International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education (International Perspectives on English Language Teaching) 3030992608, 9783030992606

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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education Edited by Mark Wyatt Kenan Dikilitaş

International Perspectives on English Language Teaching

Series Editors Sue Garton, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK Fiona Copland, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

Global meets local in Palgrave’s exciting new series, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching. This innovative series is truly international, with each volume providing the opportunity to compare and learn from experiences of researchers and teachers around the world; is based on cutting edge research linked to effective pedagogic practice; shows how developing local pedagogies can have global resonance. Each volume focuses on an area of current debate in ELT and is edited by key figures in the field, while contributors are drawn from across the globe and from a variety of backgrounds.

Mark Wyatt · Kenan Dikilita¸s Editors

International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education

Editors Mark Wyatt Khalifa University of Science and Technology Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Kenan Dikilita¸s University of Stavanger Stavanger, Norway

International Perspectives on English Language Teaching ISBN 978-3-030-99260-6 ISBN 978-3-030-99261-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Chapter 14 is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license information in the chapter. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: SusanneSchulz/getty images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

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Current Developments in Mentoring in English Language Education Mark Wyatt and Kenan Dikilita¸s Peer-Tutors as Writing Centre Peer-Mentors at the American University of Sharjah Maria Eleftheriou, Zahraa Al-Dawood, Konstantina Spyropoulou, and Roger Nunn

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Mentoring Doctoral Students: Challenging the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Novice Researcher Anne Burns

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Mentoring Through Modeling and Socialization: Insights from China and Nepal Peter I. De Costa, Laxmi Prasad Ojha, and Luqing Zang

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Contradictions in a TESOL Mentoring Programme in Vietnam: Implications for Practice Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen and Thi Lan Anh Tran

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Systematic Informed Reflective Practice: Facilitating Knowledge and Agency Co-construction Through Mentoring Elena Onˇcevska Ager

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Contents

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Learning to Mentor Junior High School Teachers in Japan James M. Hall and Fiona Copland

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Reflections on Mentoring In-service English Language Teachers in Oman While Drawing on Malderez and Bodóczky’s ‘Mentor Courses’ Mark Wyatt

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Is It Cultural or Personal?: Exploring Interwoven Factors Influencing Mentoring Conversations Melissa K. Smith and Marilyn Lewis

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Collaboration, Collegiality, Co-Production: Mentoring Exploratory Practitioners in International Contexts Judith Hanks, Ines K. Miller, and Maria I. A. Cunha

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Empowering Teachers Through Mentoring Within Language Teacher Associations: Examples from Africa Kuchah Kuchah and Amira Salama

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Mentoring Teacher-Research: From Situated Practice to ‘Global’ Guidance Richard Smith

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Mentoring Teacher Research Online Claudia Bustos-Moraga and Steve Mann

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Mentoring Presence for Supporting International Teacher-Researchers Kenan Dikilita¸s, Aslı Lidice Göktürk Sa˘glam, Mariana Serra, and Ruben Daniel Mazzei

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Mentoring at Scale in India: The English Language Initiative for Secondary Schools Simon Borg

11 Transformative Mentoring in a Pre-school Bilingual Context in Turkey Kenan Dikilita¸s and Simon Edward Mumford 12

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Mentoring in English Language Education: Using Current Transnational Practices to Inform the Future Mark Wyatt and Kenan Dikilita¸s

Index

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List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

10.1 10.2 15.1 15.2

Fig. 15.3

Fig. 15.4

What culture is not Web of factors Screengrab of a mentor’s comments on a mentee’s draft Daniel (the mentor) taking notes on his mentee’s questionnaire while screensharing Mariana (the mentor) using her mentee’s questionnaire and exploratory questions to prompt reflection while screensharing Pedro (the mentor) screensharing notes to scaffold a subsequent description of the research context given by his mentee

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List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 10.1

Types of initiative and KA, and their effects on the discussion Reflection analysis

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1 Current Developments in Mentoring in English Language Education Mark Wyatt and Kenan Dikilita¸s

Introduction Our term ‘mentor’ derives from ‘Mentes’, who was an elderly counsellor in Homer’s Odyssey who offered guidance and support to Odysseus’ young son, Telemachus (Ellis et al., 2020). The term was little used in English until the 1980s but has since become an important concept in English language education. As an expression, ‘mentoring’ may suggest a more affective dimension to offering guidance and support than related terms such as ‘advising’, ‘tutoring’ and ‘supervising’, against which, according to Google Ngram viewer, ‘mentoring’ has grown in relative frequency in English text since 1996. This shift in the use of terminology likely reflects related shifts, such as the growing use of ‘teacher educator’ at the expense of ‘teacher trainer’, and, at a deeper level, changing perceptions within society, as sociocultural perspectives in language education have developed (Freeman & Johnson, 1998). M. Wyatt (B) Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE e-mail: [email protected] K. Dikilita¸s University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_1

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Indeed, contemporary definitions of mentoring emphasize that the concept embraces not just a linear transfer of knowledge from a more to a less experienced person through the provision of friendly guidance and support, which appears to have been the earlier, primarily ‘patriarchal’, understanding (Asención Delaney, 2012; Gakonga, 2019; Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Orland-Barak, 2014). Rather, mentoring as an activity also implies the use of opportunities to provide facilitative support to enable constructivist knowledge development centred on reflective practice and conversation (Carrigan, 2018; Smith & Lewis, 2018; Tonna et al., 2017). Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of scaffolding is perceived to be at the heart of such collaborative and cooperative work (Malderez & Wedell, 2007; Nguyen, 2017; Smith et al., 2014), which can accordingly be provided by a peer (Bu˘gra & Wyatt, 2021; Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2016; Nguyen & Ngo, 2018). Providing psychological support (Halai, 2006; Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999) and addressing psychosocial needs (Nguyen, 2013) are now generally regarded as crucial dimensions of the mentor’s role (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018; Nguyen, 2017), enabling the growth of trust and facilitating mentee-mentor relationship-building (Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Smith, 2020). However, while reports of mentoring practices are now appearing more frequently, e.g. with regard to pre-service teachers (Ellis et al., 2020), mentormentoring (Smith & Lewis, 2018) and teacher-research (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018; Smith, 2020), there is still a relative scarcity of publications examining internationally situated mentoring practices conducted face-to-face or through online interaction in English language education worldwide. Nevertheless, amongst researchers whose primary research focus has been on different aspects of teachers’ reflective self-development in transnational situations, awareness may be growing of a need for mentoring to facilitate dynamic psychological change processes in their mentees. Accordingly, it seems timely to cast a spotlight on internationally situated, transnational and interculturally-performed mentoring practices. Through this volume, we aim to support critical engagement with mentoring amongst English language educators and provide a venue for the sharing of potentially inspiring insights into mentoring, mentoring practices and trajectorial experiences achieved through mentoring. In the remainder of this chapter, we explore the roots of mentoring in general and English language education, and then focus on key issues in mentoring practices that embrace a consideration of mentee-mentor roles (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999), peer mentoring (Nguyen, 2017), judgementoring (Hobson & Malderez, 2013), facilitative mentoring (Smith & Lewis, 2015) and dialogic mentoring processes (Mann et al., 2020). There

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will then be some discussion of the range of educational and geographical contexts in which mentoring is taking place, with language learners, teachers in pre- and in-service education, teacher-researchers, and research mentors, through face-to-face and online channels. There will be a spotlight on how mentoring supports professional learning activities involving reflective practice, exploratory practice and collaborative action research, and processes centred on achieving fuller identity growth, enhanced self-efficacy beliefs, greater autonomy, and emancipation. We will then introduce the contents of this volume that address these various dimensions of mentoring.

The Rise of Mentoring in English Language Education There may be several interconnected reasons why mentoring appears to have been adopted as a strategy for supporting teacher development in general and then English language education from the 1980s, in contexts including the UK and the USA (Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Hobson et al., 2009). Firstly, from a theoretical standpoint, Vygotsky’s (1978) ideas about scaffolding were gaining currency, while Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on legitimate peripheral participation likewise became highly influential (Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Meanwhile, awareness spread that teaching was not simply a matter of producing appropriate behaviour that could be linked to learner outcomes, but instead reflected complex areas of practical knowledge, values and beliefs developed in social situations and informed by emerging pedagogical insights (Borg, 2006; Freeman & Johnson, 1998). Consequently, it became recognised that, for teachers to function successfully, they should be equipped through their education with the tools to become reflective practitioners (Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Wallace, 1991). At the same time, there were practical concerns about the high attrition rates of novice teachers, sometimes ‘150% higher than [those] of other teachers’ (OECD, 2012: 1), a phenomenon likely associated with an unfortunate disconnect between formal teacher preparation, the practicum and real teaching (Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Mentoring, it was thought, could scaffold reflective practice, so helping teachers learn from their own cognitive engagement and from the various experiences they were exposed to in social situations, so that they could then adapt, survive, and grow (Hobson et al., 2009; Nguyen, 2017). Such mentoring would help novice teachers to navigate their own ways increasingly independently from the periphery to the centre of their communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). While doing

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so, they could engage in the kinds of sociocultural practices that can facilitate the development of teacher identity, practical knowledge and teaching expertise in the language classroom (Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Since then, while mentoring has become ‘a global mantra in teacher education’ (Ellis et al., 2020: 2), it has also been somewhat taken for granted as a panacea, which is unfortunate because there are contexts where mentoring is insufficiently supported (Arnold, 2006; Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999) and where reflective practice itself is little understood (Watanabe, 2017). This situation necessitates some consideration of salient issues in mentoring practices.

Key Issues in Mentoring Practices It is broadly agreed that the primary goal of mentoring is to support professional learning in social situations through one-to-one or group interaction focused on addressing mentees’ needs (Nguyen, 2017; Orland-Barak, 2014). However, there is some debate about the qualities and skills needed by mentors, the roles they assume, the support mechanisms they require and the mentoring resources and strategies they might deploy. With regard to mentor qualities, insights can be gained from considering the perspectives of mentees. These perspectives tend to emphasize that, whatever the task, personal qualities such as being friendly, enthusiastic, helpful, kind, patient, open and willing to share are all important in a mentor (Arnold, 2006; Chien, 2015; Hudson & Nguyen, 2009). Highly important too are interpersonal skills, such as being able to listen actively and empathize, and also, where mentees and mentors are from different cultures, employ relational talk that demonstrates intercultural awareness (Arnold, 2006; Smith & Lewis, 2018). These skills and qualities are vital for the fulfilment of more ‘nurturing’ mentor roles, such as providing emotional or psychological support (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018; Gakonga, 2019; Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999) while patiently building a trusting relationship (Arnold, 2006; Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). The fulfilment of the mentor’s educator role (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999) also depends to a large extent on a positive trusting relationship having been established. Shaped by cultural factors, this relationship may be particularly strong when the mentor providing such support is a peer psychosocially sharing, encouraging and befriending (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Nguyen, 2017), working on egalitarian principles (Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018). However, the mentor fulfilling an educator role (Malderez & Bodóczky,

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1999), which is often realised through helping language teachers to develop as reflective practitioners through post-lesson discussions (Gakonga, 2019), might also require particular skills. These skills include being able to read a mentoring situation (Orland, 2001), fine-tuning support according to needs (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012), ‘holding up the mirror’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 19) and scaffolding reflective dialogue (Mann et al., 2020), perhaps in a collaborative, alternative or non-directive way (Gebhard, 1984). Adopting a facilitative strategy (Smith & Lewis, 2018) might involve mentors in guiding their mentees towards self-discovery in post-lesson discussions, perhaps through use of the Systematic Informed Reflective Practice mentoring model (Malderez, 2015). This model was developed to consciously avoid the judgementoring that can be manifest in an over-use of politely worded but emotionally destructive constructive criticism (Hobson & Malderez, 2013) that can inhibit agency (Gakonga, 2019; Onˇcevska Ager & Wyatt, 2019). However, studies that have drawn on conversation analysis suggest it may be difficult to avoid judgementoring discourse in post-lesson discussions. Copland and Donaghue (2019) argue that, while many mentors explicitly favour adopting a collaborative approach to stimulate reflection, in practice the feedback they offer can tend towards the directive. Mentor talk analysed by Waring (2013), for example, is centred on advising and assessing, while in some cultures, teachers may view being asked to reflect as an ordeal if they have had little prior experience of doing this, particularly through a second language (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). Mentors engaged in post-lesson discussions therefore need not only culturally attuned teaching expertise (Smith & Lewis, 2018), but reflexivity and a deep understanding of the role of reflective practice as a self-directed strategy for teacher development and an awareness of how to support it (Arnold, 2006; Mann & Walsh, 2017). There is another key facet to the mentor’s ‘educator’ role, which Halai (2006) divides into two main areas: ‘expert-coach’ focused on encouraging reflection (as above) and ‘subject-specialist’ focused on providing core knowledge with regards the topic area. The notion of the mentor as an advice-giving subject-specialist, a patriarchal ‘white beard’ (Smith & Lewis, 2018), appears to be particularly dominant in Confucian heritage cultures (Bai et al., 2014; Chang et al., 2014), but is present in many others, and is associated with knowing and telling. Of course, though, there are many situations where advice on content may not be required, for example where mentee and mentor are equally confident in the linguistic matter being taught. However, the subject-specialist may be needed in situations in which there is a knowledge gap, for example where teacher research is being introduced to teachers with limited knowledge of how to do such research by mentors who are also

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developing this knowledge with the help of mentor-mentoring (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018). In such a situation, Fletcher (2012: 71) distinguishes between ‘research mentor pedagogical content knowledge’, ‘the knowledge a research mentor needs to teach teachers to research their practice’, and ‘research skills pedagogical content knowledge’, which refers to the mentor’s nurturing of ‘specific research skills and aptitudes’ as expert-coach (Halai, 2006). In contexts where the mentor lacks subject-specialist knowledge, for example in Wang and Bale’s (2019) study of four teachers of Chinese in the United States whose mentors could not speak the language, this absence may be a source of regret. The mentors in this case were able to encourage reflective strategies but could not scaffold the growth of linguistic knowledge they themselves did not possess. Besides the roles of educating and providing emotional support, there are other mentor roles, including ‘modelling’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999), which refers to the sharing of craft knowledge that accords primarily with the apprenticeship model of teacher education (Wallace, 1991). While Malderez and Bodóczky (1999) conceptualize modelling as being about inspiring as well as demonstrating, modelling can be conceived as belonging primarily to the technical dimensions of mentoring, together with other forms of information sharing (Gakonga, 2019). Moving beyond mentor roles, mentoring itself needs to be set within broader global developments. This is because mentoring in English language education is currently being enacted within a rapidly changing social world in which critical consciousness-raising of all forms of discrimination is accelerating (Curtis & Romney, 2010; Savski, 2021). We should never forget that mentees, particularly those sometimes positioned as ‘”other” by virtue of the intersection of gender, race, class, ethnicity, ability, or sexual orientation, may experience difficulties initiating and participating in informal mentoring relationships’ (Hansman, 2002: 39). It is vital, then, that the mentor is deeply reflexive about power relations, constantly questioning their own beliefs, values, and practices in relation to their mentee’s needs in whatever is the current situation. Besides critical consciousness regarding social change, the mentor also needs to be alive to technological developments. As Asención Delaney (2012) highlights, computer-mediated communication has facilitated the development of online ‘communities of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) centred on the sharing of resources and support and functioning as sites for online mentoring practices. Online mentoring, which Asención Delaney (2012) suggests may be a particularly appropriate channel for non-evaluative collaboration across geographical contexts, would seem to be of great relevance to

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English language educators in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic (and indeed online mentoring is the focus of several chapters of this volume). It follows from the above that mentor-mentoring needs to, creatively, imaginatively, and sensitively, develop interpersonal skills, personal qualities, intercultural awareness, reflexivity, and critical consciousness (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999; Smith & Lewis, 2018; Smith, 2020). To gain further insights into current mentoring and mentor-mentoring practices in language education, we now consider research findings relating to the mentoring of learners, pre-service and novice teachers, in-service teachers, teacherresearchers, and research mentors online and face-to-face in different educational and geographic contexts. We start with language learners.

