Realize Your Mentoring Success: Conceptions of Mentoring Help Shape Interactions between New Science Teachers and Their Mentors

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Your principal has asked you to mentor the new teacher joining your science faculty. This person may be a recent graduate from a college teacher-education program or an individual coming directly into teaching after years of working in the private sector. How successful will you be in guiding this teacher's professional development? While your success will be influenced by how you and your mentee conceptualize teaching, learning, and the nature of science, research indicates that your success is also highly dependent on how you and your mentee conceptualize mentoring itself. Conceptions of mentoring Science teachers are familiar with conceptual-change literature that highlights the variation in students' conceptions of science phenomena. This literature suggests that students come to science-learning experiences with different perceptions of science phenomena, which influence their interactions with the phenomena both inside and outside of the classroom. This literature also tells us that these perceptions are often linked to the critical features that are the foci of their attention; for example, students might conceive of energy as a fluid, ingredient, or product (Driver et al. 1994) as a result of unique experiences with energy in their daily lives. Similarly, new science teachers and the experienced teachers who serve as their mentors may conceptualize mentoring in different ways, which can influence their professional interactions. Interpretations of mentoring in a science-teaching context may be derived from various life experiences, and these experiences--not unlike those that contribute to students' conceptions of science phenomena--may have links to a host of affective, social, and contextual factors. Interpretations of mentoring may be based on portrayals in movies and television shows, interactions with adults during childhood, or mentoring roles ascribed to novices and experts in the private sector, in addition to those derived from participation in school-based mentoring experiences. In a recent study of science teacher mentoring, we investigated conceptions of mentoring held by new science teachers and their mentors through interviews and intensive case studies (Koballa et al. Forthcoming); the new teachers in this study were completing an alternative secondary certification program. Our findings revealed three prominent conceptions of science teacher mentoring that highlight mentoring roles, processes, and outcomes: 1. Science teacher mentoring is personal support. 2. Science teacher mentoring is apprenticeship. 3. Science teacher mentoring is co-learning. Mentoring as personal support The conception of mentoring as personal support highlights the mentor's role in providing the new science teacher with both emotional and pedagogical support. When giving emotional support, the mentor listens to the new teacher's problems and triumphs and offers advice for coping with the challenges of science teaching. For example, a mentor might congratulate a new science teacher on a well-taught lesson or, after commiserating with the new teacher about the need for more laboratory equipment at their school, suggest alternatives to the equipment identified in the textbook's teacher edition. Emotional support may also involve the mentor advocating for the new teacher in dealings with school administrators. In this conception, pedagogical support emerges from the in-school experiences and teaching assignments the mentor and new teacher share. The nature of this support centers on encouraging new teachers to try multiple instructional strategies in order to develop a personal teaching style. A positive outcome of this type of mentoring is a new teacher who feels valued as both a person with compelling dilemmas and accomplishments and a professional who aspires to the fullest possible development. …