Mentoring support and the professional development of beginning teachers: a Chinese perspective

TLDR

China has a long tradition of experienced teachers mentoring beginning teachers. The study investigates the kinds of support provided by mentoring dyads and the factors influencing that support. The study uses an empirical design involving eight mentor–protégé dyads in Guangzhou secondary schools. Mentors provide four main support types—information provision, lesson observation, collaborative preparation, and office discussion—while factors such as workload, subject grade, interaction style, mentor–mentee relationships, incentives, and school culture influence support, and protégés perceive both positive and negative developments with a focus on content teaching.

Abstract

For a long time, there has been a tradition in China of experienced teachers helping beginning teachers. This empirical school study investigates the kinds of support that are provided by eight dyads of mentoring teacher and first‐year secondary school teachers in Guangzhou of southern China and the major factors affecting mentoring support. In addition, this research focuses on the professional development of first‐year teachers in areas of subject knowledge, student, teaching and classroom management. The findings reveal that mentors provide four forms of support: provision of information, mutual lesson observation, collaborative lesson preparation and discussion in the office. Factors affecting mentoring support include teaching workload, grade and subject, style of mentor–protégé interactions, relationships between mentor and mentee, incentives for the mentors, and collegial culture in the case study schools. It is notable that there are positive and negative developments perceived by the protégé and the foci of mentoring tend to be the teaching of content rather than curriculum and pedagogy.