Mentoring Language Learners There are relatively few studies available of mentoring language learners, possibly as the term ‘tutor’, which suggests a narrower focus on supporting study rather than the whole person, is sometimes preferred to ‘mentor’ by researchers (e.g. Eleftheriou, 2019). Nevertheless, there is an overlap, particularly in educational contexts such as writing centres in the United Arab Emirates where there is a focus on developing agentic, self-regulated academic competence (Nunn & Langille, 2016) through non-directive peer tutoring initiatives (Eleftheriou, 2019). Whether such activity is strictly tutoring or mentoring more broadly might depend on the communicative style of the mentoring peer. Culpeper and Kan (2020) analysed the communicative styles of three peer mentors providing online support at the Open University. Their analysis of a survey and corpus found that the most positively evaluated communicative style, which also triggered the most active mentee participation, appeared to blend strategies to enhance and maintain rapport, supported by self-effacing humour. In contrast, the least popular communicative style, which also triggered the least mentee participation, included more formal politeness elements, less relationship-building, and more directive discourse. As Fayram et al.’s (2018) study in the same university context emphasizes, the emotional support provided by a mentor is regarded by mentees as critical to building self-confidence. Both Culpeper and Kan (2020) and Fayram et al. (2018) thus underline the need for well-developed interpersonal skills in a (peer) mentor.

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Mentoring Pre-Service and Novice Teachers Well-developed interpersonal skills are also crucial in the mentoring of preservice language teachers, typically researched during the practicum, and novices, often researched during their first year, as various studies have demonstrated that have reported on both positive and negative mentee experiences (e.g. Arnold, 2006; Hudson & Nguyen, 2009). Ideally these interpersonal mentoring skills are allied to mentoring pedagogical content knowledge (Fletcher, 2012), for example through facilitative mentee-centred mentoring (Smith & Lewis, 2015). This approach might involve mentors in fine-tuning support to their mentees’ current developmental level, considering psychological as well as cognitive needs, and listening rather than telling, i.e. avoiding judgementoring (Onˇcevska Ager & Wyatt, 2019). However, Smith and Lewis (2015) do also caution that, due to differences in personality and culture, a mentee-centred approach may sometimes need to be more directive than the mentor would prefer. This may reflect a conscious decision. Reports also abound, though, of very directive mentoring approaches that are not at all mentee-centred, as illustrated in this quote from a mentor in Arnold (2006): Didn’t care to prepare. Told repeatedly. Did not prepare. Told to fulfil tasks – to ask questions, see what he needed, constantly make notes, ask other mentors, ask other mentees, ask other teachers. He did not fulfil any of the suggestions I have given him, did not fulfil any (118).

In some educational contexts, the gap between mentor and mentee can appear stark, for there are institutions where mentees are highly conscious of being publicly positioned as subordinates. For example, mentees can be made to feel like ‘small potatoes’ through stratified seating arrangements in the staffroom, as reported by a pre-service teacher on a Hong Kong practicum in Mann and Tang (2012); this teacher consequently found it very hard to access her higher-ranking mentor. Meanwhile, Chinese mentees in Yan and He (2010) reported feeling distrusted by their school-based mentors, who were possibly affected by the intensely competitive examination-oriented system they were working in; so, rather than gain opportunities to teach and gain feedback, the mentees found themselves assigned ‘routine work, such as marking papers, checking discipline, cleaning’ (67). In similar contexts elsewhere, where mentees are at least allowed to front classes, their autonomy may nevertheless be severely restricted. For example, a pre-service teacher in Yuan (2016) whose ideal identity was as a caring teacher sensitive to learners’ needs and interests instead felt he had become a ‘puppet’… fully controlled by his mentor, who had a very traditional style (192). Images of puppet-like

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pre-service teachers are also evident in Yıldırım and Orsdemir’s (2019) study, which focuses on the practicum in Turkey through the eyes of the young learners who are being taught, using their drawings and words. Explaining a drawing from her own perspective, a young learner says: ‘This is Mrs Eren [the mentor]. She is correcting Miss Ayla’s mistakes, and Miss Ayla is teaching the way she’s told’ (324). Where mentoring looks like this, i.e. top-down and directive, pre-service teachers may be afraid of being judged (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Nguyen, 2013). A particular issue, too, in English language education is that the mentors’ criticism may focus to a great extent on issues with language proficiency (Akcan & Tatar, 2010), which may debilitate self-confidence (Nguyen, 2013). Mentoring may be unplanned, with mentors expected to take on the role out of a sense of duty without necessarily having been given any particular support, as in Mann and Tang’s (2012) study in Hong Kong. In such a scenario, experiences of being mentored, as in general education (Bullough, 2012), can be hit or miss, with much depending on chemistry and goodwill. Positive relationships might more easily develop where mentees are given the responsibility of finding their own mentors, as in Chien (2015). While hierarchical relationships are very evident in Chien’s Taiwanese study, with mentees positioning themselves as polite, humble, and respectful, in line with Confucian norms, and one mentor metaphorically describing her role as a hen with chicks, the mentors’ kindness, patience, enthusiasm and willingness to talk about teaching are highly valued. Nevertheless, such hierarchical relationships can lead to a form of apprenticeship in which procedural matters can take precedence over collaborative support for reflection (Mann & Tang, 2012), with only one of the four mentors in the latter study forming a very close working relationship with their mentee. This mentor was actually only a little older, having had just one year’s teaching experience, and indeed mentor and mentee perceived themselves as peers. Of late, peer mentoring has been promoted as a strategy in pre-service teacher education in countries including Vietnam (Nguyen, 2013, 2017; Nguyen & Ngo, 2018) and Turkey (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020). The term ‘peer mentor’ is occasionally applied in unexpected ways, however, for example by Villas Boas (2014), whose peer mentors of beginning teachers in Brazil were actually retired from the senior positions they had once held and no longer teaching. As conceptualised, though, by Nguyen (2013), a ‘peer mentor’ refers to one of a pair of pre-service teachers who consider themselves equal enough, in terms of age, expertise, power, and status, to be able to engage in reciprocal or mutual mentoring, which might be realised through peer observations and discussions. Through such activities, Nguyen

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(2017) and Çomo˘glu and Dikilita¸s (2020) argue that peer mentoring can fulfil various key functions; these functions include not only those that are career-related (such as information sharing and career strategizing) but also those that are psychosocial (such as confirming beliefs and values in a stress-free environment, and offering personal feedback, emotional support, and friendship). Various positive outcomes from such peer mentoring have been identified, including greater opportunities for reflective self-evaluation, enhanced professional knowledge and transformative identity development (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Nguyen & Ngo, 2018). Mentoring programmes employing a theory-and-practice connection, knowledge transformation mentoring model (Nguyen, 2017) have led to beneficial professional development, with the mentoring on offer attuned to mentees’ needs. For example, Karimi and Norouzi (2017) describe a programme in Iran utilising video-recorded performance analysis, observations, and discussions; the programme seemed to help the four participating novice teachers become more articulate in discussing their lessons, more focused on student learning and less worried about student behaviour; the authors suggest that the mentoring may have accelerated their cognitive development. Meanwhile, Yuan and Lee (2014) identified positive ways in which beliefs changed in three pre-service Chinese teachers taking their practicum in a supportive school environment; their mentors provided scaffolding, facilitated meaningful classroom practice, and engaged them in reflective conversation. Another knowledge transformation mentoring model is centred on supporting collaborative inquiry (Nguyen, 2017), i.e. with pre-service teachers engaging in practitioner research. Accounts of such mentoring activity are provided in the Turkish context by Çiftçi et al. (2017), Eraldem˘ır ¨ (2018), S¸ ahinkaraka¸s & Tokoz-G ¨ oktepe ¨ Tuyan (2019), Rakıcıo˘glu-Soylemez (2018), S¸ ener (2017) and U¸stuk & Çomo˘glu (2019). For example, preservice teachers might be introduced to action research (Burns, 2010), encouraged to adopt an exploratory and action-oriented research design to help them investigate their practicum experiences and then present their findings at local teacher-research conferences, all the while being mentored (Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, 2019; S¸ ahinkaraka¸s & Tokoz-G ¨ oktepe, ¨ 2018). Published accounts of such research engagement include written-up poster presentations collected in Dikilita¸s et al. (2019). So, for example, puzzling how to help her learners become more autonomous, Ba¸s (2019) reports first exploring the topic through observing videos of her own teaching, keeping a teaching journal, and administering checklists to help her identify the key issues, which she found included her learners’ limited self-awareness and under-developed

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self-study skills. Then, although she acknowledges that such change takes time, she introduced strategies that she subsequently evaluated to help her learners take small steps on the path towards greater autonomy. Reflecting on the ‘liberating’ experience of engaging in teacher-research, supported by feedback from mentor and peers, she felt it had helped her ‘view teaching in a new light’, as an activity that could be constantly renewed supported by research engagement (73).

Mentoring In-Service Teachers While fewer in number than those centred on beginning teachers, studies that have focused on the mentoring of in-service teachers have demonstrated how such activity can be invaluable in supporting sustained continuing professional development (Bu˘gra & Wyatt, 2021; Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, 2018; Wyatt & Arnold, 2012; Wyatt & Dikilita¸s, 2016). Therefore, in cultures where mentoring is still unfortunately conceptualized as yet another topdown professional development activity and is resisted (e.g. Bai et al., 2014; Chang et al., 2014), it may be worthwhile to raise awareness of the nonevaluative collegiality that a knowledge transformation mentoring model can offer (Borg & Parnham, 2020) and of the ensuing growth that can occur (Bu˘gra & Wyatt, 2021). The mentoring of in-service teachers has focused on supporting teachers to: • transition to more learner-centred, interactive language teaching methodology (Borg & Parnham, 2020) • reflect in post-lesson discussions in English (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012) • engage in forms of practitioner research including exploratory practice (Do˘gan, 2018; Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018; Slimani-Rolls, 2019), exploratory ¨ 2017; action research (Smith et al., 2014) and action research (Kırkgoz, Yücel & Gündo˘gdu, 2017) • write up their research findings (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2016). There is also a small but growing body of work on mentoring transnational doctoral students in the field of English language (teacher) education (Cotterall, 2011; Sánchez-Martín & Seloni, 2019). These studies provide insights into mentoring processes and in some cases highlight the need for continuing mentor development. For example, Borg and Parnham (2020) report on a project involving 420 mentors in India,

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who, after intensive training in learner-centred language teaching methodology, had received a short mentoring course that included input on building positive relationships, conducting developmental observations and holding constructivist post-lesson discussions. While the project was successful in many ways, Borg and Parnham (2020: 4) do highlight that ‘mentors would have benefited from further opportunities to reflect on and develop their mentoring skills’. Post-lesson discussions could be brief, dominated by the mentor and were very rarely characterized by mentee-driven dialogues, but Borg and Parnham (2020) do emphasize that mentoring was a largely unfamiliar concept at the start of the project. Meanwhile, the kind of growth that can occur in an extensively supported individual over time is illustrated in Wyatt and Arnold’s (2012) case study of an Omani senior English teacher, who had benefited from short in-service methodology courses, an in-service BA TESOL that included a module on mentoring based on Malderez and Bodóczky (1999), and dialogic post-lesson discussions that scaffolded reflective practice (Wyatt, 2010). Realising that the teachers in her school still struggled to reflect in English when asked to talk about their lessons, the senior teacher addressed this issue in a flexible, creative, and caring way, using video-stimulated recall while monitoring both her own and her mentees’ development (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). Growth is also evident in studies that have reported on the mentoring of teacher-research. The emancipatory nature of practitioner research engagement is illustrated in various studies (e.g. Bu˘gra & Wyatt, 2021; Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, 2018; Slimani-Rolls, 2019; Wyatt & Dikilita¸s, 2016). Of an exploratory practice project, for example, Slimani-Rolls (2019) declares that it provided: a life changing experience because the mentoring process created the necessary space for [the teacher-researchers] to pursue collaboratively their investigative efforts and to develop meaningful learning situations for themselves, their students, their peers and the mentors who led the research process. When teachers are given voice, time and opportunities for collaboration, they use them creatively (8–9).

Carefully structured teacher-research mentoring programmes (e.g. Dikilita¸s, 2015; Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, 2018; Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018; SlimaniRolls, 2019; Smith, 2020), have been developed, considering contextual factors, including institutional support, and the knowledge base of both mentees and mentors (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018). Considering this knowledge base is crucial. For, while carefully attuned enthusiasm and commitment in a mentor can go a long way towards providing the needed psychological

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support (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999), novice mentors may also need to develop ‘research mentor pedagogical content knowledge’ (Fletcher, 2012) so that they can provide the necessary subject-specialist support (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018); in the case of teacher-research, this pedagogical content knowledge might include that of data analysis techniques. Furthermore, when mentoring takes places in intercultural contexts, mentor-mentoring programmes may also need to develop cultural awareness (Smith & Lewis, 2018), particularly since mentee and mentor may have different concepts as to what mentoring involves. Having briefly reviewed the field, we now introduce the contents of this volume, with chapters drawn from various geographical and educational contexts.

The Structure of the Book The order in which the chapters are presented largely reflects the way in which we have approached the literature above. So, we start with the mentoring of language learners. In Chapter 2, Maria Eleftheriou, Zahraa Al-Dawood, Konstantina Spyropoulou and Roger Nunn reflect from different perspectives on a peer-mentoring scheme at the University of Sharjah in the UAE. From undergraduates, we then transition to the mentoring of postgraduates. In Chapter 3, Anne Burns reflects on encouraging her PhD students in Australia to engage in establishing a mutually supportive community characterized by peer-mentoring. Next, in Chapter 4, Peter De Costa from the United States and his PhD students from Nepal and China, Laxmi Ojha and Luqing Zang, consider mentoring, socialization and communities of practice in those contexts. The focus in the volume shifts then to the mentoring of pre-service and novice teachers. In Chapter 5, Hoa Nguyen and Lan Tran draw upon cultural-historical activity theory to explore contradictions in the mentoring experienced by pre-service teachers in Vietnam. Then, in Chapter 6, Elena Onˇcevska Ager analyses her use of systematic informed reflective practice (Malderez, 2015) to facilitate knowledge and agency co-construction in North Macedonia. In Chapter 7, James Hall and Fiona Copland explore post-observation feedback in-depth to gain insights into James’ experience of learning to mentor novice junior high school teachers in Japan. The next chapters then focus on mentoring in-service teachers. In Chapter 8, Mark Wyatt reflects on mentoring in-service English language teachers in Oman while drawing on Malderez and Bodóczky’s ‘Mentor Courses’. In Chapter 9, Simon Borg evaluates a project in India that

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involved mentoring at scale. In Chapter 10, Melissa Smith and Marilyn Lewis consider an instance of communication breakdown in a mentoring relationship in China, where the mentor was American and the mentees were Chinese; they consider cultural and personal factors at play. In Chapter 11, Kenan Dikilita¸s and Simon Mumford report on transformative mentoring in Turkey, supporting homeroom and pre-school English teachers transitioning to bilingual co-teaching. The focus of the volume then switches to mentoring in-service teachers’ engagement in research. In Chapter 12, Judith Hanks in the UK and Inés Miller and Maria Cunha in Brazil draw on their experience in mentoring exploratory practitioners in international contexts to consider the importance of collaboration, collegiality, and co-production. Then, in Chapter 13, Kuchah Kuchah and Amira Salama report on mentoring initiatives organized through language teacher associations in Africa that targeted female leaders and teacher researchers. Next, in Chapter 14, Richard Smith shares insights from his experience of developing a framework to guide teacher research in various Latin American and South Asian contexts. Some of the mentoring support he provided was online, and the next two chapters both concern online teacher research mentoring. In Chapter 15, Claudia Bustos-Moraga and Steve Mann analyse both synchronous and asynchronous teacher research mentoring in three Latin American countries, Chile, Mexico, and Peru, in relation to social and cognitive presence (Garrison et al., 1999). Drawing on the same framework, but adding researching presence, Kenan Dikilita¸s, Asli Göktürk Sa˘glam, Mariana Serra, and Ruben Mazzei analyse asynchronous mentoring conversations in an online international research community in Chapter 16. In a concluding chapter, we then pull together key themes and point to possible future research directions. As should already be evident, chapters below report on wholehearted engagement in innovative mentoring practices in a range of international, transnational and intercultural English language (teacher) education contexts. Our hope is that readers focused on supporting transformative growth in their mentees will be inspired to incorporate mentoring into their own professional practices in even more diverse and reflexive ways.

