, it can result in a superficial process with no philosophical or professional underpinnings and no link to a shared local context.

 

Professor Bill Mulford is Director of the Leadership for Learning Research Group, in the Faculty of Education, at the University of Tasmania, in Tasmania, Australia.

Join the online discussion for all supporting papers from Monday 19 June to Sunday 26 June 2006.