Distribution of influence,communication, and relational mentoring in the US superintendency

We report on how fifty superintendents (chief executive officers of public school systems, each invited by a researcher to participate) from seven states in the US talked in eight focus groups of their perspectives on their influence as leaders, their efforts to communicate with stakeholders, and how they learn from these stakeholders. We maintain that our participants’ revelations suggest that three definitions must be expanded to fit their work. First, influence or authority must be seen not merely as vested in the superintendent; rather, these superintendents described their leadership in terms of working with and through others. Second, organizational communication for these superintendents is more than the district’s leader communicating his or her perceptions and wishes to others; it is more relational, in which a variety of actors communicate their perspectives to one another. Third, this type of inter‐professional leadership leads logically to relational mentoring, where learning does not pass merely from expert to novice; rather, superintendents described their roles in terms of various parties learning from and teaching one another. We discuss implications of these insights for practice, research, and preparation.     

Authentic leadership strategies in support of mentoring processes

The aim of the study was to determine whether teacher-mentees perceive their mentors as authentic leaders and if so, how these perceptions affected their leadership strategies. The sample included 60 Israeli teacher-mentees from different school levels and different sectors, who volunteered to participate in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore participants' perceptions of mentoring processes that had influenced them professionally. Based on a confirmatory approach in qualitative analysis, using ATLAS.ti 5.0, we found that the influential mentors were perceived as authentic leaders who acted within four dimensions that were consistent with authentic leadership theory: self-awareness, balanced processing, relational transparency and internalised moral perspective. In addition, it was found that the influential mentors had contributed to the mentees' development of leadership strategies that included envisioning, engaging, evaluating, reflecting and monitoring. These findings may contribute to the development of preparatory programmes that can focus on development of authentic leaders among mentors, and may assist in developing middle-level leadership among their mentees. The present study indicated that mentoring characterised by authentic leadership could contribute to the broadening of leadership circles and to the construction of middle-level leadership through advancing mentees' leadership strategies within their educational spheres.     

The social construction of gender in the superintendency

The public school superintendency in the United States is overwhelmingly socially constructed as masculine even though the educator workforce from which superintendents are drawn is 75% female. Predictably, those who teach, research and write about the superintendency in the US, again overwhelmingly male, have largely reinforced the sexist gendering of this critical leadership position. In contrast, this study explores how three women superintendents engaged, in a complex fashion, the gendered social construction of the super intendency as they conducted the daily work of leading school districts in the state of Texas. This study also verifies for feminists in other national contexts the critical need for feminist research to be conducted in a wide variety of national contexts, especially because the feminist work of one specific context may be very different than that of another. The study ends with recommendations that fit Texas and the US at the beginning of the 21st century.     

Assessing mentoring in organizations: an evaluation of commercial mentoring instruments

The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the types of instruments available for assessing and improving mentoring in organizations. Extensive review of the psychological, business and medical literature was conducted to identify commercially published, practitioner‐oriented instruments. All of the instruments that were identified – including the Alleman mentoring activities questionnaire, Mentoring in the moment, Mentoring skills assessment, and Principles of adult mentoring scale – are evaluated herein. Each instrument’s target audience, raters, subscales, response options, psychometric properties, and relative strengths and weaknesses are described. Although these instruments are reported to be used extensively, evidence of their validity is not always available. This review presents information that, in combination with first‐hand inspection of the instruments, should enable practitioners to differentiate between instruments that may be a fit for their needs from those that are not. Furthermore, it may introduce academic readers to instruments that are not covered in the scholarly literature in spite of their common use for non‐research purposes.     

Learning from change: the mentoring triangle

Studies of relationships in the encounters of initial teacher education have tended to focus on pairs of actors — the higher education (HE) tutor and the student; the school‐based tutor and the student. This article looks at the occasion, formalised in the new partnership arrangements, when HE tutor and student meet to discuss issues of common concern. It identifies some benefits, in terms of clarification of role and responsibility, of the present definition of partnership. In the first year of the scheme it is apparent that the class teachers responsible for the mentoring of student teachers have a greater sense of ownership of the process and are more confident in their position vis a vis the higher education tutor. The higher education tutor finds that within a tighter specification of tasks, a distinctive contribution is recognised and respected. The student teacher's position and status in the triangle of relationships is the one that needs some further clarification, especially in relation to the interim and final judgements of competence.     

Contexts of mentoring and opportunities for learning to teach: a comparative study of mentoring practice

Drawing on data from twenty-three US, UK, and Chinese mentor teachers, this study explores the relationship between contexts of mentoring and mentoring practice. It discusses learning opportunities created by mentoring in different contexts for novices to learn to teach. Through comparative analysis, it finds that mentoring practices show greater differences across programs and countries than within. This is the case even when mentors are practicing or moving toward practicing a kind of teaching as expected by education reformers. These differences are reflected in mentors’ beliefs about what novices need to learn, their interaction patterns and foci with novices. Three instructional contexts in each setting shape such differences: structure of school curriculum and assessment, organization of teaching and mentoring, and student population. These findings suggest that the reform-minded teaching practice that mentors developed does not necessarily guarantee the effective mentoring that supports teacher learning and teaching reform. Teacher educators should pay attention to the influences of instructional contexts on mentoring and the kinds of learning opportunities that mentoring creates for novice teachers in different contexts. When designing mentoring programs and arranging mentoring relationships, teacher educators need to consider how to restructure school contexts and help mentors learn how to mentor.     