References Akcan, S., & Tatar, S. (2010). An investigation of the nature of feedback given to pre-service English teachers during their practice teaching experience. Teacher Development, 14 (2), 153–172.

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Arnold, E. (2006). Assessing the quality of mentoring: Sinking or learning to swim? ELT Journal, 60 (2), 117–124. Asención Delaney, Y. (2012). Research on mentoring language teachers: Its role in language education. Foreign Language Annals, 45 (1), 184–202. Bai, L., Millwater, J., & Hudson, P. (2014). Chinese TEFL teachers’ perceptions about research and influences on their research endeavours. Teacher Development, 18(3), 349–368. Ba¸s, T. (2019). “Let students take control!”: Promoting learner autonomy in my practicum classroom. In K. Dikilita¸s, M. Wyatt, A. Burns, & G. Barkhuizen (Eds.), Energizing Teacher Research (pp. 71–74). Faversham. IATEFL. Borg, S. (2006). Teacher Cognition and Language Education: Research and Practice. Continuum. Borg, S., & Parnham, J. (2020). Large scale teacher development through mentoring. The Teacher Trainer, 34 (2), 2–7. Bu˘gra, C., & Wyatt, M. (2021). English language teachers collaborating in practitioner research and loving it. Educational Action Research, 29 (3), 483–499. Bullough, R. V., Jr. (2012). Mentoring and new teacher induction in the United States: A review and analysis of current practices. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 20 (1), 57–74. Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners. Routledge. Carrigan, M. (2018). Mentoring as conversation. International Journal of Choice Therapy and Reality Therapy, XXXVI, I (2), 97–110. Chang, K., Jeon, Y., & Ahn, H. (2014). Investigating continuing professional development for teacher educators in South Korea: Opportunities and constraints. In D. Hayes (Ed.), Innovations in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers (pp. 111–129). British Council. Chien, C. W. (2015). Pre-service english teachers’ perceptions and practice of field experience and professional learning from expert teachers’ mentoring. Teachers and Teaching, 21(3), 328–345. Çiftçi, H., Mede, E., & Atay, D. (2017). Action research as a professional development tool for pre-service English language teachers. In A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Developing Insights into Teacher-Research (pp. 65–76). Faversham, England: IATEFL. Çomo˘glu, ˙I, & Dikilita¸s, K. (2020). Learning to become an English language teacher: Navigating the self through peer practicum. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 45 (8), 23–40. Copland, F., & Donaghue, H. (2019). Post observation feedback. In S. Walsh & S. Mann (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education (pp. 402–416). Routledge. Cotterall, S. (2011). Doctoral pedagogy: What do international PhD students in Australia think about it? Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 19 (2), 521–534.

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Culpeper, J., & Kan, Q. (2020). Communicative styles, rapport and student engagement: An online peer mentoring scheme. Applied Linguistics, 41(5), 756–786. Curtis, A., & Romney, M. (Eds.), (2010). Color, Race, and English Language Teaching: Shades of Meaning. Routledge. Dikilita¸s, K. (2015). Professional development through teacher-research. In K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & W. Trotman (Eds.), Teacher-Researchers in Action, (pp. 47– 55). Faversham, Kent: IATEFL. Dikilita¸s, K., & Mumford, S. E. (2016). Supporting the writing up of teacher research: Peer and mentor roles. ELT Journal, 70 (4), 371–381. Dikilita¸s, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, 22(4), 537–553. Dikilita¸s, K., Wyatt, M., Burns, A. & Barkhuizen, G. (Eds.) (2019). Energizing Teacher Research. Faversham, England: IATEFL. Do˘gan, C. (2018). Transforming mentoring challenges into opportunities through exploratory practice. In G. Barkhuizen, A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Empowering Teacher-Researchers, Empowering Learners (pp. 9–17). Faversham, England: IATEFL. Eleftheriou, M. (2019). Multilingual, middle-eastern students‘ varied responses to directive and non-directive strategies in peer tutoring. TESOL International Journal, 14 (1), 61–78. Ellis, N. J., Alonzo, D., & Nguyen, H. T. M. (2020). Elements of a quality preservice teacher mentor: A literature review. Teaching and Teacher Education, 92, 103072. Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, S. (2018). On the way to achieve sustainability: An evaluative look at a three-year action research program in an ELT context. In G. Barkhuizen, A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Empowering Teacher-Researchers, Empowering Learners (pp. 19–27). Faversham, Kent: IATEFL. Eraldem˘ır Tuyan, S. (2019). From in-service to pre-service: A comparative look at my action research mentoring. In K. Dikilita¸s, M. Wyatt, A. Burns, & G. Barkhuizen (Eds.), Energizing Teacher Research (pp. 11–18). Faversham, England: IATEFL. Fayram, J., Boswood, N., Kan, Q., Motzo, A., & Proudfoot, A. (2018). Investigating the benefits of online peer mentoring for student confidence and motivation. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 7 (4), 312–328. Fletcher, S. (2012). Research mentoring teachers in intercultural education contexts; self-study. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1(1), 66–79. Freeman, D., & Johnson, K. E. (1998). Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 397–417. Gakonga, J. (2019). Mentoring and mentor development. In S. Walsh & S. Mann (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education (pp. 432– 445). Routledge.

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Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105. Gebhard, J. G. (1984). Models of supervision: Choices. TESOL Quarterly, 18(3), 501–514. Halai, A. (2006). Mentoring in-service teachers: Issues of role diversity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22, 700–710. Hanks, J., & Dikilita¸s, K. (2018). Mentoring language teaching professionals in/through exploratory practice. In K. Dikilita¸s & J. Hanks (Eds.), Developing Language Teachers with Exploratory Practice (pp. 11–38). Palgrave. Hansman, C. A. (2002). Diversity and power in mentoring relationships. In C. A. Hansman (Ed.), Critical Perspectives on Mentoring: Trends and Issues (pp. 39–48). Columbus, OH: ERIC. Hobson, A. J., Ashby, P., Malderez, A., & Tomlinson, P. D. (2009). Mentoring beginning teachers: What we know and what we don’t. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25 (1), 207–216. Hobson, A. J., & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108. Hudson, P., & Nguyen, H. T. M. (2009). What do preservice EFL teachers expect from their mentors? In P. Jeffery (Ed.), Changing climates: Education for sustainable futures: Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education International Education Research Conference, Brisbane, Australia, December 2008 (pp. 1–10). Karimi, M. N., & Norouzi, M. (2017). Scaffolding teacher cognition: Changes in novice L2 teachers’ pedagogical knowledge base through expert mentoring initiatives. System, 65, 38–48. Kırkgoz, ¨ Y. (2017). Insights into the process of mentoring action research by teachers of young learners. In A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Developing Insights into Teacher-Research (pp. 19–28). Faversham. IATEFL. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. Malderez, A. (2015). On mentoring in supporting (English) teacher learning: Where are we now? In D. Holló and K. Károly (eds.), Inspirations in Foreign Language Teaching: Studies in Language Pedagogy and Applied Linguistics in Honour of Péter Medgyes (pp. 21–32). Harlow: Pearson Education. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor Courses: A resource book for teachertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Malderez, A., & Wedell, M. (2007). Teaching Teachers: Processes and Practices. Continuum. Mann, S., Crichton, R., & Edmett, E. (2020). Evaluating the role of video in supporting reflection beyond INSET. System, 90, 102095.

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Mann, S., & Tang, E. H. H. (2012). The role of mentoring in supporting novice English language teachers in Hong Kong. TESOL Quarterly, 46 (3), 472–495. Mann, S., & Walsh, S. (2017). Reflective Practice in English Language Teaching. Routledge. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2013). Peer mentoring: A way forward for supporting pre-service EFL teachers psychosocially during the practicum. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(7), 30–44. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2017). Models of Mentoring in Language Teacher Education. Springer. Nguyen, H. T. M., & Ngo, N. T. H. (2018). Learning to reflect through peer mentoring in a TESOL practicum. ELT Journal, 72(2), 187–198. Nunn, R., & Langille, J. (2016). Operationalizing a global and holistic characterization of competence in a local UAE context. In V. Aryadoust & J. Fox (Eds.), Trends in Language Assessment Research and Practice: The View from the Middle East and the Pacific Rim (pp. 302–316). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. OECD (2012). What can be done to support new teachers? Teaching in Focus, 2012(2) September, 1–4. Onˇcevska Ager, E., & Wyatt, M. (2019). Supporting a pre-service English language teacher’s self-determined development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 78, 106– 116. Orland, L. (2001). Reading a mentoring situation: One aspect of learning to mentor. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17 (1), 75–88. Orland-Barak, L. (2014). Mediation in mentoring: A synthesis of studies in Teaching and Teacher Education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 44, 180–188. Rakıcıo˘glu-Söylemez, A. (2018). A retrospective reflection of an EFL teacher educator on mentoring an inqury-based practicum experience. In G. Barkhuizen, A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Empowering Teacher-Researchers, Empowering Learners (pp. 29–37). Faversham. IATEFL. S¸ ah˘ınkaraka¸s, S., & Tokoz-G ¨ oktepe, ¨ F. (2018). “My story in practicum”: A project of student-teachers’ action research during practicum. In G. Barkhuizen, A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Empowering Teacher-Researchers, Empowering Learners (pp. 39–46). Faversham. IATEFL. Sánchez-Martín, C., & Seloni, L. (2019). Transdisciplinary becoming as a gendered activity: A reflexive study of dissertation mentoring. Journal of Second Language Writing, 43, 24–35. Savski, K. (2021). Dialogicality and racialized discourse in TESOL recruitment. TESOL Quarterly. Advance access, first published online 6/1/21: https://doi.org/ 10.1002/tesq.3013 S¸ ener, S. (2017). Involving Undergraduate Students in Research. In A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Developing Insights into Teacher-Research (pp. 53–64). Faversham. IATEFL. Slimani-Rolls, A. (2019). Developing a teacher learning community through exploratory practice. In K. Dikilita¸s, M. Wyatt, A. Burns, & G. Barkhuizen (Eds.), Energizing Teacher Research (pp. 3–10). Faversham. IATEFL.

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Smith, R., Connolly, T., & Rebolledo, P. (2014). Teacher research as continuing professional development: A project with Chilean secondary school teachers. In D. Hayes (Ed.), Innovations in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers (pp. 111–129). British Council. Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2015). Toward facilitative mentoring and catalytic interventions. ELT Journal, 69 (2), 140–150. Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2018). Supporting the Professional Development of English Language Teachers: Facilitative Mentoring. Routledge. Smith, R. (2020). Mentoring Teachers to Research Their Classrooms: A Practical Handbook. British Council. Tonna, M. A., Bjerkholt, E., & Holland, E. (2017). Teacher mentoring and the reflective practitioner approach. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 6 (3), 210–227. U¸stuk, Ö., & Çomo˘glu, ˙I. (2019). Reframing as a mentor-coaching technique in initial EFL teacher education. In K. Dikilita¸s, M. Wyatt, A. Burns, & G. Barkhuizen (Eds.), Energizing Teacher Research (pp. 19–26). Faversham. IATEFL. Villas Boas, I. (2014). Differentiating continuing professional development in a large bi-national centre in Brazil. In D. Hayes (Ed.), Innovations in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers (pp. 89–110). British Council. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press. Wallace, M.J. (1991). Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach. Cambridge University Press. Wang, W., & Bale, J. (2019). Mentoring for new secondary Chinese language teachers in the United States. System, 84, 53–63. Waring, H. Z. (2013). Two mentor practices that generate teacher reflection without explicit solicitations: Some preliminary considerations. RELC Journal, 44 (1), 103–119. Watanabe, A. (2017). Reflective Practice as Professional Development: Experiences of Teachers of English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Wyatt, M. (2010). One teacher’s development as a reflective practitioner. Asian EFL Journal, 12(2), 235–261. Wyatt, M., & Arnold, E. (2012). Video-stimulated recall for mentoring in Omani schools. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1(3), 218– 234. Wyatt, M., & Dikilita¸s, K. (2016). English language teachers becoming more efficacious through research engagement at their Turkish university. Educational Action Research, 24 (4), 550–570. Yan, C., & He, C. (2010). Transforming the existing model of teaching practicum: A study of Chinese EFL student teachers’ perceptions. Journal of Education for Teaching, 36 (1), 57–73. Yıldırım, R., & Orsdemir, E. (2019). Through the eyes of young EFL learners: Learning with student teachers. ELT Journal, 73(3), 316–327.

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Yuan, E. R. (2016). The dark side of mentoring on pre-service language teachers’ identity formation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 55, 188–197. Yuan, R., & Lee, I. (2014). Pre-service teachers’ changing beliefs in the teaching practicum: Three cases in an EFL context. System, 44, 1–2. Yücel, B. & Gündo˘gdu, M. A. (2017). Mentoring teachers as researchers: Implementing a small schoolwide programme. In A. Burns, K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & M. Wyatt (Eds.), Developing Insights into Teacher-Research (pp. 29–38). Faversham, England: IATEFL.

2 Peer-Tutors as Writing Centre Peer-Mentors at the American University of Sharjah Maria Eleftheriou, Zahraa Al-Dawood, Konstantina Spyropoulou, and Roger Nunn

Introduction In 1997, the American University of Sharjah (AUS) recognised the need for a writing centre, and in 2004, the university implemented a peer-mentoring1 model aligned with prevailing practices in the US. In 2005, a Fellows programme was developed, which assigns trained peer-mentors to professors to assist their students in writing-intensive classes. At the same time, a training course was introduced and became mandatory for all prospective peer-mentors. This training course provides potential peer-mentors with 1 Although we have used the term “peer tutor” in writing centre discourse, as our approach has become more holistic, the term peer mentor” has become more appropriate.

