Mentoring: An Approach to Teacher Development

Mentoring is an old idea but a new approach applied in modern management, business, politics, human resource development and successor development system. It is found in both eastern and western cultures. In the Ramayana, Balmiki was the mentor for twin Lava and Kusha who made the twin as knowledgeable, skilled and powerful as their father king Rama. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore stepped back from the position of president to a normal minister just to support, guide and coach his new president. Similarly, Gandhi mentored Nehru in India. These days, mentoring is applicable in schools to develop teachers and students. The term mentor started from the Greek poet Homer's epic Odysseus.

What is a mentor? A mentor is a loyal friend, confident advisor, trusted "Guru", guide, coach, role model, patron or encourager (Peterson, 1989). More over, a mentor, as defined by Odell (1994) is an older, more experienced person who is committed to help less experienced person or a protégé in the profession as well as in many aspects of life. A mentor, in the context of teacher development program, is an experienced, competent, excellent senior teacher who supports, coaches, nurtures, and guides inexperienced new teachers and less competent teachers for their professional growth and excellence (Kafle, 2001). Mentoring is a two way process between the mentor and the protégé.

What is a protégé? A protégé is a person who is both a recipient of assistance and a participant in a comprehensive effort towards becoming self-reliant and accountable. Mutual participation is an essential ingredient to establish mentor-protégé relationship. Mentoring is not an approach where the mentor imposes changes on an unexpected protégé. It is a process that encourages protégé to become a self-reliant person. A self-reliant person needs to develop some beliefs, skills and attitudes which are generic. The expected attitudes of the self-reliant person are: (1) competent and able to do things on his/her own, (2) able to influence the conditions, (3) able to do independent actions (4) able to set standards and obtain feedback to make decision, and (5) personally controlled and having intrinsic reinforcement (Garman, 2002).

Over the last two decades mentoring has been very popular especially in teacher development in America, Europe and Australia. It is also effective for students' learning. In Asia continent Japan, South Korea, Bhutan and Pakistan are introducing mentoring in schools. In Nepal, many teachers join the teaching profession without any preparation. However, young people start the teaching profession with hopes for life, ambitions, excitements, and enthusiasm. But very soon most of them fail to continue and become very frustrated. Nepal is lacking an effective teacher development model. In other part of the world several models are experimented and implemented. Mentoring is one of the success stories. Where mentoring is successfully applied, teachers have remarkable positive feelings about it. An American teacher Riesenberg, (1997) said "Mentors come in all shapes and sizes. Often they are not recognized by those they help. My mentors shaped my life through an act of kindness, support and direction. Without mentors, I would have never begun teaching and I never would have continued teaching" (p.10). As mentoring is a two way process: Mentor and protégé must know each other very well and like each other to work together.

A mentoring model there are ample opportunities to learn by mentor and protégé both, however this model is primarily designed for the success of the teachers (protégé) in their teaching profession. In this model, an assigned person as mentor contributes to the following activities: (1) counseling and moral support, (2) providing coaching, (3) providing assistance in student evaluation, (4) helping with curriculum and lesson planning, (5) providing feedback on teaching, (6) coaching the teacher in reflection, (7) providing ideas for dealing with troublesome student problems, and (8) providing strategies for working with community.

Before starting a mentoring model, selection and preparation of mentors and developing an implementation system are essential. The prepared mentor must have following qualities: (1) committed to the teaching profession (2) excellent classroom educator (3) interested in working with teachers (4) interested in reading and practicing mentoring skills (5) exhibits special skills like counseling, (6) listening, patience, and humor, (7) mentor is close at hand to assist immediately, (8) reflective and analytical about personal teaching, (9) skilled problem solver, (10) caring and wise (11) can deal with differences and diversities of thoughts, styles, backgrounds, culture and philosophy, (12) competent in planning, organizing, and managing work, (13) aware of personnel and resources (14) can work with adults, (15) can demonstrate a wide variety of instructional skills and knowledge of curriculum, (16) possess an understanding of learning theories, principles human growth and development, (17) maintain high standard of professionalism and integrity, (18) can provide unconditional support to teachers.