Teaching is considered one of the challenging and demanding professions that might put a great amount of pressure on both experienced and novice teachers. That might sound terrifying for novice teachers and they usually undergo various problems in the way of succeeding in their profession. In this case, mentoring programs offered by schools can help to address these challenges that first-year teachers faced at the beginning of their careers. In addition, there are mutual benefits for both novice and experienced teachers. According to Anderson, Barksdale, & Hite (2005), mentoring programs allow young teachers to grow professionally in their roles as teachers and fill the gap between theory and practice (cited in Izadinia, 2017). Hanson and Moir (2001) found that experienced teachers benefit from being a mentor in different ways that include a stronger understanding of teaching and learning, frequently performing leadership positions in their schools, and after the completion of their jobs as mentors, they brought up professional learning community perspective in their schools (cited in Mathur, 2012).
Various empirical studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of the mentoring program for novice teachers and its impact on their practices (Kadyrova, 2017). Despite these multitudes of studies on mentoring, researches on teachers’ experience with the mentoring program in the Kazakhstani context is limited and not deliberately examined. Thus, more research is needed to better understand the perceptions and preferences of Kazakhstani teachers to further explore the impact of mentoring programs on their practices.
The current study has been conducted in one International School in Nur-Sultan. The school organizes seminars that are held every week. The main aim is to assist new teachers in becoming acquainted with the international educational program under which the school operates. Apart from weekly seminars, school administration assigns senior teachers as mentors for novice teachers within the same department to support them professionally, and guide them in creating lesson plans, conducting lessons, and assessing students’ works. However, the school does not have written guidelines or policies within the Mentoring Program that mentors and mentees follow and can refer by perforce and that regulate the process of mentoring. This will result in a lack of oversight on the part of the school administration, which will lead to the difficulties linked with mentor neglect, failure to fulfill their tasks, and deterioration of young teachers' work quality. Thereby increasing the risk of jeopardizing the learning process as novice teachers who have not received assistance from more experienced teachers would act blindly. This raises an issue of a mentoring program in a given school.
The purpose of this study is to explore the teachers’ experience with the mentoring program and its influence on their practices.
The central questions are what are the teacher’s experiences with the mentoring program and what are their influences on their practices.
The subquestions are the following:
- What kind of mentoring program exists at ISA?
- What are the teacher’s perceptions towards mentoring?
The mentor and mentee relationship is a considerably new concept in the Kazakhstani school system and unfortunately, there are few examples of mentoring programs that exist in Kazakhstan. It raises the issues related to the challenges that first-year teachers face when they start working as teachers and whether they perceive any support from experienced teachers.
Literature review
Research on a mentoring experience from the perspective of new teachers conducted by Gholam (2018), identified three areas of challenges that novice teachers face at the beginning of their career. Gholam (2018) claims that the inability to manage a classroom in terms of setting classroom rules and routines, dealing with students’ misbehavior, and managing time was referred to as the obstacles that new coming teachers experienced and struggled to overcome. Varela and Maxwell (2015) emphasized the inefficiency of a teacher training program that leads to the gap between the theory and practice and that is one of the main reasons for beginning teachers’ inability to balance classroom and workloads and perform successfully as well (Fletcher, 2013, as cited in Gholam 2018). In addition, research indicates that lesson planning and curriculum development are two additional areas of difficulty that first-year teachers when they start teaching.
Regarding mentoring experience, research has shown some positive outcomes. Gholam (2018), reports that mentoring programs helped young teachers improve their instructional skills, reflect on their faults and strengths, and encourage them to build great student-teacher relationships. Following these findings, Ingersoll and Strong (2011) young teachers who were part of mentorship programs showed considerable gains in classroom management and teaching techniques.
The study suggests conducting further qualitative research on exploring how factors such as culture and philosophy of the school, teachers’ experience and mentor selection, training, and matching to novices affect the teachers’ practices and quality of the mentoring program.
Methodology
As stated in the purpose of the study, it is needed to explore teachers’ experiences, and qualitative research design was used in this study as it is an effective method that occurs in participants’ familiar and natural settings and allows the researcher to generate a level of detail by being deeply involved in the events (Cresswell, 1994 cited in Williams, 2007). In addition, qualitative research design allows addressing whys and hows of teachers’ experiences with the mentoring program through exploring teachers’ opinions (Mitchel, 2013) and providing researcher the opportunity to directly interact with participants in their natural settings which results in collecting in-depth data (Rahman, 2016). Through purposeful homogeneous sampling, a high school, World History teacher who was assigned as a mentor and novice Kazakh and World history teacher in one International School in Nur-Sultan were selected. These particular participants were chosen because firstly, they are part of a mentoring program that exists in the school, and also mentor is considered as one of the most experienced teacher with excellent professional background. Purposeful homogeneous sampling was used to select participants as they lie under the group of the mentoring program and possess characteristics defined as mentor and mentee. Data were collected by conducting a semi-structured interview with participants and the following questions were constructed. The interviews were lasted for 30 minutes with each of the participants and probing questions were occurred during the interviews. To ensure confidentiality, pseudonym Assem was assigned to mentor and Ainur for the mentee.
- How would you describe mentoring?
- How would you describe a mentor/mentee?
- Can you tell me about your mentoring experience? / Can you tell me about your experience being a mentee?
- What is your opinion on communication between mentor and mentee? How mentor and mentee should communicate?
- Do you have a mentee now? Do you have a mentor now?
- Can you describe to me your meetings?
- From your perspective, how is this mentorship going?
- Are there any fixed or written guidelines within the mentoring program that you follow?