M. Eleftheriou (B) · Z. Al-Dawood · K. Spyropoulou · R. Nunn American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE e-mail: [email protected] Z. Al-Dawood e-mail: [email protected] K. Spyropoulou e-mail: [email protected] R. Nunn e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_2

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theoretical and practical knowledge, as well as experience in mentoring students. While the value of writing centres is becoming recognized in the Arabian Gulf (Hodges et al., 2019), to our knowledge, no other university in the region currently offers such a comprehensive credit-bearing pre-service training course. Scholarly attention has focused insufficiently on the education of mentors (Wyatt, Chapter 8); moreover, little is known about the kind of support mentors need (Aspfors & Goran 2015) or how they acquire relevant knowledge and develop requisite skills (Bullough, 2012). Consequently, although there would clearly appear to be value in establishing formalized mentoring courses (Borg, Chapter 9; Fletcher, 2012; Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018; Wyatt, Chapter 8), such courses remain rare (Aspfors & Goran 2015). This is unfortunate since, when mentors do not receive the support and training they need, they may view the task as a burden and their effectiveness as mentors may be limited (Mann & Tang, 2012). In fact, in their examination of the causes of failures in school-based mentoring programmes, Hobson and Malderez (2013: 11) concluded that one of the key issues was ‘insufficient opportunities for effective mentor training and development’. They recommend policy changes to ensure that mentors complete accredited training programmes. Responding to local needs, AUS now offers a formal, credit bearing, semester-long course to prepare our peer-mentors for their mentoring roles in the Writing Centre. This course aims to provide the support and pedagogical knowledge peer-mentors need to fulfill their roles as writing mentors: • helping with issues relating to an unfamiliar writing culture and academic institution • conducting one-on-one tutorials with students • working as Fellows on the courses to which they have been assigned This chapter discusses the nature and function of our Writing Centre, which accommodates a Peer-mentoring Programme and Fellowing Programme. It describes both programmes and includes reflections from the perspectives of two trained mentors. By delineating this initiative and its effects, we suggest directions for other institutions and for subsequent research. The first author is the director of the AUS Writing Centre, with 16 years’ experience in the role. The co-authors include two senior students with extensive experience in the AUS Writing Centre as peer-mentors. The fourth author is the head of the English Department, which houses the Writing Centre.

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Our Current Writing Centre The AUS Writing Centre follows the evolving American writing centre model, adapted to our particular situation: generalist peer-mentors assist students from a variety of disciplines during one-on-one mentoring sessions. The Centre has a staff of 25 peer-mentors and holds approximately 4,500 appointments a year. The peer-mentors are paid 30 dirhams (approximately 6 GBP) an hour for their work and are employed for 4–15 h per week. Instructors of writing-intensive courses often encourage or require their students to visit the Writing Centre for supplemental help, and students can self-refer. Instructors in the Department of English hail from various countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Lebanon, Palestine, India, and Jordan. AUS students are second language learners, and the language of instruction is English. Most students seeking help at the Writing Centre come from freshman composition courses, although another 25% are seeking assistance with writing assignments for courses in disciplines including Economics, History, Biology, Business, and International Relations. During the sessions, mentees and peer-mentors engage in holistic discussions of the writing process and the students’ approach to writing. They also focus in detail on content and organization: they help students to reorganize and clarify confusing sentences, and they draw attention to punctuation and grammar in the context of immediate concerns. At the AUS Writing Centre, we have created a physical space conducive to an engaging and interactive writing experience. Student art, provocative images, writing tips and references to inspiring literary figures are displayed on the walls. The Centre is alive with the activity and conversations of our students and peer-mentors. The comfortable environment acts as a sanctuary where students feel safe sharing their academic and non-academic concerns with their tutors. This pleasant ambiance is conducive to the candid collaboration, diverse interaction and responsiveness that leads to holistic mentoring: academic goals are reached though the consensus-driven process. In teacher education, Beiler (2013) describes holistic mentoring as considering the whole person and supporting individual autonomy. In preservice teacher education, peer-mentors alleviate stress, allay fears and reduce the threat of burn-out (Nguyen, 2013), and similarly, peer-mentors at our centre assist their mentees with far more than their writing skills. They advise on time management, the transition from high school to university life, and on navigating the unfamiliar academic writing culture with its novel conventions and imperatives. According to Bieler (2013: 24), such psychosocial mentoring

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constructs ‘meaningful teaching and learning experiences’ and encourages agency.

The Writing Fellows Programme Writing Fellows programmes have become prominent features in many writing centres across North American universities (Hall & Hughes, 2011). The Writing Fellows programme matches an experienced writing centre peermentor (called a Fellow) with a professor of a particular course for a semester. The Fellow then meets with the professor to discuss expectations for course writing assignments, and the professor’s students have exclusive access to the Fellow during the weeks leading up to their project submissions. Consultations provide students with the opportunity to ask questions about the writing and drafting process, faculty expectations, assignment requirements and genre expectations. For details on the goals of the Fellows Programme, see Appendix A.

Training: The Peer-Mentoring Course The peer-mentoring course is a semester-long, credit-bearing course. Students must have completed the advanced written communication courses to qualify and have a recommendation from a writing course professor to enroll in the course. Written assessments, including dialogue journals, literacy narrative, tutor reflections, research paper proposal, and research paper, offer a variety of written modes for students to develop their writing skills as they reflect upon tutoring approaches and analyse class content. Assessments of presentations (grammar workshops, reading facilitations, and final assessments) provide students opportunities to hone their oral communication skills as potential tutors. Recent scholarship on writing has informed the design and development of this course. It has an extensive reading list that includes topics such as the impact of culture on writing (Kaplan, 1966), the role of conversation in peer-tutoring (Bruffee, 1993), the avoidance of appropriation of student writing (Severino, 2009), the extent of emotional labour in the writing centre (Nielsen, 2018) and strategies for multilingual students (Eleftheriou, 2019). Prospective mentors are actively encouraged to engage in discussions about the theory and practice of peer-mentoring in writing, and these topics are debated and discussed in reading circles and panel discussions. In addition to theory, the course focuses on the practical side of peer-mentoring. Through

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instruction and by example, prospective peer-mentors learn to prioritize ‘hands-on’ learning: they model, observe and reflect on writing centre tutorials, discuss their experiences teaching each other, and provide feedback on sample student papers. We review subject matter content including grammar, research strategies and rhetorical devices, and we discuss the importance of listening actively, being patient with mentees, offering praise and delivering criticism constructively. Supported by role-play and discussion, peer-mentors are generally then able to develop the requisite traits (Arnold, 2006) for tackling challenging tutorial situations and building mentoring relationships based on trust. Encouraging peer-mentors to reflect on their mentoring sessions is intended to develop a critical self-awareness that will enable them to continuously fine-tune their peer-mentoring skills as their mentoring experience increases. Reflecting on any kind of teaching or tutoring situation can be challenging, since talking about such activity is a complex task, quite different from performing it (Arnold, 2006). Nevertheless, given the insights reflection can generate (Delaney, 2012; Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Jamissen & Phelps, 2006), encouraging reflection on ‘high inference teaching skills such as the ability to respond to unexpected classroom events’ and ‘sensitivity to student difficulty’ is needed in mentoring conversations (Arnold, 2006: 119). As Hobson and Malderez (2013) explain, mentoring conversations are the ideal context for the development of reflective insights. Such scholarship has helped to shape our training programme and the way we use feedback as reflective practice. Peer-mentors in the Writing Centre may offer feedback on issues in student essays such as coherence, organization, paragraph development, vocabulary, grammar and citations. During training, they are advised to use facilitative strategies to encourage reflection about writing in their mentees. Facilitative strategies include asking questions about the mentees’ goals and assignments, negotiating an agenda, outlining/mapping with the mentees, asking mentees to explain and clarify their ideas orally, asking mentees to write independently, and asking openended questions to develop critical self-awareness about the arguments they are making. The peer-mentors are trained to facilitate this process by responding as readers and by practising the use of silence and wait time. Moreover, instead of merely observing these strategies, they are actively engaged in responding to written tutorial scenarios where they brainstorm on various ways in which non-directive strategies could be implemented. These facilitative strategies towards student feedback encourage reflection and help them understand that learning is an active and interactive process. Peer-mentors regularly participate in many types of reflective activities in

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the training programme (Writing 221) in which observation and reflection, self-reflection reports, and journal entries about their experiences with their mentees are integral to the curriculum. We have noticed that they tend to be remarkably efficient in identifying strengths and weaknesses in their mentoring practice. Students who have completed the course and who have demonstrated an understanding of peer-mentoring approaches, superior academic writing skills and a high level of English proficiency are selected to work in the Writing Centre. Those students who are not invited to work in the AUS Writing Centre often realize that they are not well suited for the position, at this stage, and they rarely dispute the decision. Students receive credit for completing the course, and in many cases, add it to their résumés to demonstrate to future employers their strong communication skills.

Insights Benefits of Peer-Mentor Training Providing mentoring education has been shown to be effective in a comprehensive comparative analysis by Pfund et al. (2006) involving several training programmes. The authors reported on the positive results of implementing training for faculty research mentors who are mentoring undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers. They introduced the Wisconsin Mentoring Seminar at UW-Madison and compared untrained to trained cohorts of mentors. They discovered that the trained mentors were more effective in assessing the skills of their students and were more likely to discuss student expectations. Additionally, students who had been mentored previously by untrained mentors reported that the trained mentors were ‘more available to them, more interested in them as individuals, and gave them more independence’ (474). The authors concluded that the training resulted in both self-reported positive gains for the mentors and in objective behavioural changes in mentoring practice. In their independent narratives below, our student co-authors report gains similar to those found in the Pfund et al. study. In the next section, they contribute independent firstperson accounts of their experience as peer-mentors to better illustrate the topics we have discussed above.

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Peer-Mentors’ First-Person Perspectives The Peer-Mentoring Training Course Zahraa: Writing 221 introduced us to the mentoring experience at the Writing Centre. It covered topics related to writing and peer-mentoring through different assignments, including readings, reflective essays, and observations. Writing 221 helped us become aware of the expectations of our role as peer-mentors in the Writing Centre; we understood that our job was not confined to helping students improve their papers but also to assist them to become better writers and better at navigating their academic journey. The readings covered in Writing 221 encompass a broad range of topics relevant to mentoring in writing. We discussed these readings in class and related their different ideas to mentoring, which helped us understand how these concepts fit into our particular context in the UAE. Our professor would provide her input based on her experiences in the Writing Centre but would otherwise leave us to lead the conversation. Our discussions of the assigned readings acted as a springboard to brainstorming about how to make sessions as productive, engaging, and motivating as possible. We discussed how factors, such as writing anxiety, cultural expectations and academic concerns could affect writing and mentoring sessions, and considered different approaches to help our mentees, such as encouraging them to ask for advice. We rarely focused on lower order concerns in our discussions about mentoring; however, we were assigned grammar presentations in which we had to indirectly present a grammar rule to our class. The purpose was to help peer-mentors learn to discuss grammar concerns with mentees: the peer-mentor should not directly tell their mentee how to correct their grammatical mistakes but rather help them deduce grammar rules. Learning how to provide feedback effectively is crucial for prospective peer-mentors; peermentors should avoid being directive and rely on collaborative discussions instead, which can promote reflection in mentees and help them become self-sufficient (Smith & Lewis, 2015). Writing 221 incorporated practical assignments, and we were required to observe and reflect on mentoring sessions at the Writing Centre. Through these observations, we reflected on the mentoring strategies peer-mentors used, the interaction between the peer-mentors and their mentees, and the engagement of the mentees, in order to assess the effectiveness of the mentoring session. We also conducted two tutorials under the observation of a peer-mentor. We observed the dynamics between peer-mentors and their mentees, which helped us understand how to make a session more

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engaging, how to understand nonverbal cues, and how to motivate mentees. The observations fostered reflection and allowed us to think critically about our mentoring sessions.

Reflections on the Writing Centre Experience. Konstantina: Mentoring at the Writing Centre for the past four semesters has been a rewarding experience for me. Even before I became a mentor, my visits to the AUS Writing Centre impressed upon me that it was a place where learning and the exchange of ideas flourished. Any inhibitions about applying the theoretical concepts learned in Writing 221, our training course, soon disappeared after observing and working together with more experienced peer-mentors in this friendly environment. The confident and cheerful manner in which they offered help, guidance, and advice to the mentees demonstrated that mentoring involves much more than answering questions about paragraph structure and citations. As highlighted by Gayles and Kelly (2020), successful mentoring depends on the relationship that mentors build with their mentees. Such a support network exists at the AUS Writing Centre, where ‘tutors’ become peer-mentors of students they work with more than once. It is very common for students to request to see the same peer-mentor on their upcoming visits, partly because the peer-mentor is familiar with their assignment, weaknesses, writing style, and concerns, and because they had a positive and productive tutorial with them the last time they visited. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the Centre’s services were transferred online, students have been able to book appointments with their peer-mentor of choice. Seeing the same students more frequently and realizing we were adapting our approach for each of them gave us confidence in our mentoring skills and confirmed the benefits of a long-term mentoring relationship. Any fears that the distant setting would impair mentoring disappeared as we realized that we could still get to know our regular visitors and adapt our mentoring strategies based on their needs. Soon, we knew our students well enough to distinguish between their individual writing voices, which aspect of writing each of them was struggling with, and how they were coping with online learning. Another factor that has enabled us to develop mentoring skills was the opportunity to try different approaches to mentoring with students from different colleges, languages, and backgrounds. Many peer-mentors were able to conduct appointments in languages other than English, such as Arabic, Urdu and Hindi, and students appreciated the convenience of expressing their concerns in their mother tongue. The multilingual and multicultural

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setting of the AUS Writing Centre invites the peer-mentors to try different approaches for different students and to continually adapt their strategies based on their needs. From proofreading to brainstorming to discussing time management and providing stress relief, peer-mentors learn readiness and adaptability. Throughout the semester, peer mentors have the opportunity to discuss their concerns, share experiences, and reflect on their progress at the regular writing centre meetings. Reading the students’ feedback in the post-tutorial surveys is helpful in realizing which areas peer-mentors still need to work on. Aspfors and Goran (2015) have emphasized the importance of meeting, interacting, sharing experiences and building a culture of openness and trust in mentor education. As part of our in-service training, the peer-mentors and the Writing Centre Director are connected to each other through social media and messaging apps and can easily reach out to one another for help during their shifts or share experiences during the day. Developing our mentoring skills, therefore, is a process achieved in a pleasant and supportive environment and through collective effort.

TheWriting Fellows Experience Zahraa: As a Writing 221 Fellow, I am aware of my role as a mentor to the students in the course. In Fellowing, we meet our students throughout the semester, and as Konstantina mentioned earlier, there are benefits to frequent meetings: I was able to establish and foster relationships with my mentees, which improved the quality of mentoring sessions. In the teacher education literature, Hobson et al. (cited in Mann & Tang, 2012: 477), agree that mentoring focuses more on ‘constructed learning’, rather than directive instruction, when mentors meet more frequently with mentees. Konstantina: A formative experience in mentoring was serving as a Writing Fellow for a Politics course, POL 202. The first brainstorming sessions we had with students were a great way to get to know each other without the pressure of a deadline, and to talk about their topics and ideas. Students who saw me more often than others were more relaxed during the sessions and sought specific feedback. When it came to the final draft submissions, sessions with students I had met several times were far more productive, as we only had to focus on some passages of concern rather than go over the entire draft. My experience as a Writing Fellow demonstrated that a mentoring relationship needs to be built and cultivated, and that students trust their Fellow-mentor with more than just their writing concerns.

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Zahraa: Students have asked for advice not just on writing their research papers but also on topics such as time management, choosing the right classes, and studying for exams. Students in Writing 221 have also discussed their worries and expectations about mentoring and working at the Writing Centre with me. A student once asked me to observe her mentoring session because she felt comfortable around me and trusted me to provide her with honest feedback. Another student told me that he observed my mentoring strategies during our sessions and tried to apply those he found effective during his observation assignments. Both these examples affirm the role of a Writing Fellow as a mentor to their students. Konstantina: As the country went into lockdown in March 2020 and lectures and appointments were delivered online, many of the regular students requested advice beyond writing, and tutorials. This experience impressed upon me that the role of a writing mentor extends not only to providing writing-related help but help of any sort possible. Although my role was primarily focused on assisting students with formulating their ideas and making sure they followed a clear organization to meet the assignment’s requirements, I learned a lot about the topic as the sessions went on and developed new mentoring skills.

