‘A good news story’: hope for mentor teachers undertaking unseen labour in schools

In a new paper, RMIT education lecturer Allison Byth has called out the often overlooked commitment carried out by mentor teachers as they go about preparing ‘classroom-ready’ graduates.  

Byth tells EducationHQ the concept of hidden labour captures the situation perfectly. 

“[We’re talking] about assigning the mentoring work without a corresponding allocation of time.

“So, the mentor takes that on, but it’s absorbed within their daily classroom teaching tasks,” she says.

“In doing so, we are perhaps undervaluing that, because we’re saying ‘well, just do it on top of (your usual workload), or do it when you can’.”

The consequence is that the mentoring experience is reduced to ad-hoc and quick chats, often squeezed in before yard duty or before the next class kicks off, Byth says. 

Mentoring practices are also largely self-guided, she notes, meaning the practicum experience is incredibly varied for preservice teachers – a concern echoed in the ‘Strong Beginnings’ report handed down by the Teacher Education Expert Panel last year. 

And in the absence of targeted preparation and support at the system level, Byth says mentors are forced to follow their personal preferences or simply emulate their own mentor experiences when they take a novice teacher under their wing. 

Mentoring is complex and emotionally demanding work, she says, and being a proficient teacher does not necessarily equate to being an effective mentor. 

“Mentoring is a different skill because you’re mentoring adults. So, when you start to mentor an adult your pedagogy changes to andragogy. 

“It’s about understanding the adult learner and the adult learner context. 

“And those adult learners have so many different life experiences that they’re coming with,” she says. 

At present schools have little incentive to host ITE students, meaning mentor recruitment takes on a ‘woo these individuals through any means necessary’ flavour, Byth suggests. 

However, there is a good news story to be found here, the academic says. 

“We need to celebrate the really important contributions that mentor teachers make ... they’re really critical to training preservice teachers,” Byth says. 

In her research, Byth showcases how eight school-based coaches successfully bridged the gap between universities and schools, essentially scaffolding the entire mentoring experience and elevating its impact for all parties involved. 

One coach involved in the program reflected on how she planned an intervention for time-poor mentor teachers:

“After speaking to all the mentors, they felt that, with the school so busy and they had meeting after meeting after meeting, to find the time to actually sit with their preservice teachers and go through things was really quite difficult,” the coach said.  

“So, what we did was we gave each mentor half a day CRT release. In that time, they would sit with their preservice teacher and go through things like individual learning plans, assessments and what they wanted to cover in planning.

“They [the mentors] thought it was really valuable, otherwise they’re grabbing five minutes here and five minutes there.” 

Byth notes that while the coaches only worked part-time in the role, they were able to take on the bulk of challenges that mentor teachers would normally have to navigate on their own. 

They also were able to provide ‘much-needed clarity’ around practical implementation strategies, and helped to build a shared practice between teachers and their ITE students. 

“It is often largely unguided,” Byth says of the typical mentoring experience.

“This model is different to that. This model is supported and funded. 

“And I think it shouts out that, these little bits of funding that we are getting from the (Victorian) Government are really having an excellent impact. 

“This is a good news story.” 

Indeed, the research notes a ‘shift in identity’ was observed as the preservice teachers were involved in shared opportunities for planning and decision-making with their mentor and as they gained expertise in the classroom. 

“I guess one of the key findings was that if you give mentors time to do this work, then the work happens at a higher level,” Byth says. 

The academic would like to see the often concealed efforts of mentor teachers to be acknowledged in a bigger way. 

“We need to celebrate the really important contributions that mentor teachers make in initial teacher education programs, alongside their regular teaching duties – they’re really critical to training preservice teachers,” she says. 

“But in this research, we showed a way of doing (mentoring well), where schools and an ITE provider work really collaboratively together, and there’s professional reciprocal benefits to both.” 

The Teacher Education Expert Panel has warned that too many teachers starting out in the profession feel they are underprepared for the thorny challenges of the classroom. 

A survey of ITE students commissioned by the Panel found while many reported high-quality practical experience placements, many “did not feel that the expectations of their performance were clearly communicated or that they had mechanisms in place to resolve grievances”.

The Panel recommended a more “structured whole-of-system approach” for delivering high-quality practical experience so roles and responsibilities were clarified, consistency was improved and the administrative burden lessened.