- Can you describe to me the assessment system of young teachers by mentors in this school? / Were you told how you are going to be assessed after the probation period?
- Did the mentoring affect your teaching practice in any way?
- What are the benefits of being a mentor in this school? Are there any encouragements from the school?
- From your point of view, what needs to be improved in the mentoring program?
Findings
Data collected from the semi-structured interview was categorized into four themes.
Theme 1: Perception of mentoring. During the interview, Assem identified a mentor as a guider, advisor, and someone who is professionally prepared and willing to share the experience. As for Ainur, she claims that mentors should provide not only guidance but support young teachers professionally, dedicating a great amount of time helping them to deal with the school system and culture, lesson planning, and delivering. She mentioned, «I was very frustrated when I started to teach concerning everything, from the content and structure of the lesson and I did not understand if I was conducting lessons properly or not. I needed some kind of feedback and did not receive any».
Theme 2: Challenges. Assem and Ainur identified three areas of challenges that hinder the work of mentoring. The first area was related to the lack of time. Assem finds it extremely difficult to meet with her mentees during work hours as she can not find time to devote herself to mentoring. She noted that «At this moment I can’t say I am the best mentor as I can’t manage time to take time to work closely with my mentees. And I consider this as an extra load for this moment»
The second area was related to lesson planning and delivery. Ainur emphasized that she was afraid first to teach students as was not aware of the lesson structure and not confident about what exactly to teach. In addition, she was concerned about her level of English and sometimes was stuck when delivering lessons.
The third area of challenge was related to the difficulties with developing tasks for summative assessments (here and after SA). She states that sometimes it took more than 5 hours to create tasks for SA because she was struggling to understand the assessment system, criteria and create tasks in accordance with them. She mentioned, «I was supposed to create SA tasks and spent the whole night working on it and ended up with frustration and felt depressed, even thought to quit the job. Then, I turned to my mentor and other teachers but couldn’t get sufficient help and still struggling with this» .
Theme 3: Experience with Mentoring program. In terms of the mentoring program, Assem expressed her concerns by noting the gap between school administration and teachers when formers assign them as mentors. She argues that mostly, the process of assigning mentors and mentees usually goes without taking teachers’ workload into account and states as a fact that teachers have to cope with.
In addition, both mentor and mentee mentioned that they were not given any written guidelines or policies to follow and it results in a poor mentoring process which negatively affects their practices. Consequently, mentoring is not regulated by the administration, and the official time for meetings was not identified in the school timetable and often teachers give up on these meetings as they are not regulated.
Moreover, Assem mentioned that this year she was not assigned as a mentor officially because the school administration did not issue an official decree on mentoring. She says, «Officially I am not a mentor as there is no and issued decree on mentoring for this year, I don’t know how to say, but this year it seems like more than voluntary work and help».
Theme 4: Assessment of mentees. During the interview, it was revealed that Ainur is not aware of the probation period and was told that vice-principals and coordinators will come to observe her lessons and provide feedback but still within the two months no one came to observe her . In addition, Ainur mentioned that it would be better first, to observe lessons of more experienced teachers to see and compare with her lessons and indicated that she would be stressed if someone comes to observe her as she does not know what to show.
As for Assem, she asserted that mentors do not play any role in assessing mentees, and during her experience of being a mentor she has never asked to provide any feedback or rapport. She states, «For the period of mentoring, the school administration has never asked my opinion in terms of a mentee and I see it as a devaluing of mentors role and their work in general».
Conclusion
Participants indicated three areas of challenges including lack of time, difficulties with lesson planning and delivering, and developing tasks for SA. The findings reported by participants align with previous research concerning the challenges novice teachers face. Fletcher (2013) identifies that lesson planning and curriculum creation are two other areas of challenge that beginning teachers experience. The findings of this study provide a solid foundation for educational policymakers to develop and create effective mentoring programs for new teachers in Kazakhstan. Even though some schools assign mentors to provide support for newly-arrived teachers, mentoring programs can be improved and regulated by the administration. In addition, before identifying mentors, the general workload of these teachers should be reviewed and considered to ensure the quality of lessons and mentoring as well. Finally, some strategies should be developed to familiarize novice teachers with school program and teach them to deliver lessons properly, and deal with other tasks related to developing curriculum and summative assessments.
References:
- Gholam, A. (2018). A Mentoring Experience: From the Perspective of a Novice Teacher. International Journal of Progressive Education,14(2), 1–12.
- Guest, G., Namey, E. E., & Mitchell, M. L. (2013). Collecting Qualitative Data: A Field Manual for Applied Research (1st ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
- Izadinia, M. (2015, November). A closer look at the role of mentor teachers in shaping preservice teachers' professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education,25,1–10.
- Ingersoll, R. M., & Strong, M. (2011). The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers: A critical review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 201–233.
- Kadyrova, S. (2017). The role of the mentor in the first year of teaching. NUGSE Research in Education, 2(1), 27–35. Retrieved from nugserie.nu.edu.kz
- Mathur, R. S., Gehrke, R., Kim, S.H. (2012). Impact of a Teacher Mentorship Program on Mentors’ and Mentees’ Perceptions of Classroom Practices and the Mentoring Experience. Assessment for Effective Intervention, 38(3), 154–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534508412457873
- Rahman, M.Sh. (2017). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches and Methods in Language «Testing and Assessment» Research: A Literature Review. Journal of Education and Learning, 6(1), 102–112.
- Williams, C., (2007). Research Methods. Journal of Business &Economic Research, 5(3),65–71.