Mentee’s Insights into the Peer-Mentoring Programme Up to this point, we have discussed the peer-mentors’ perspectives of the programme. We now turn to the mentees’ perceptions of their peer-mentors and their tutorials. After their writing centre tutorials, mentees receive a link where they can comment on their peer-mentors’ qualities and skills. Representative survey results from the Spring 2021 semester indicate that our mentees are satisfied with the preparedness of their peer-mentors, with more than 98% of 375 students agreeing that their session was helpful. Furthermore, a similar proportion of students agreed on survey items that their peer-mentor provided useful advice/guidance, addressed their needs and concerns, gave them enough time to speak and was respectful of them and their writing. The open-ended comments in the surveys about the peer-mentors further corroborate the survey statistics. Some representative comments include: ‘The [peer-mentor] was extremely helpful and the [peermentor’s] feedback and suggestions for my essay were useful in improving my essay’ and ‘My [peer-mentor] was really lovely and gave me pointers I can use and build on for the rest of my college experience’.

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Implications: Challenges and Solutions The peer-mentors’ narratives above illustrate how the training course has helped them to deliver effective writing centre tutorials. For peer-mentors to be successful in their roles, they must reflect on their teaching practices, build relationships with their students, adopt a holistic approach and be committed to a collaborative approach. The training course has been successful in preparing peer-mentors for their roles; however, we do encounter challenges and the programme is continually revised to respond to these challenges. A challenge to our mentoring training course has been limited regional scholarship to inform and guide peer-mentor training. When we first created the peer-mentoring programme, we consulted popular, authoritative training handbooks such as The Allyn and Bacon guide to peer-tutoring (Gillespe and Lerner 2000) that promoted a non-directive, collaborative model as the best approach during writing tutorials. These handbooks were required reading during training. Our discussions centred on topics related to the non-directive approach, and peer-mentors were instructed to view themselves as peers rather than authority figures. Issues relating to the distinction between mentor and editor were an integral part of our peer-mentor training programme, and peer-mentors were instructed to resist the role of editor. In subsequent years, peer-mentors tried to implement the guidelines outlined in their training, but it became apparent that they were experiencing challenges with the non-directive, collaborative approach. Some of our students were not responsive during their non-directive sessions: they would not engage in conversations; they were unable to answer questions and they waited with a pen in hand for peer-mentors to dictate sentences. The peer-mentors shared their feelings of helplessness when abiding by the prohibition against directive approaches, and guilt about their occasional resort to directive approaches. Similar feelings are discussed in conversation analysis conducted by Copland and Donaghue (2019), which has revealed that language teachers typically claim to value a collaborative approach to feedback, but often adopt a directive approach despite themselves. We became concerned that the approach espoused by the handbooks might not be the most effective one for our multilingual students and decided to conduct a study (Eleftheriou, 2011) about the use of non-directive vs. directive approaches to gain insights into the struggles peer-mentors were facing with these approaches during tutorials. Through our research involving conversations and analysis of peer-mentor reflections, we discovered that the binary

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distinction between directive/non-directive approaches was causing confusion, and that it would be more productive to focus on flexible mentoring models. In order to respect student agency, we continue to teach the utility of non-directive, collaborative approaches; however, we began to train peermentors to take into account the circumstances of each tutorial (language level, type of assignment, personality and the mentees’ strengths and weaknesses), in order to enable them to meet the disparate needs of the mentees, while recognising the importance of agency (Eleftheriou, 2019). These considerations and concerns inform our research as our peermentoring training programme continues to evolve. Our programme is involved in a continuous process of reconsidering competent practices and questioning writing centre orthodoxy. Moreover, our peer-mentors’ voices and their experiences play a significant role in creating and refining the discourse. Ronesi (2009) discussed the difficulties she faced when leading the design of our peer-mentoring training course considering the then paucity of regional scholarship. She referred to North American peer-mentoring scholarship, which acknowledged that mentors should play an active role in complicating and extending writing centre theory and practice. The following excerpt from the syllabus of our peer-mentoring course illustrates the importance of our conversations with peer-mentors in our training programme: As multilingual mentors supporting multilingual peers in writing at an English medium university in an Arab country, you hold a unique position in the realm of peer-mentoring in writing. As most of our course readings will treat a North American context, WRI 221 students will need to contribute their experiences and insights as multilingual students at AUS to fill the information gap, to help the class consider how the addressed concepts resonate with their reality, and to forge an understanding of how writing tutorials can best be practised at AUS.

In addition to the challenges outlined above, some faculty members may assume peer-mentors do not have the qualifications or knowledge to assist their students. Trimbur (1987: 22) notes that faculty opponents of peermentoring typically argue that students lack the ‘expertise and credentials’ to help their peers learn to write, sometimes comparing peer-mentoring to ‘the blind leading the blind’. In fact, our peer-mentors have been recommended by writing faculty and are trained in peer-tutoring strategies in a formal course and have the requisite linguistic knowledge to function efficiently as

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‘expert peers’ (Williams, 2005: 60). Perhaps more collaboration with different university departments to explain the mission of the Centre and to emphasize how peer-mentors are trained could help to dispel the impression that our peer-mentors are unqualified.

Conclusion Mentors, whether they are experienced teachers or senior students, may not always receive the support or training they need for their mentoring role (Arnold, 2006). However, as Pfund et al., (2006: 30) have noted, ‘Mentoring skills can be learned’, and formal training is an effective means of engaging mentors to reflect upon and improve their mentoring practices. We believe that our experience of training student mentors can inform best mentoring practices and contribute to the broader discussion relating to the conditions and the milieu necessary to make mentoring successful in any teaching situation. When peer-mentors have been properly trained and coached, faculty can gradually develop confidence in mentors’ skills and appreciation for the mentoring. In that way, peer-mentoring programmes can change institutional culture and encourage other institutions to implement formal mentor training. However, more research is needed, which would ideally draw upon the narratives of peer-mentees as well as those of peer-mentors. While acknowledging that the current study is limited in scope, we believe it may inform further research involving a larger cohort of trained mentors, their mentees, and faculty, and utilizing a broader range of research methods.

Engagement Priorities 1. Are there ways in which a peer-mentoring system could help to improve learning at your university? 2. What would be the benefits and challenges of setting up a credit-giving peer-mentoring course in your institution? 3. If you were able to set up a peer-mentoring system in your institution, how do you think you might draw upon ideas and experiences reported in this chapter? 4. In what ways do you think the approach to supporting peer-mentoring described here could be adapted in order to meet the particular needs, circumstances and conditions of your university?

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5. Given our circumstances at AUS, and the cultural and linguistic diversity of our student body, can you suggest how we may approach further research in our context?

Appendix A

Roles

Goals

Tasks

Students

Students will profit from personalized conferencing on their written work, more attention given to discipline-specific writing, and the experience of learning from fellow students

Fellows

Fellows will develop their academic writing through their training and through the experience of helping others with their writing Fellows will hone their interpersonal skills through interaction with faculty and peers

Faculty

Writing Fellows will allow faculty to focus more keenly on the content of the paper and evaluate student understanding of the course

Students submit a preliminary draft of writing assignments to the Writing Fellow two weeks before the due date. During this two-week period, the Writing Fellows respond with written comments on first drafts and then meet with each student to explain the comments Each student meets with the Writing Fellow two or three times during the semester for individualized writing help Fellows must become familiar with discipline-specific writing conventions. They comment on structure, cohesion, development and language of the assignment Fellows will meet with the professor of the course to communicate about assignment deadlines and student progress Fellow meetings take place before each paper cycle to clarify goals and expectations, and after each paper cycle to share impressions of student writing, and make suggestions for any modifications

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References Arnold, E. (2006). Assessing the quality of mentoring: Sinking or learning to swim? ELT Journal, 60 (2), 117–124. Aspfors, J., & Fransson, G. (2015). Research on mentor education for mentors of newly qualified teachers: A qualitative meta-synthesis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 48, 75–86. Bieler, D. (2013). Strengthening new teacher agency through holistic mentoring. The English Journal, 102(3), 23–32. Bruffee, K. A. (1993). Peer tutoring and the conversation of mankind. In C. Murphy & J. Law (Eds.), Landmark essays on writing Centres (pp. 87–89). Hermagoras Publishing. Bullough, R. V., Jr. (2012). Mentoring and new teacher induction in the United States: A review and analysis of current practices. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 20 (1), 57–74. Copland, F., & Donaghue, H. (2019). Post observation feedback. In S. Mann & S. Walsh (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English language teacher education (pp. 402–416). Routledge. Delaney, Y. A. (2012). Research on mentoring language teachers: Its role in language education. Foreign Language Annals, 45 (S1), 184–202. Dikilita¸s, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, 22(4), 537–553. Eleftheriou, M. (2011). An exploratory study of a middle eastern writing centre: The perceptions of tutors and tutees. EdD thesis, University of Leicester, Leicester. Eleftheriou, M. (2019). Multilingual, Middle-Eastern students’ varied responses to directive and non-directive strategies in peer tutoring. TESOL International Journal, 14 (1), 65–84. Fletcher, S. (2012). Research mentoring teachers in intercultural education contexts; self-study. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1(1), 66–79. Gayles, J. G., & Kelly, B. T. (2020). Mentoring for success across the academic spectrum. In L. A. Flores & J. H. Olcott (Eds.), The academic’s handbook (4th ed., pp. 232–239). Duke University Press. Gillespie, P., & Lerner, N. (2000). The Allyn and Bacon guide to peer tutoring. Allyn. Hall, E., & Hughes, B. (2011). Preparing faculty, professionalizing fellows: Keys to success with undergraduate writing fellows in WAC. The WAC Journal, 22, 21–40. Hernandez, P. R., Estrada, M., Woodcock, A., & Schultz, P. W. (2017). Mentor qualities that matter: The importance of perceived (not demographic) similarity. Journal of Experimental Education, 85 (3), 450–468. Hobson, A. J., & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108.

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Hodges, A., Ronesi, L., & Zenger, A. (2019). Learning from/in Middle East and North Africa writing centers: Negotiating access and diversity. Writing Center Journal, 37 (2), 43–60. Hudson, P. B., & Nguyen, T. (2008). What do preservice EFL teachers expect from their mentors? Proceedings of Changing Climates: Education for Sustainable Futures, Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), Brisbane, Australia, 1–10. Jamissen, G., & Phelps, R. (2006). The role of reflection and mentoring in ICT teacher professional development: Dialogue and learning across the hemispheres. Teacher Development, 10 (3), 293–312. Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education’. Language Learning, 16 (1–2), 1–20. Mann, S., & Tang, E. H. H. (2012). The role of mentoring in supporting novice English language teachers in Hong Kong. TESOL Quarterly, 46 (3), 472–495. Nguyen, H. T. (2013). Peer Mentoring: A way forward for supporting preservice EFL teachers psychosocially during the practicum. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38(7), http://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2013v38n7.3 Nielsen, K. (2018). There may have been other stuff going on: Affective labor and the writing center as a safe house. In O. Barnawi (Ed.), Writing centers in the higher education landscape of the Arabian Gulf (pp. 129–144). Palgrave Macmillan. Pfund, C., House, S., Spencer, K., Asquith, P., Carney, P., Masters, K. S., McGee, R., Shanedling, J., Vecchiarelli, S., & Fleming, M. (2013). A research mentor training curriculum for clinical and translational researchers. Clinical and Translational Science, 6 (1), 26–33. Pfund, C., Pribbenow, C. M., Branchaw, J., Lauffer, S. M., & Handelsman, J. (2006). The merits of training mentors. Science Magazine, 311, 473–474. Ronesi, L. (2009). Theory in/to practice: Multilingual tutors supporting multilingual peers: A peer-tutor training course in the Arabian Gulf. The Writing Centre Journal, 29 (2), 75–94. Severino, C. (2009). Avoiding appropriation, In S. Bruce & B. Rafoth (eds.), ESL writers: A guide for writing Centre tutors (51–65) (2nd ed.). Boynton/Cook Publishers, Portsmouth, NH. Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2015). Toward facilitative mentoring and catalytic interventions. ELT Journal, 69 (2), 140–150. Trimbur, J. (1987). Peer tutoring: A contradiction in terms? The Writing Centre Journal, 7 (2), 21–28. Williams, J. (2005). Writing Centre interaction: institutional discourse and the role of peer tutors, In B. H. K. Bardovi-Harlig (Ed.), Institutional talk and interlanguage pragmatics research (37–65). Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.

3 Mentoring Doctoral Students: Challenging the Loneliness of the Long-Distance Novice Researcher Anne Burns

Introduction While there is a dearth of international research on mentoring practices in English language teacher education, particularly those related to teacher researchers, there is even less literature on the mentoring of doctoral students engaged in researching various aspects of English language education (but see Cotterall,[2011] and Sanchez-Martin & Seloni,[2019] for some exceptions). Many of these students are English language teachers, teacher educators or emerging academics working in English language teaching contexts internationally. Moreover, during the course of their doctoral studies, these students may spend extended periods of time away from their home base studying in other countries (although since early 2020 this has been less common because of the Covid-19 pandemic). This chapter focuses on my experiences of mentoring doctorial students, both domestic and international, studying at two Australian universities. Typically, in doctoral programmes in this context, students do not undertake coursework. Instead, they must navigate the relative isolation (Janta et al., 2014) of pursuing an individual study only under the guidance of one or more supervisors—something that can feel like running a long and A. Burns (B) Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_3

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lonely marathon, as my title suggests. Drawing on my own earlier experiences and reactions to being a doctoral student, I gradually refined my ideas about mentoring to embed my practices within a sociocultural and constructivist philosophy (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978), which became an ongoing exploration of how to provide a supportive and collegial community of practice for my students. Part of this exploration drew on the notion of mutual and distributed scaffolding among the student group, whereby students extended their and others’ competence as researchers through dialogic interaction and collaboration. By scaffolding, I mean the gradual handing over of increased autonomy and independence to the student. As Hammond (2023: 39) notes, scaffolding: …builds on the assumption that learning is essentially a social and cultural process that occurs in the interaction between individuals. It also builds on the assumption that knowledge is collaboratively constructed in interactions between teacher and student (rather than something that is passed from teacher to student), and that all participants are actively involved in the learning process.

In this chapter, I reflect on what I learned about scaffolded peer mentoring and what the reactions of my doctoral students were to the approaches adopted. These insights are then used to draw out the broader messages for those who are similarly engaged in mentoring doctoral students, providing some specific suggestions and tools that could be adopted by others to maximise a supportive environment during the doctoral experience. The chapter concludes with questions for reflection and discussion and some suggestions for research on mentoring doctoral students in English language education.

Context The context for my discussion forms a trajectory of how my thinking about mentoring developed and how my changing reflections and experiences over the years shaped my most recent approaches. These reflections begin with my own doctoral period several decades ago.

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Experiencing Doctoral Mentoring My own experience of completing a doctoral degree reverts back to the early 1990s. Having enrolled at a local university in a major city in Australia, I was allocated a supervisor1 with whom I would work individually for the period of my candidature. It was a time when the university department I attended (and where I was also employed) was actively increasing and revising its TESOL and applied linguistics (AL) programmes. The majority of doctoral students were domestic, those who could access the university personally. At the same time, a fledgling national distance learning programme was emerging which would eventually expand greatly to include many international masters and doctoral students. The TESOL/AL department was a highly active one, encouraging visits by well-known national and international scholars and enabling staff like me who, were also doctoral students, to attend national and international conferences and give presentations. Occasionally, there were social events on campus, where doctoral students could meet and make their own informal contacts with each other and with supervising staff. Apart from these activities, there was no formal mentoring programme in place for doctoral students, and mostly students relied on contact with their individual supervisors. There was also no formal course work to complete, as most Australian PhD programmes followed (and still do to a large extent) a model of an individual research study under academic supervision. In some cases, but not in my own, students are allocated more than one supervisor. My meetings with my supervisor occurred on what might be called an ‘as needs’ basis. Initial meetings occurred to shape the research paradigm, focus, and research questions, and my supervisor encouraged me to begin a literature review and to read widely. They2 were also very helpful in providing references and copies of relevant articles during our meetings and in introducing me to other doctoral candidates internationally, whom they knew personally and who were pursuing similar lines of research. As my candidature proceeded, I contacted my supervisor when I felt I needed further meetings or when I had drafts of chapters for which I wanted feedback. They were always very prompt in reading drafts and making further suggestions, which I appreciated as that allowed me to move forward. In retrospect, I would probably say that the style of mentoring I received was very encouraging but reactive. Supervisors are of course busy people, and 1 In some countries the term advisor rather than supervisor is used. However, I use supervisor which is more common in Australia. 2 To maintain confidentiality, I am using the generic pronoun ‘they’.

