Educative mentoring: Promoting reform‐based science teaching through mentoring relationships

Abstract

Abstract Educative mentoring is an idea developed by Feiman‐Nemser [Feiman‐Nemser, S. (1998). Teachers as teacher educators. European Journal of Teacher Education , 21(1), 63–74; (2001). Helping novices learn to teach: Lessons from an exemplary support teacher. Journal of Teacher Education , 52(1), 17–30] to reflect current conceptions of mentoring that emphasize novices learning from their practice with the assistance of a mentor teacher. Educative mentoring seeks to meet the immediate needs of novice teachers while also focusing on long‐term goals for professional development. This paper discusses the meaning of educative mentoring, describes key behaviors of educative mentors, outlines important components for the professional development of mentors, and proposes areas for further research with a specific emphasis on the needs of beginning science teachers. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94: 1049–1071, 2010