RR 90-13 Adolescent dancing and the mentoring of beginning teachers.
Abstract
Like adolescents at a junior high dance, experienced teachers working with beginning teachers stand poised and ready to dance. In both events, particular conditions, norms, and expectations govern the interactions of participants and heavily influence what happens and how the event unfolds. Focusing on eight instances of experienced and beginning teachers' work together in junior and senior high schools in a large urban district, the author explores the work of experienced teachers with beginning teachers and perceptions and enactments experienced teachers have of their role. Mentors pass on to beginning teachers, through their discussions and through their teaching with the beginning teachers, many messages about teaching and learning in an urban context. Yet, as with the existing but often competing and conflicting rules that govern junior high dances and lead to uncertain expectations and outcomes, so too are there conflicting ideas about what mentoring is supposed to lead to. Mentors experience conflict in their work; most notable in the data are conflicts of fitting role expectations with role enactment and the difficulties of critiquing beginners' teaching practices. Two conditions of the work, the limited time available to mentors and the norms governing the work, add to the conflicts. Implications of the study are that mentors could provide a model for beginning teachers by showing how their struggles to overcome the dilemmas of their practices could result in worthwhile experiences in which both experienced and beginning teachers could study and learn about teaching over time.