3 things that you can do right now
Engage with the evidence base provided by your training provider that lies behind some of your key practices and make these explicit to your mentee. Ensure that you are making links between theory and practice explicit, whether in planning / and or teaching.
Familiarise yourself with the programme modules/curriculum of the programme that your mentee is following. Ensure that you are linking what happens in the classroom, with what your mentee is learning in their CPD sessions.
Explicitly highlight examples of well-grounded theory and research in your mentee's teaching. Explain the impact it had on the pupils' learning and this will allow the mentee to understand how they are impacting on progress.
In this section
Make Links
In this section we focus on:
- linking theory and practice, helping teachers to deepen and broaden their learning from experiences
In a similar way to the children in your class, your mentee will not learn from reading a textbook alone. If they are a trainee teacher, they will need an opportunity to see how what they have been learning and reading about during training days, fits in with the reality of the classroom. This should be encouraged by your teacher training provider, either through weekly mentor reading, mentor professional development and / or integrated target setting. If they are a teacher in the early stages of their teaching career, they will still be attending training that needs to be given context within their employing school. You will need to guide them through this and make explicit links to relevant pedagogy. An obvious example might be talking to a mentee about a specific formative assessment strategy that you have chosen to expose learning. This is likely to link to centre based training underpinned by the ITTECF, and mandated research from Dylan Wiliam. The challenge here, is making sure you identify the things you are doing as part of your day to day planning and practise. A lot of what you do without thinking about it, will be embedded in well researched and respected theories of pedagogy. When you are able to do this, it allows the mentee to implement a pedagogical approach, review it, adapt it and measure its impact. This in turn allows the mentee to make an informed judgement about whether that approach is something they want to ensure is part of their day-to-day planning and teaching.
For teachers in the early stages of their career, you may find it necessary or useful to make links to your school’s curriculum, as well as linking to pedagogy. Understanding how the curriculum is sequenced and put together, is difficult to understand when you are first working within schools. Explaining why an area of a subject is being taught at a specific time of the year, can be enlightening for an early career and, by making links between theory, curriculum and the practical environment of the classroom, you are allowing your mentee to not only be aware of established best practice but also to start demonstrating these principles within their own teaching.
Initial Teacher Training Early Career Framework
The new initial teacher training and early career framework (ITTECF) combines and updates the initial teacher training core content framework (CCF) and the early career framework (ECF). It will ensure that all new teachers receive three or more years of training underpinned by the best available evidence.
What makes great pedagogy and great professional development: final report
Although from 2014, this report outlines what pedagogy is and how professionals can impact on this during their careers. Useful suggestions and case studies allow the reader to contextualise and evaluate the realities of implementing some of the recommendations.
Mentoring in Schools: How to become an expert colleague
Haili Hughes’s book provides a succinct exploration of what is required to be successful mentor in schools. Haili guides readers through the Teachers’ Standards, also linked to the ITTECF, offering mentors a wealth of strategies and interventions with which to support their mentee. The link below takes mentors to the book in its entirety. We suggest you locate the chapter most relevant to your mentee’s most current area for development.
Strategies and Models for Teachers: Teaching Content and Thinking Skills
Paul Eggen and Don Kauchak (Pearson, 2011)
This text is focussed on how to be an effective music teacher but the points made are applicable to all practitioners, across all Key Stages.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura (General Learning Press, 1977)
A wide-ranging text that focuses on a concept known as Social Learning Theory. The text focuses on the idea that we learn through observing other people’s professional behaviours and the outcome of these behaviours.
Make Links - Further Development
