“Breaking Good”: Mentoring for Teacher Induction at the Workplace

Abstract

Given the dissonant and complex character of induction for novices at the workplace, I propose a conception of mentoring that focuses on mitigating misalignments between novices’ developmental stage and the socializing characteristics and pressures of workplace induction. Drawing on extant research and conceptualization, including my own research on mentoring for teacher induction, this article addresses three interrelated questions: What are the central tasks of mentors in promoting effective induction of novice teachers at the workplace? What do mentors need to know in order to perform these tasks?  What kind of professional frameworks for learning to mentor?

 
I claim that in order to help novices ‘break good from experience’, as the title metaphorically suggests, mentors need to be prepared to flexibly adapt strategies from diverse mentoring models according to the particular socio-cultural features of induction of novices’ workplace and to aspects of subject matter teaching. Such kind of mentoring is, thus, attentive to discursive tensions between ideologies, rituals, values, belief systems and behaviors that surge amongst the various players involved. The article describes the central tasks for mentors of novice teachers, the knowledge-base required of mentors in order to perform these tasks and the kind of professional frameworks for learning to mentor.