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may have expectations that doctoral students need to be personally agentive, so this style of supervision may be relatively widespread. Interestingly, Mantai (2017) who interviewed 30 PhD students from two metropolitan Australian universities confirms that the majority of students formed their identities as researchers, not so much from the models provided by their supervisors, but mostly from mundane daily opportunities involving personal, social, informal, and formal learning opportunities. She remarks that in the participants’ responses ‘supervisors are largely absent as students draw on multiple individuals on and off campus in assuming a researcher identity’ (636). In general, I would say that these experiences reflected my own.

Shaping New Ideas on Mentoring My Own Doctoral Students From the mid-1990s when I had completed my doctoral studies and was beginning to acquire my own PhD students, I began to process and reflect on my personal experiences as a student. Uppermost in my mind in these early days was what I had gleaned about supervision myself, as reflected in the experiences I have described, and from those of other doctoral contemporaries. There were many positive aspects to my supervisory experience, but I felt it had been a relatively solitary process with few opportunities for interaction and collaboration beyond my supervisor. My initial attempts to provide greater mentoring to doctoral students involved organising, with a colleague, after-work-hours meetings within the department in general for any doctoral students who wished to attend. We believed that this would give students an opportunity to meet, mingle and hear about others’ doctoral research. Unfortunately, this plan was not very successful for several reasons. First, the then head of department was relatively unenthusiastic about the idea, although they did not actually impede it—the attitude was more ‘we tried that and it didn’t work but go ahead if you really want to’. Second, the range of topics across the whole department was broad and diverse, so that students were not always able to see applications to their own work. Next, the meetings involved asking students to present on their individual topics—a bit in the style of a ‘top-down’ conference presentation—and it was somewhat difficult to get volunteers to do so, apart from the fact that presentations created extra work for the students involved. In addition, the meetings were held in the early evenings when, in many cases, people had to rush from work, were tired and hungry and were taking time away from their personal lives. Another reason was that these sessions were not widely supported and encouraged, nor attended, by supervisors around the department and were not seen as a

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‘required’ part of students’ candidature. As a result, our efforts at mentoring in this format were short-lived.

Moving in Other Directions Despite the failure of this initial attempt, it had taught me several things. In a mentoring situation, students needed a stronger sense of the immediate relevance of the process to their own interests, and an opportunity to actively discuss issues related to their own needs and challenges. They also needed to meet at times more conducive to their own requirements and to see their mentoring experiences as motivating for their development as researchers. As a result, my second attempt at mentoring was with my own group of supervisees. This move came about partly as a result of a conversation with a supervisor from a different university who recounted her experiences of establishing regular joint meetings for her own students. Consequently, I decided that at least I could try out some of her ideas by linking up my own students and introducing them to each other as a group. Even though their topics were different, my students were working within a similar area of research (English language teaching and applied linguistics) and using a similar qualitative research paradigm. This meant that they already had interests in common. My aim was to give them a network of support and collegiality that I hoped would sustain them beyond their individual supervision meetings with me. I began by asking their permission to join them up to a group and then emailing them to ask them to nominate a convenient meeting time (within a range of possibilities). The group consisted of the eight students I was supervising at the time which included four local and four international participants. At the first meeting I outlined that what I had in mind was regular ongoing meetings at which we would select in advance a topic or issue that they felt was important to their doctoral work and use that as a focus for the discussion. At the first meeting we brainstormed a list of topics the students felt were urgent, that included: writing for a journal, refining research questions, understanding research paradigms, selecting appropriate data methods, analysing data, reviewing the literature, and meeting deadlines/coping with the workload. The list reflected the varied concerns of the students at their different stages of study. We decided the following meeting would focus on how to prepare an article and select an appropriate journal for submission. To provide a basis for the meeting I gathered samples of various journals I had access to that I felt would be of interest to the students and which they could peruse to see which were appropriate to their goals. As the meeting proceeded, however, I realised

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that a lot of the talking was being done by me, which did not cohere with my desire to ensure the peer scaffolding that would accumulate through shared and dialogic interaction among the whole group. The students were clearly regarding me as the ‘sage on the stage’ who would point them in the direction of what to do. This trend continued across the following meetings despite my efforts to get the students to take a more interactive role. Although a few were willing to provide their input and opinions, others, perhaps because of lack of confidence, unfamiliarity, or for cultural reasons (Zhang, 2016), seemed reluctant to speak out. In general, although the students indicated that they liked and valued the meetings and wanted them to continue, in my view they were still not characterised by the type of peer scaffolding I referred to earlier that could create a stronger community of practice.

Experiencing a ‘Lightbulb’ Moment Shortly after working with this doctoral group, I moved to a new university where I was again responsible for supervision. Three of the students from my previous university decided to follow me, in order to complete their studies under my supervision. The new doctoral group consisted of these three students, who were each at slightly different stages of candidature but within two years of commencing their studies, and a newly enrolled student. The meetings were also attended by one of my students from my previous university who had just completed her PhD but would shortly be returning to her own country, and a post-doctoral student from an overseas university, who was spending six months under my supervision preparing publications. This combination provided a broad range of experiences within the group upon which to draw. As with the previous group, we brainstormed a list of topics to cover in the upcoming meetings. However, the student who had just gained her PhD volunteered to talk about her own ‘PhD journey’ and how she coped with challenges along the way. The student’s input transformed the way the group interacted: the main ‘content’ of the session was coming from a participant and not from me, and because the group saw her as a peer, they were more willing to open up, pose questions, relate their own experiences, and exchange ideas. The meeting was something of a ‘lightbulb’ moment for me as I began to see that I needed to feel less responsible for maintaining the content and flow of meeting, and to encourage the students to take the lead. I had previously felt reluctant to do this since, as a supervisor, I felt responsible to provide them with ‘input’ that would be valuable and would not lead to their thinking their time was being wasted.

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Mentoring Through Building a Community of Novice Researchers Over the next year or so as new students enrolled under my supervision and joined the group, we refined the ways the meetings were held to suit the needs and wishes of the students. Because new students were joining approximately every six months and others were completing their studies, the group began to form a kind of rolling and distributed network of doctoral study experiences. New students who joined were combining with others who had already gone some way down the paths they were about to tread and could therefore share their own experiences. Students could nominate ideas for topics that were immediately related to different challenges at their stage of study. While initially I had taken responsibility for booking a meeting room, emailing details about meeting times, and putting together an agenda, gradually the students began to offer in an ‘ad hoc’ way to take over some of these tasks. Eventually, I suggested to them that for each meeting, rather than have different volunteers to take up these tasks, we would appoint a leader who would not only attend to these practical issues, but also facilitate the meeting and manage the timing of the issues on the meeting agenda. The sample below3 shows a brief example of the preparation for one such meeting and the email exchanges between the students. As the email exchange illustrates, between meetings students interacted in a very collaborative and collegial way, negotiating their ideas for the agenda, preparing for feedback on each other’s work, and distributing resources they felt would assist their peers. For each meeting, the leader structured the flow of the various topics but invited the student who had proposed the particular issue to take the lead on introducing it and generating further interaction. The students actively managed these exchanges by posing their own questions, dilemmas, or puzzles and asking their colleagues to suggest ways to take their issues forward. Increasingly, the students gained confidence in constructively critiquing their peers’ thinking, putting forward ideas about, for example, how to shape and respond to ethics applications, to improve research presentations or journal articles, to expand their data collection methods, to reconstruct and deepen their data analysis samples, to manage their time and to write up their thesis chapters. In addition to these more ‘technical’ areas, the collegial and affective aspects of the group were not neglected; the group regularly expanded the social and relational dimension

3

All data samples here and below are used with permission.

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Dear all, I guess everyone is now very busy with the research project, especially when the next review is coming closer. Therefore, it is great if we gather together, update the current situation, share the hardships and seek the solutions to overcome them I would like to remind you that our next group meeting is tomorrow, 17 January, 2-4 pm at Room xxx. Here is the agenda: - Project Updates - Publication - Data management - Discussion If you have other interests, please let me know. I am looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow Best wishes X Thank you, X It would be good (if time allows) to talk a bit about the process of editing the chapters, the challenges we’ve got and how we have overcome these challenges Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow! All the best Y Many thanks for the reminder and agenda, X. I will be at work tomorrow (on campus) but should be able to come for the first hour - looking forward to seeing you all at 2 pm! I’m attaching a possible research writing plan for 2017 in case this is useful for anyone - the same as we discussed at the start of 2015 and 2016. I haven’t made my own plan yet as I’m focusing (very hard!) on getting my thesis chapters ready as my first priority this year Z

by bringing food to share with others, meeting for coffee or other refreshments, joining together for lunches and dinners, and celebrating the successes of their peers when they submitted their theses and finally graduated. At different points, where the students did look to me for guidance on the issues that arose, I aimed to fine-tune my input in such a way that it would extend their thinking and point them towards new insights on the topic, that they could then use to redirect the discussion or follow up on the issues. A further dimension through which I strove to mentor the peer group was by inviting notable visiting scholars and academic colleagues to join our discussions, in order to provide new insights and angles on the issues the students raised. As a result of this collaboration, one student spent a postdoctoral period of study working with a professor based in the USA, while another was involved in a TESOL International conference colloquium later organised by one of the visitors.

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Gaining Student Feedback on Mentoring As the mentoring I have described here was initiated by me for my own doctoral students, no formal evaluation of it was required by my university department. However, in 2016 I asked my students to provide me with short written testimonials on their experiences that I could use for the purposes of creating a portfolio which was to be submitted to the faculty in relation to doctoral supervision. I asked them to be as critically constructive and frank as possible in their comments. The students’ comments proved valuable in enabling me to gauge the most important dimensions from their perspectives and to reflect on what aspects of the mentoring I should continue to focus on. Four themes in particular stood out.

Being Supported Most comments pointed to the importance of feeling well supported as a doctoral student. Students valued mentoring meetings that offered personal support in the form of mutual collaboration through a peer group, emotional support as a means of sharing experiences and concerns, and professional support in the sense of expanding knowledge and leadership skills, all crucial dimensions of mentoring (Gakonga, 2019): …she encouraged her students to meet regularly as a group in order to share their experiences and knowledge and to provide support to one another. This made for an extremely fulfilling and supportive PhD experience. …the PhD student group, where we openly discussed our concerns, developed our leadership, and got support from others. I had access to a peer support group she established. I feel that I can learn much more than if I were going through the PhD process ‘alone’ (as many students seem to). … balance between on-going support and freedom to develop my own research skills. Part of this support comes from a research group she set up consisting of her current PhD students, who meet as a group with her once a month. Her students regularly meet as a group to share ideas and provide one another both professional and emotional support, the group functioning as a ‘family’.

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Providing Motivation The students’ sense of feeling supported seemed to increase their confidence, feed into their motivation to be part of the group, and thereby sustain their research. They also commented on the fact that the group was a place where they felt comfortable to share their doubts or questions: I was also greatly impressed by the enthusiasm of all of [her] PhD students. Through membership in this group, we all feel inspired and intellectually stimulated; we have a ‘safe place’ to ask for advice from each other and her. The more experienced PhD students help to mentor the new PhD students, while all members of the group learn how to present their own work clearly and confidently to a group of their peers. I found those meetings a great opportunity to discuss research issues… allowing [her students] to discuss research issues, share findings and encourage one another.

Mediating the PhD Journey Some students highlighted the issue that the doctoral process was a long, complex, and protracted ‘journey’ towards completion. They indicated that they appreciated the mentoring through the group as a way of mediating and managing this process: …doing a PhD can be a long and lonely journey… she made the journey enjoyable for all of her PhD students. …her supervisory style nurtured independent thinking and analysis, rather than applying autocratic direction. In the later stages of thesis development, her expertise as a professional writer, and her professional understanding of the writing process contributed wise advice, through consistent and timely responses to queries and drafts.

Gaining Opportunities to Grow as a Researcher and Become Part of a Broader Network Some other comments pointed to the importance, not so much of internal support, but opportunities to feel part of an external network of researchers and wider community of academic scholars: …showed me and other students in the group how to be part of a broader network and work together.

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Students attend and present their research at these group meetings while developing their networking skills.

Insights In the ways that I have described, including the feedback I gained from my students, my role as a mentor gradually changed from being a ‘driver’ who imparted knowledge to being a ‘scaffolder’ whose aim was to encourage collaborative and dialogic learning. I changed my views on what the role of a research supervisor-mentor should be, gradually aiming to balance the more directive stance that was sometimes necessary in individual meetings with an approach that would mentor and scaffold students’ personal development towards being part of the academic community through collaborative processes among themselves. I increasingly saw, as Lee (2008) suggests, that the key, indeed the essential, task of a supervisor is to ensure that doctoral students develop a high level of independence, and to encourage them towards this end. The meetings that evolved were not a ‘required’ school policy for supervisors but were instigated through my own experiences as a way of balancing and expanding individual supervisory sessions with a peer network that would self-support students who were at different stages of the doctoral ‘journey’. The end goal of this journey, as suggested by Lee, became my desire to see my students fly towards the future as fully fledged researchers. In a recent literature review of the qualities of effective mentors of teachers, Ellis et al. (2020) point to seven key dimensions: • • • • •

Collaborating with external partners Developing a disposition and professional knowledge in mentoring Establishing an effective relationship with mentees Facilitating mentees’ learning Modelling effective research and making connections between theory and practice • Providing direction and support • Using a progressive mindset and supporting mentees to nurture a researcher identity. I believe that the mentoring I have described accords with these dimensions. While many of them already exist within individual student-supervisor relationships, and university schools and departments may organise formal opportunities for presentations by students or visiting scholars, my overall

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impression from discussions with academic colleagues in several countries is that the type of scaffolded peer group mentoring I have described is more rare. This impression is supported by recent literature. Yob and Crawford (2012: 34), for example, contend that ‘doctoral education has a history of individual mentoring of students as a means of guiding them through their research’. Zhang’s (2016) study of the transition challenges of Chinese students into doctoral study in the USA, points out that mentoring by faculty-students and peers would be a valuable way that students could be better supported. Describing their own positive peer mentoring experiences as ‘transformational’ learning, Preston et al. (2014: 63) refer to this form of peer mentoring as an untapped and ‘under-utilized resource with great capacity to foster human and social capital within and between cohorts of graduate students’.

Implications Based on my experiences and the literature cited in the last section, I would suggest that supervisors wishing to replicate such a group could consider the following practical strategies:

Analyse the Existing Institutional Mentoring Context • Consider what opportunities for peer mentoring already do or do not exist within your school/department. Reflect on whether these events provide real opportunities for student peer support or whether they are mainly passive observers. • If such opportunities do not exist, depending on the number of students you supervise, consider facilitating a regular peer mentoring group. Decide on the timing of meetings per year according to the students’ personal responsibilities and needs. If you supervise only one or two students, consider joining with a colleague to expand the numbers of students who can collaborate.

Support Student Leadership Skills • Encourage the students to take leadership roles in organising and managing the meetings themselves.

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• Enable the students to identify their own pressing issues to discuss that can provide them with ‘just-in-time’ support to move forward.

