Introduction

Thank you for your interest in the Mentoring for Effective Teaching (MET) program. The following presents details about the program, including registration and session information.

Registration is AUS$370 for three-months access to the MET program online. There are 11 sessions with activities related to each MET session. The program will take approximately 20 hours (12 hours for engaging in the sessions and 8 hours to complete the activities). When you complete the activities in the program, you can submit your portfolio generated from the activities. The portfolio will be assessed by a qualified university academic who is also a MET Facilitator.

The MET program will refer to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (APST). However, you can use standards or competencies from other countries (e.g., UK, Europe, the US, and various parts of Asia).

Upon successful completion of all activities, you will receive a certificate of professional learning at the highly-accomplished career stage.

If you would like further information about the MET program or you wish to enrol, please email drsuzannehudson@gmail.com

MET program instructions and navigation

These instructions provide details about learning MET program, particularly using the dashboard with its sequence of activities.

Portfolio Feedback – Criteria Sheet

You will receive feedback on all your tasks within the portfolio along with a certificate upon successful completion. On request at the time of submitting your portfolio, MET university academics will provide a graded assessment using this criteria sheet.

Relationships and relationship building are pivotal in the teaching profession. Similarly, forming a positive mentor-mentee relationship in the school setting can assist in building the mentee’s capacity for teaching. Respect and trust are at the centre of the relationship where both mentor and mentee can share expectations and understandings for teaching through a collaborative and supportive process. This session unpacks key components of this relationship.

Every school is unique. Every classroom is unique and every child is unique. All new teachers, including early-career teachers such as preservice teachers and beginning teachers, need to be inducted into the school. Part of induction is knowledge around the school culture and infrastructure. The school culture has developed over time and embraces the wider community. It includes the community’s socioeconomic status, resources, cultural backgrounds, religious affiliations and a range of other influences that can impact directly on the school. This session delves into induction and the school culture and infrastructure.

Mentees seek personal and professional qualities in their mentors. Undoubtedly, the mentor’s personal attributes contribute to the mentoring process and include: having the personal qualities for the mentee to be willing to reflect with the mentor, being supportive, being comfortable with talking, being an active listener, and instilling positive attitudes and confidence in the mentee. These qualities are claimed to assist in forming and sustaining the mentor-mentee relationship and will be presented in this session.

All teachers employed within education departments must abide by the system requirements. In its simplest form this includes the aims, policies and curriculum for teaching. Assisting early-career teachers (i.e., preservice teachers and beginning teachers) to understand the system requirements becomes an essential mentoring process. For instance, mentees need awareness of key policies (e.g., child protection, behaviour management, duties) for acceptable involvement in a school. This session presents mentoring on the system requirements.

Classroom teachers, in their roles as mentors, can have the wisdom from teaching to deconstruct and articulate particular, and tacit, pedagogical knowledge to guide the mentee’s teaching practices. Differentiating the curriculum and addressing students’ needs underpins the pedagogical knowledge practices. This session unpacks eleven essential pedagogical knowledge practices for mentoring early-career teachers.

Effective mentors model teaching practices to assist early-career teachers’ development. Drawing on these vicarious experiences can allow mentees to reflect and evaluate practices for building their own teaching expertise. It is important to note that mentors are modelling to mentees in all aspects of school life, including teaching, professional relationships, collegial discussions, duties and dispositions towards the profession. This session provides concepts around modelling as an essential factor within the mentoring process.

Mentors play key roles in developing early-career teachers for their chosen careers and providing feedback requires a significant relational interaction between the mentor and mentee to assist in guiding the mentee’s practices. Respectful relationships provide a basis for mentor-mentee feedback discussions and stimulating the mentee’s reflections on practice for future pedagogical advancement.

Feedback involves establishing expectations prior to observations of teaching and then determining the form of the feedback (e.g., oral and/or written). It’s important to provide feedback on the mentee’s reflections on practice. This session explores feedback as an essential factor of mentoring.

Key parts of mentoring include modelling teaching practices and observation of the mentee’s teaching. Mentees need opportunities to observe their mentors and listen to the mentors’ reflections on practice, as this also provides a model for mentees to consider. In addition, and after negotiated expectations on what and how to observe, an effective mentor provides quality feedback after observing a mentee teacher and facilitates reflection on practice. This session presents an observation of teaching for the purposes of providing quality feedback.

Using frameworks for providing feedback and facilitating reflections can assist the mentoring process. Frameworks can provide directions with the content of the mentoring. This session presents the REF framework (Reflections, Exploring practices, and Future directions with goal setting).

The REF framework can help to generate questions around Reflection on practice, Exploring various intricacies in the mentee’s teaching practices, and asking questions about the mentee’s Future directions for advancing teaching practices.

Using tools can assist to de-personalise the mentoring for the purposes of providing diplomatically honest and focused feedback. Tools for mentors and mentees can present concepts associated with practices. These tools may be in the form of a Likert scale (e.g., “tick and flick”), written comments or a combination of the two. This session presents a variety of tools for both mentors and mentees.

There can be issues and problems associated with teaching in the classroom. These issues may result in low to high-level conflicts that require resolution. A mentor can be more prepared for the mentoring process when knowledgeable about conflict resolution strategies. In addition, mentors take on leadership roles when stepping into the mentoring role. This session provides an awareness of the attributes and practices of inspirational leaders that can further advance the mentor’s understandings of effective practices.