遗嘱继承与衡平理念

伴随着遗嘱继承发展历程的,是既促进个人意志自由又促进家庭、社会利益和谐发展的衡平理念.当代社会,遗嘱继承的衡平机制包括:在保障遗嘱自由的前提下,通过对家庭成员利益的救济,通过对社会公共利益的关注,最终实现个人、家庭和社会之间的利益平衡.实现法律所追求的公平正义.     

Nurturing the Singaporean Reader

This article describes Singapore’s efforts at encouraging extensive reading for pleasure among Singaporean school children.     

Strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge

Fundamental for mentoring a preservice teacher is the mentor’s articulation of pedagogical knowledge, which in this research draws upon specific practices, viz.: planning, timetabling lessons, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, questioning, classroom management, implementation, assessment and viewpoints for teaching. Mentoring is haphazard; consequently, mentors need a pedagogical knowledge framework and a repertoire of pedagogical knowledge strategies to guide a preservice teacher’s development. Yet, what are strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices? This qualitative research investigates mentoring strategies assigned to pedagogical knowledge from 27 experienced mentor teachers. Findings showed that there were multiple strategies that can be linked to specific pedagogical knowledge practices. For example, mentoring strategies associated with planning for teaching can include co-planning, verbally reflecting on planning with the mentee and showing examples of the mentor teacher’s planning (e.g. teacher’s plans, school plans, district and state plans). This article provides a bank of practical strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices to assist a preservice teacher’s development.     

Role reversal within the mentoring dyad: collaborative mentoring on the effective instruction of English language learners

Two purposes guided this mixed‐methods investigation of the collaborative mentoring of teachers in a large school system in the south‐eastern United States. The first was to examine collaborative mentoring as unstructured peer‐to‐peer coaching that emerged spontaneously as teachers shared experiences about effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs). The second was to examine how licensure courses contributed to the emergence of collaborative mentoring. Data collection consisted of questionnaires, mentoring stories, phone interviews, and electronic surveys. After completing courses, 84 teachers reported significant increases in frequency and duration of interactions for sharing best practices with colleagues. The data analysts identified course components, causal links, and catalysts as having created conditions for mentoring. Of 33 novice teachers recently trained in teaching ELLs, most found themselves mentoring veteran teachers yet untrained in teaching this student group. This unexpected reversal of the traditional novice/veteran roles within mentoring dyads addresses a gap in the educational literature.     

Conceptions of mentoring: An empirical study of conceptions of mentoring during the school-based teacher education

This article discusses the mentoring given by the mentor (cooperating teacher) during the practical part of teacher training. This mentoring is empirically described by studying and describing how it is conceived of by a group of mentors and student teachers. The differences in conceptions found concerning the functions are discussed in terms of a reflecting and a taken-for-granted perspective of professional knowledge of teachers. As regards conceptions of the content, it is discussed whether student teachers' practice teaching is an object of reflection or an occasion for practice. Conceptions and patterns of behaviour as regards the form of mentoring are discussed in terms of a principle-oriented strategy and an episode-oriented strategy. The variation described in this way in terms of the disparate perspectives could reflect different types of theoretical awareness of the phenomenon of mentoring that exist among mentors and student teachers.     

Developing Human Capital: training and mentoring for principals

The links between educational development and economic capability are widely recognised and have provided part of the rationale for the shift to market concepts of education in many countries. As more functions have been devolved to school level, it has become increasingly evident that principals require training and development to carry out their new responsibilities and to lead improvement in their schools. In Singapore, aspiring principals take a 1‐year training course which includes mentoring by an established principal. In England and Wales, the new National Professional Qualification for Headship is undertaken on a part‐time basis and adopts a quasi competence model without a mentoring dimension. This article compares the two approaches and concludes that training is likely to be more effective if mentoring is a central component of the process.     

Providing knowledge recommendations: an approach for informal electronic mentoring

The use of Web 2.0 technologies for knowledge management is invading the corporate sphere. The Web 2.0 is the most adopted knowledge transfer tool within knowledge intensive firms and is starting to be used for mentoring. This paper presents IM-TAG, a Web 2.0 tool, based on semantic technologies, for informal mentoring. The tool offers recommendations of mentoring contents built upon personal competencies of the mentee, combined with content and opinion tagging. To validate the tool, a case study comparing recommendations from the IM-TAG and a group of experts was conducted. Results show that the accuracy of IM-TAG's recommendations is notable and satisfactory. The main conclusions of this research may be valuable to organizations immersed in mentoring programs.     

Nurturing Positive Mental Health: Mindfulness for Wellbeing in Counseling

As increasing attention has been given in the past decade to positive psychology, this has likewise been directed toward understanding methods of nurturing positive mental health. These methods have moved toward empowering clients in the development of skills to enhance their own sense of wellbeing (Khong, Counseling and Spirituality, 25, 67–84, 2006). Advances in neurosciences are adding to this understanding, especially through the power of neuroimaging. Mindfulness training and self-compassion are key practices undergoing development for empowering clients in ways to nurture their own positive mental health. Counselors who become familiar with these practices and ways in which they promote positive mental health can gain new understanding and methods for assisting clients and thereby extend their therapeutic effectiveness. Counselors can teach clients practices that can serve to enhance coping capabilities and to reduce suffering.