Broaden Your Knowledge of and Abilities in Mentoring • Learn as much as possible about the features of effective mentoring by consulting the literature (such as some of the works cited in this chapter). • Time your own input into peer discussions strategically to offer theoretical and practical direction as needed and appropriate.

Facilitate Meaningful Interaction • Ensure opportunities for students to gain peer input and feedback on samples of their work, such as data sets, draft conference abstracts, ethics or funding applications, draft journal articles, draft departmental or conference presentations. • Encourage students to work, with or without you, on activities such as co-publishing, convening and organising student conferences, reporting on conferences and presentations attended, and sharing information about upcoming scholarly events.

Build a Community of Practice Among Your Students • Encourage open mindsets where honest and constructive critical feedback is viewed as a group responsibility towards individual success. • Celebrate doctoral milestones (e.g. successful candidature confirmation) and achievements (e.g. thesis supervision and completion) as a whole group.

Conclusions The type of doctoral mentoring I have described in this chapter aimed to move away from the traditional approach of an individual, and typically hierarchical, relationship between supervisor and student. It initiated a process that could supplement and balance individual supervisory experiences with scaffolded peer mentorship where students could create their own agendas and take leadership roles in promoting and developing themselves and their doctoral colleagues. I have contended that this form of doctoral mentoring

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may be much less rarely used than the more traditional individual approaches. However, as the comments of my own doctoral students bring to life, there seems to be much to be gained from supervisors’ initiating and facilitating opportunities for peer mentoring. In an era where universities worldwide are expanding their doctoral programmes and competing for students, there has been growing pressure and demands on university faculty as a result. Scaffolded peer mentoring may be one way of also providing support to faculty to ensure their own and their students’ academic success.

Engagement Priorities The questions below aim to offer possibilities for responses from both supervisors and students. 1. Do you agree, either as a supervisor or as a doctoral student, that individual supervision for students should be balanced with scaffolded peer mentoring as suggested in this chapter? Why? Why not? 2. What opportunities currently exist a) in your faculty; b) among your own supervised students, or among your doctoral student peers, for scaffolded peer mentoring? 3. Universities are increasingly focusing on enrolling more doctoral students. If you are a supervisor: What are the pressures and demands in your context to supervise and mentor doctoral candidates? What are the advantages of such a move in your opinion? If you are a doctoral student: What do you see as the pressures on your supervisor in mentoring multiple students? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being one of several student mentees? 4. In the scaffolded peer mentoring process described in this chapter, how would you see your own role as a supervisor? Teacher, tutor, coach, facilitator, counsellor, consultant, advisor, academic/theoretical guide? 5. Alternatively, in the scaffolded peer mentoring process described in this chapter, how would you see your own role as a doctoral student? Collaborator, peer coach, informer, adviser, co-constructor of knowledge, responder, supporter? 6. If as a supervisor, you do not already mentor a group as described here, survey your students about their interest in setting up such a group. Ask them to consider issues such as: the timing and duration of the meetings, the timing between meetings (fortnightly, monthly?), responsibilities

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of the participants, the topics/issues for discussion. If you are a doctoral student, what would be your preferences? 7. Depending on the responses of the students you supervise, experiment with different ways of organising and facilitating the group to identify what kinds of interactions are the most effective. 8. Ask the students you supervise for regular feedback on whether/how the group is working well for them and what improvements could be made.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to many of my former doctoral students who enthusiastically embraced the mentoring ideas and approaches described in this chapter. I learned as much from them as they did from me. They also greatly supported me through some of my own personal challenges and have remained my colleagues and friends. I am fortunate that they are still in touch with me to this day. This chapter is dedicated to them.

References Anonymous academic (2017). Not all PhD supervisors are natural mentors—some need training. The Guardian, 28 July, 2017. Cotterall, S. (2011). Doctoral students writing: Where’s the pedagogy? Teaching in Higher Education, Critical Perspectives, 16 (4), 413–425. Ellis, N. J., Alonzo, D., & Nguyen, H. T. M. (2020). Elements of a quality preservice teacher mentor: A literature review. Teaching and Teacher Education, 92, 103072. Janta, H., Lugosi, P., & Brown, L. (2014). Coping with loneliness: A netnographic study of doctoral students. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 38(4), 553– 571. Gakonga, J. (2019). Mentoring and mentor development. In S. Walsh & S. Mann (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education (pp. 432– 445). Routledge. Gatfield, T. (2015). An Investigation into PhD supervisory management styles: Development of a dynamic conceptual model and its managerial implications. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 27 (3), 311–325. Hammond, J. (2023). Scaffolding: Implications and equity for diverse learners in mainstream classes. In L. de Olivier & R. Westerlund (Eds.), Scaffolding for multilingual learners in elementary and secondary schools. Routledge. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Lee, A. (2008). How are doctoral students supervised? Concepts of doctoral research supervision. Studies in Higher Education, 33(3), 267–281.

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Mantai, L. S. (2017). Feeling like a researcher: Experiences of early doctoral students in Australia. Studies in Higher Education, 42, 636–650. Preston, J. P. Ogenchuk, M. J. & Nsiah, J. K. (2014). Peer mentorship and transformational learning. PhD student experiences. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 44 (1), 52–68. Sánchez-Martín, C., & Seloni, L. (2019). Transdisciplinary becoming as a gendered activity: A reflexive study of dissertation mentoring. Journal of Second Language Writing, 43, 24–35. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press. Yob, I. M., & Crawford, L. (2012). Conceptual framework for mentoring doctoral students. Higher Learning Research Communications, 2(2), 34–47. Zhang, Y. (2016). International students in transition: Voices of Chinese doctoral students in a U.S. research university. Journal of International Students, 6 (1)175– 194.

4 Mentoring Through Modeling and Socialization: Insights from China and Nepal Peter I. De Costa, Laxmi Prasad Ojha, and Luqing Zang

Introduction One of the approaches I adopted while teaching in the university in such a low-resourced context was mentoring my students (both individually and in groups) to support the development of their professional skills. Due to the lack of resources and large number of students enrolled in the department, I would usually resort to mentoring through modelling. I tried to present models for my students which they could emulate and build on. For example, one of the courses I taught was related to the issues of professional development of English language teachers. The course drew mostly on books and papers written by foreign authors about contexts that were very different than the one my students would be working in after their graduation. This was a challenge for me, and I had to find ways to localize the ideas and provide models for them to learn from. (Laxmi) P. I. De Costa (B) · L. P. Ojha · L. Zang Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. P. Ojha e-mail: [email protected] L. Zang e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_4

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I needed to learn to take care of myself as a new teacher while designing and constructing all teaching related materials, checking students’ progress, and negotiating with staff to answer students’ non-academic questions. When facing difficulties and class issues, it was hard to find a place for sharing and looking for help. I mentored students only based on my previous experience. This portion of work was usually hard for teachers such as me who were assigned to teach entry level students, since we needed to check on individual students frequently and provide considerable guidance. I still remember how both my students and I were exhausted as we could not get enough guidance and lost support from the school. It took me two years to figure out an effective teaching approach and construct more effective teaching plans. (Luqing)

We open this piece with vignettes from the second (Laxmi) and third (Luqing) authors of our chapter. Laxmi and Luqing, from Nepal and China, respectively, describe challenges commonly encountered by language teachers across the world. These challenges include a lack of resources regarding mentoring. So, Laxmi stepped up to model pedagogical practices for his student teachers who were future English language educators. Meanwhile, Luqing, who was left to professionally fend for herself, fell back on her past experience as an English language learner in order to provide her collegelevel students guidance. In both contexts, Laxmi and Luqing had to work creatively to fill this resource void: (1) Laxmi by first drawing on foreign published teaching literature and subsequently localizing these teaching materials for his students to generate exemplar teaching models for them, and (2) Luqing by adopting a trial-and-error approach to refine her pedagogical practices to support her students’ learning. This plight of limited access to resources is exacerbated by what Swennen et al., (2010: 144) describe as the pressure to ‘transform their identity as teachers to become “teachers of teachers in higher education” and, increasingly, to become researchers of teaching and teacher education’. Thus, in addition to having to take on the mantle of mentors, teachers generally have to juggle multiple and fluid professional identities (De Costa & Norton, 2017; Dinkelman, 2011) that include being a scholar, practitioner, researcher, advisor and learner (Peercy et al., 2019). Put differently, as they grapple with these pressing demands, language teachers like Laxmi and Luqing could benefit from mentorship themselves as they mentor their charges. It is these dual demands—of being a mentor and being in need of one—that is the focus of our chapter. Our understanding of mentoring is guided by Hall and Burns’ (2009: 60) identity-inflected understanding of mentoring as (1) a socialization process, (2) entailing more than the transmission and acquisition of professional skill sets, and (3) involving

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the establishment of structures that ‘balance power and agency in ways that allow all participants to grow and to thrive both personally and professionally’. That mentoring is characterized by complex socialization and identity work is further underscored by Bullough (2005), who describes the process as encompassing forming affiliations with other teachers and colleagues. Significantly, and in congruence with Loizou (2011: 383), we view mentoring in terms of the establishment of respectful professional relationships between ‘the powerful and the powerless … [and] the powerful and the empowered’. In other words, mentoring from our perspective is a discursive enterprise, one that enriches both mentors and mentees. To illustrate the complexities surrounding mentoring, we focus on our two aforementioned focal teachers—Laxmi and Luqing—and problematize their mentoring experiences in their home countries and the US. Specifically, we explore how they overcame the pedagogical challenges associated with being mentors and mentees.

Context Originally from Nepal and China, respectively, Laxmi and Luqing were first-year doctoral students in a college of education at a U.S. university at the time of our study. Laxmi had previously worked as a lecturer at a public university in Nepal for six years where he taught various courses to student teachers at the master’s level. His students were preparing to become English language teachers in K-12 contexts in different parts of the country. Meanwhile, Luqing had taught in a joint degree programme at a reputable Chinese university that prepared undergraduate students to study abroad. This programme had been created to raise the international profile of China’s higher education sector and to attract educational funding. Peter is a faculty member at the U.S. university where Laxmi and Luqing are currently enrolled. A former high school English teacher, Peter is an educational linguist and currently serves as Laxmi and Luqing’s academic advisor. While he performs a research mentoring role regarding his two advisees, this mentoring role is not the focus of this chapter, which focuses on pedagogical mentoring, that is, how Laxmi and Luqing benefitted from mentoring opportunities to advance their skills as teachers and teacher educators.

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Insights On a methodological level, the data that we draw on in our chapter come primarily from interviews that Peter conducted with Laxmi and Luqing over interactive Zoom meetings and email. In line with Barkhuizen’s (2013) notion of narrative knowledging, the interview data have been (re)presented as narratives in order to illustrate how our understanding of mentoring was coconstructed. We begin first with an exploration of the pedagogically-oriented mentoring experiences of Laxmi and Luqing in their home countries before proceeding to unpack their experiences in the US. The three mentoringrelated themes that emerged from the examination of our narrative data are: (1) localizing pedagogy, (2) engaging in reflexivity, and (3) working collaboratively in teams. Each theme also constitutes a strategic approach undertaken and experienced by Laxmi and Luqing in order to facilitate successful mentoring. It is to these mentoring-related themes that we turn next.

Localizing Pedagogy In a recent metanalytic study, Faez et al. (2019: 6) underscored the importance of developing teachers’ ‘own [research] instrument reflexively in consultation with local educators familiar with real-world language needs in the local context’. By the same token, and in keeping with recent calls to develop and enact culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), it has become increasingly apparent that teachers and teacher educators need to design pedagogies that take into consideration local cultures. You may recall from the epigraph to our chapter that for professional development purposes, Laxmi sought ‘to find ways to localize the ideas [from foreign textbooks] and provide models for them [his student teachers]’ to enhance their pedagogical practices. This effort to localize his pedagogy and have his students also engage in localizing their own pedagogies stemmed in part from the lack of resources with which he had to negotiate. As a consequence, Laxmi resorted ‘to mentoring through modelling’, explaining that he attempted to present himself as a model that his students could emulate. Elaborating further, Laxmi noted: [I]n one of the topics/readings in the course, the students were introduced to the ideas of critical friendship for teacher professional development. In Nepal it is not common for people to be critical about the people they are close to or work closely with. I considered this as a challenge for my students to

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practise what could have been a great way for them to engage in collaborative professional development. Therefore, I decided to ask them to form a critical friendship group in their own class …

To expedite the formation of critical friendship groups (Peercy et al., 2019), Laxmi used his personal blog as a model for his students on which to style their own blogs; these blogs, in turn, became an effective platform for his students to initiate dialogue within their respective critical friendship groups. Through modeling his blog, which was well received by his students, Laxmi was not only able to localize a learning resource for their benefit, but he was also able to do so by creating a useful platform (i.e. the blog) within their community of professional practice. Put simply, his students were socialized into this pedagogical practice of critical friendship groups through Laxmi’s modeling of his blog (for details about this creative project, see Ojha & Acharya, 2021). Equally important to note is how Laxmi constructed his student teachers. As mentioned earlier, mentoring entails complex identity work (Bullough, 2005; Dinkelman, 2011; Hall & Burns, 2009) that is also characterized by the establishment of respectful professional relationships between ‘the powerful and the empowered’ (Loizou, 2011: 383). In contrast to the common practice in his context, Laxmi made a conscious attempt to treat his students as future teachers instead of mere students. He did so by having them reflect on how they would modify ideas introduced in their Westernbased course readings and customize these ideas to fit their classroom needs. This helped Laxmi interact with his students as a novice teacher educator and develop a professional identity as an active teacher collaborator. While we certainly do not mean to imply that individuals from Asian societies such as China and Nepal are incapable of enacting criticality, we would like to point out that these aspects of learning and teaching may be underplayed because of cultural norms and educational practices that may differ from the West (Tsui & Tollefson, 2007). In Luqing’s case, she found herself having to wrestle with a teaching context that expected her to develop her students’ critical thinking skills. As mentioned, her undergraduate students were enrolled in a programme whose primary goal was to prepare them to study abroad. To illustrate how daunting her responsibilities were, Luqing highlighted a core programme activity called Model United Nations that was designed to generate class discussion and to hone the students’ critical thinking skills. Detailing this activity, she explained: Students were randomly assigned to represent different countries and had to debate controversial issues, such as giving reasons based on each countries’

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political ideologies and principles. Therefore, students not only needed to think about controversial questions critically, but they also needed to conduct research on how the people in their designated country view and react to the questions …. It was hard at the beginning. Students in China usually receive teacher-centred education as it is an effective way to improve their standardized test scores. Students in the classroom rarely participated and contributed to class negotiations; instead, they listened to their teachers talk all the time.

Luqing’s plight was compounded by the fact that she had to design her instruction around this Model United Nations activity all by herself. Lacking a mentor, she turned towards her students—the very individuals that she was expected to mentor—to provide the guidance she needed. Specifically, she designed a survey to solicit their input, and Luqing shared: Students suggested some improvements that helped me make further logical decisions. For example, since most of the students were educated to pass standardized tests before entering college, and cultural awareness was not one of the tested topics, students had a hard time thinking about global problems …. We, teachers, usually believe college students are mature enough to ask ‘big’ questions, but we forget to help transition them from high school to college. Therefore, I narrowed the focus from global issues to city problems such as traffic, natural resources …. For example, I asked students to draft city air pollution regulations for Beijing.

Like Laxmi, Luqing made a conscious effort to localize her pedagogy—as mediated through the Model United Nations task—by having her students think about how a global issue such as air pollution can be anchored to a local context, in this case their home city, Beijing. Notably, in the absence of a mentor, Luqing created her own community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), one that was populated by her students, and was thus subsequently able to enlist their guidance through their survey suggestions. In particular, and consistent with Wenger’s (1998) observation that mutual engagement constitutes a key feature of community of practice, Luqing actively sought feedback on her instructional practices from her students and used their input to shape her pedagogical decisions. It is to this crucial point of working collaboratively that we will return later when we discuss the third theme that emerged from our data.

