Peer mentoring of school-based mentors: an exploratory study of mentoring relationships in public schools in urban Delhi

Abstract

"Peer mentoring of mentors, as a mechanism for the job-embedded professional development of mentors, provides opportunities for more competent mentors to guide the development of their mentor colleagues. The mentoring relationship’s implied support and guidance help mentees grow professionally, become reflective practitioners, and improve their mentoring practice. Thus, improving the quality of the peer mentoring relationship would benefit participants in a mentoring program. This study explores a two-level peer mentoring initiative in Delhi state, India, called the Delhi Mentor Teacher Programme: a first level in which mentors who operated at the cluster level (mentor teachers, MTs) mentored the school-based mentors (called Teacher Development Coordinators (TDCs)) in their cluster, and a second level in which these TDCs were tasked with the professional development of their teacher colleagues through mentoring. The first level is the focus of this study. The study adopted the grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006). The investigation centred on participant narrations, as shared by them during semi-structured interviews. Eight MT-TDC pairs were interviewed (sixteen interviews in total). Additionally, I conducted non-participant observations for each of the eight MT-TDC dyads as means of triangulating the findings. My principal finding indicates that within the context of educational reform driven programmes, the MT-TDC mentoring interactions evolved into three identifiable categories of help and support. Categories one and two describe how MTs focused on providing socio-emotional and institutional supports to TDCs (and to school teachers indirectly). Within these mentoring relationships, MTs and TDCs described each other as ‘trustworthy’ peers with a ‘shared’ understanding of the varied pressures they operate under. TDCs also shared that their MTs were available for them whenever they asked them to be in the school. These MTs and ii TDCs also identified their mentoring relationships as ‘informal’ and ‘friendly’, and that they focused on assistance with resolving problems related to programme implementation and provision of resources and knowledge related to those programmes. Category three describes how MTs focused on providing instructional supports to their TDCs (and school teachers). The mentoring dyads explained their engagement in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) which manifested in the form of varied levels of teachers’ meetings and classroom observations. However, these instructional interactions were based on the pedagogical strategies pushed down by the mentor programme as part of a larger educational reform agenda."