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Engaging in Reflexivity The importance of reflexivity cannot be overstated. According to Clark et al., (2014: 132), reflexivity is a process that includes a ‘sense of criticality, awareness, and a certain amount of vigilance’. Similarly, for Lunn Brownlee et al., (2017: 247), ‘reflexivity is characterized by an internal dialogue that takes place in order to understand and evaluate multiple perspectives’. They further point out that teachers should take advantage of engaging in acts of reflexivity within the teaching process to recognize problems, review resolutions, determine actions, and make evaluations. Relatedly, Ustuk and De Costa (2020) emphasize that reflexivity helps advance the movement from inner thought toward action. Put simply, reflexivity thus not only helps teachers understand their own teaching practices but also mobilize pedagogical change with a view to improve the learning outcomes of their students. This was certainly the case with Laxmi and Luqing who designed their own mentoring opportunities in the face of a lack of support from their own professional peers. Thus, instead of gaining input from their colleagues, they were indirectly mentored by their own students whose feedback seeded affordances for them to be reflexive about their own pedagogical practices. As explained by Laxmi, My department did not have a formal system to evaluate teachers’ teaching skills through student evaluation, but I always sought feedback from my students on various aspects of my teaching such as classroom presentation, resources I used/provided, and support I provided to my students. I adopted both formal and informal approach to evaluation—I asked students to answer a set of open-ended questions about my teaching, and also sought feedback from some students who I thought would feel comfortable enough to talk about my teaching in an honest manner. This reflexivity helped me to become an effective teacher as I could improve myself in the next class/year based on the feedback received from my students. For example, one of the comments I received from my students at the beginning was on the pace of my class. I was not aware of this until a couple of students came to the department one day and asked me if they could talk to me in private. The students shared with me that they liked my class and found the resources useful but were struggling to catch up with the speed. They requested me to slow down the pace so they could process the information well. Based on this, I started having fewer activities and PowerPoint slides in my presentation, which allowed me to engage students more in classroom conversation …. [I]n general I was more thoughtful of my pace in class while preparing the resources and presenting them.

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As seen above, the much-needed mentoring that Laxmi desired materialized as a result of a student survey he initiated. Specifically, the student feedback he received about the pace of his teaching was then utilized to refine his classroom practice; based on their input, Laxmi slowed down his pace to make his instruction more accessible. Hence, even in the absence of teacher peer support, Laxmi was able to create a mentoring professional development opportunity for himself by soliciting student feedback upon which he reflexively acted. Put simply, Laxmi implemented a learner-supported mentoring process where he collaborated with his students to seek feedback to improve his teaching as he did not receive any opportunity for faculty mentorship. In an ideal situation, having a formal or informal faculty mentor is desirable for junior teachers so that they can develop into effective teachers by learning from their more experienced colleagues. However, in the absence of such a practice, Laxmi deemed his approach to professional development necessary in order to succeed professionally, especially in the under-resourced institution where he taught. In a similar vein, Luqing used student survey feedback to correct inaccurate assumptions she had about students’ readiness to accomplish tasks and to gain insight into how to predict their learning capacity for her course. As noted earlier, it was through this feedback channel that she was able to narrow the scope of the global issues she was attempting to tackle in class and localize these issues by having them focus instead on common, everyday city problems that emerged in Beijing. However, Luqing’s self-initiated mentoring efforts did not stop there because she also decided to record her teaching and kept a reflective journal: [T]hrough regularly watching the videos, I saw my self-growth and developed my reflexive capacity. I compared recordings of my teaching each month and tried to make possible improvements to my teaching. From classroom physical arrangements to speech content, whenever I watched the videos, I viewed myself as a third person, talked to myself, and tried to critique objectively. I kept a reflective journal and tried to find the root causes for students’ willingness to engage in class discussions. After weeks of self-analysis, I realized that the ultimate reason for not engaging in communicative skills was the students’ lack of ability to express their thoughts impromptu in English. They had adequate knowledge of the content and ideas but needed more time to process those ideas into English. Therefore, I asked students to write first and then read their transcripts because Chinese students are better at writing than impromptu speaking.

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In sum, even though they did not have peer mentoring support, Laxmi and Luqing were able to overcome this challenge by strategically creating self-mentoring opportunities that involved their recruiting the assistance of their students. The student feedback they received fueled their ability to partake in reflexive actions which, in turn, powered their professional development. However, while Laxmi and Luqing used input from their students to make strategic pedagogical decisions to serve their students better, such mentoring cannot be equated with peer mentoring as the scope of studentsupported mentoring is different from that of faculty mentoring. It is also worth mentioning that students might not be able to provide the feedback that teachers expect of them because these students might lack the required knowledge and experience to provide any suggestions on various aspects of professional development, for example related to issues such as teacher career advancement and meeting institutional expectations.

Working Collaboratively in Teams In Fall 2020, Laxmi and Luqing began their doctoral programme in a midwestern U.S. research university. To fund their doctoral studies, they worked as teaching assistants at the university. Given that they were pursuing a degree in education, both Laxmi and Luqing’s teaching responsibilities entailed working with undergraduate pre-service teachers who were enrolled in a practicum course. This course, ED 482, had several sections that were supervised by a faculty member, Dr. Maria Torres (a pseudonym), who met the section instructors regularly every week to co-plan lessons. Given that it was their first semester, neither Laxmi nor Luqing had to teach, however. Instead, they shadowed more experienced teaching assistants (advanced PhD students), who had taught ED 482 more than once, and their faculty mentor, Dr. Torres. Laxmi and Luqing worked with Dr. Torres for a semester and attended the weekly planning meetings, supported the senior student instructors in class facilitation, and also led a class independently towards the end of the semester. In addition, they also supported their more experienced student instructor counterparts to grade and provide feedback on student work. During the weekly planning meetings, the team reviewed the previous lesson and prepared a lesson plan and resources to be used in the next lesson. This allowed Laxmi and Luqing to better understand the institutional and course requirements as first year doctoral students who would be teaching their courses independently from the following semester. In short, unlike their previous experiences in Nepal and China, Laxmi and Luqing found themselves in a serendipitous situation as they were able to

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receive the mentoring opportunities that they previously lacked. In addition, Luqing found herself assuming for the first time a new identity—that of a beginning teacher educator (Williams et al., 2012)—as she and Laxmi found themselves encountering new experiences at graduate school and negotiating a newly established professional relationship established with Dr. Torres, their faculty mentor. Having not taught in the US before, Luqing welcomed the mentoring support she received from her peers and found the weekly planning meetings highly useful. She noted: In the ED 482 lesson planning group, even though I am a shadowing instructor and lack experience in teaching domestic [U.S.] students, Dr. Torres and the other instructors from the planning group welcome my ideas and encourage me to make contributions .… At our group meetings, instructors give ideas and make comments to each other which prompt self- and groupreflection. ED 482 has better prepared me to be a teacher educator. Even though I also need to check my students’ [pre-service teachers’] progress and am involved in academic assignment planning, I feel validated by the whole team and have more confidence in directing my students. I have learned from my co-instructors in the course and will model their pedagogical practices in my future teaching. Collaborating with colleagues has increased my sense of security, which is especially important for new teachers.

As Walkington (2005: 63) asserts, mentoring provided by experienced teachers (unlike supervision) helps promote ‘a collegial relationship that fosters each individual pre-service teacher to develop his/her own identity as a professional teacher’. Significantly, the established consultative mentoring model used in ED 482 enabled Luqing to develop her confidence in teaching in a new educational context. In particular, the ratification of her suggestions by her colleagues made her feel welcome as she situated herself in this new community of practice. In addition to assuaging her initial sense of insecurity, the supportive environment of peer mentoring enabled Luqing to construct a new teacher educator identity, while also negotiating another new identity, that is, one of a graduate student at a U.S. university. That she found such identity development to be productive is underlined by this observation: [T]he open space that ED 482 creates and the openness of students [preservice teachers] allow new teachers [teacher educators] like me, to engage in exchanging ideas more efficiently. I am constantly switching back and forth between being a [graduate] student and a teacher [educator]. This powerful and dynamic switching opportunity has not only helped me to better understand

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the learning experiences of my students and how to design more appropriate lesson plans, but it has also empowered me professionally as a teacher.

Luqing’s shared observations about her enhanced pedagogy as a result of being able to work with and observe her colleagues are congruent with findings of other language teacher educator identity scholars (e.g. Peercy et al., 2019; Yazan, 2018; Yuan, 2019), who have noted that teacher educator identity development can inform one’s pedagogy. In his study on language teacher educators’ ideal identities in China, Yuan (2019: 191) reported that the modelling practice experienced by his focal teacher educator participant not only gave him opportunities to observe and hone practical teaching skills, but also expanded his understanding of ‘the dynamic and interactive nature of language teaching’. This was also certainly the case with Luqing, who, as you may recall, had lamented the lack of classroom interaction when she was teaching in China. Simply put, the insights gleaned from interactive teaching modelled in ED 482 supplied her with new pedagogical tools to facilitate interactive instruction. Like Luqing, Laxmi also spoke highly of the mentoring arrangement created around ED 482, emphasizing how the collaboration with his peers fostered his growth as a language teaching professional. He disclosed: Working collaboratively with the other instructors and having regular meetings with Dr. Torres has helped me learn about the U.S. model of higher education. I have learned so much from her [Dr. Torres] and my co-instructors on designing lesson activities, interacting with students, providing feedback on student assignments, selecting course materials from a wide range of resources, designing assignments and other assessment tools. Besides, I have learned about so many technological tools that I was not familiar with before coming to the US. The department asked the graduate students to engage in shadow teaching to provide mentoring opportunities for the new graduate students, which has turned out to be a great way to learn teaching skills while I adapt to the new context. At the same time, I have been keenly observing how other instructors deal with various aspects of teaching. I have taken their activities and resources as models for my own professional development and hope to use them as a teacher educator in the coming days while I engage in teaching undergraduate courses as a doctoral student and teaching assistant.

As seen above, Laxmi was grateful for the support he received from his department as a new doctoral student. Equally noteworthy are his plans to add newly introduced technological tools and activities to his pedagogical repertoire, while transitioning into his new role as doctoral student and

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teacher educator. Elaborating on the expansion of this repertoire, Laxmi disclosed: Another important lesson for me from ED 482 is selecting resources and designing activities and assignments. While I mostly provided print materials (books and papers) to my students while teaching in Nepal, the fellow instructors in ED 482 draw heavily from multiple sources such as internetbased videos, interactive websites, newspaper/magazine websites, and federal and state bodies overseeing educational policies. All these resources are hyperlinked in the [ED 482] syllabus to help students access the resources easily and provide pedagogical resources for all types of learners. I think I will follow this model to provide resources to my students in my own teaching in the future.

In sum, working collaboratively with their ED 482 colleagues provided both Laxmi and Luqing with valuable mentoring opportunities, opportunities that not only had a direct impact on their pedagogy but also played an instrumental role in shaping their identities as language teacher educators. Up to this point, we have been privy to Luqing and Laxmi’s transition into their new roles as ED 482 instructors. Taking on the new identity of language teacher educators was undeniably a professional leap for both and one that is consistent with Barkhuizen’s (2021:73) following observation that the work of teacher educators changes, as they move across stretches of time and space: Characteristic of their [teacher educators’] work is pedagogy, research, and service (institutional and community), and working across these domains with their own communities means that teacher educators are constantly negotiating their multiple identities to position themselves where they want to be or do not want to be. At the same time, they are being positioned by others—their students, teachers, colleagues, and institutions.

Having moved from China and Nepal, respectively, to the U.S., Luqing and Laxmi found themselves having to negotiate their multiple identities (Barkhuizen, 2021), as these changed and developed. In moving to the U.S., Laxmi and Luqing changed their work to suit their new teaching context while also (1) negotiating their multiple identities, and (2) transitioning into their new roles as ED 482 instructors. Specifically, they had to shuttle back and forth between their new graduate student and teacher educator identities as they (re)positioned themselves regarding their ED 482 students and colleagues as well as their new academic institution. At this juncture, it would be helpful to reiterate some key insights gleaned from Luqing and Laxmi’s narratives. As mentioned, mentoring is characterized by socialization processes. Evidently, both of them described being

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socialized into the ED 482 community of practice by Dr. Torres and their co-instructor colleagues. However, this process of socialization also took place in their home countries, albeit in different ways. Back home, and in light of the lack of systematic peer mentoring support, it was their students who filled this mentoring void, and thus played an instrumental role in socializing them into their professional responsibilities. Crucially, socialization and mentoring were not unidirectional; instead, these processes took on a bidirectional and discursive dimension because as teachers, Laxmi and Luqing were themselves being socialized and mentored by their students as much as they were socializing and mentoring their charges. Relatedly, the mentoring and socialization processes were expedited and mediated by reflexive endeavors embarked on by Laxmi and Luqing. Findings from student surveys administered in their home countries became an effective catalyst to having them rethink their pedagogical practices. And in Luqing’s case, supplementary efforts such as video recordings of her classroom practices and a reflective journal became helpful tools in facilitating her ability to mentor herself. Finally, we traced how Laxmi and Luqing were able to creatively overcome a lack of resources and consequently better mentor their students by localizing their pedagogy. Specifically, Laxmi mentored his students by (1) creating local materials instead of blindly borrowing Western teaching materials, and (2) setting up local models to guide his students. A case in point was his creation and subsequent sharing of his personal blog, on which his students styled their own. The blogs they designed became a viable platform for them to exchange ideas with others. In a similar spirit, Luqing elected to make the handling of global issues like pollution more accessible for students by having them think about examples of pollution encountered locally in Beijing.

Implications Malderez (2009: 538) describes mentoring as an activity that is focused on supporting the transformative development of a mentee, with a view to ‘facilitating the mentee’s acceptance into or deeper engagement with a professional community’. As has been emphasized and demonstrated throughout this chapter, even though Laxmi and Luqing did not have an immediate professional community initially, they agentively sought and built their own professional communities in their home countries. They did this by working with their students, considering them as their community. This relates to Gheradi’s (2009: 515) ideas that ‘the community should replace the individual as the learning subject and the repository of knowledge as a collective

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heritage’ to form a community of practice. Things changed, however, when Laxmi and Luqing started graduate school at their U.S. university because they found themselves immersed in the supportive professional community that the ED 482 team created. The modelling of lesson planning, class facilitation, and feedback on student work provided by the senior student co-instructors were beneficial for Laxmi and Luqing as they viewed them as inspiring pedagogical practices. The demonstration of such practices by the senior instructors that Laxmi and Luqing sought to emulate exemplify mentoring through modeling, as mentors are also considered models of ways of teaching (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). Both Laxmi and Luqing’s narratives also underscore the value of how modelling is a way of socializing teachers into new contexts by providing them with useful strategies that are deemed practical and effective in a particular institutional context. In addition, Laxmi and Luqing also gained psychosocial support from their senior student co-instructors. As noted by Nguyen (2017), psychosocial support can fuel teachers socially and emotionally and facilitate their career advancement. Laxmi and Luqing also supported each other psychosocially by communicating and interacting after they joined the ED 482 team, which can be taken as another form of peer-mentoring. According to Nguyen (2017), being able to speak openly with one’s professional peers is an important way to reduce work-related stress for teachers. The semester-long engagement with this supportive professional community thus influenced Laxmi and Luqing in shaping their professional identity in a positive manner and developing their self-assurance for teaching the courses in the following semesters. In their study on identity development and mentoring in doctoral education, Hall and Burns (2009) aptly remind us that we need to view mentoring as a socialization process that seeks to help teachers not only survive but thrive in the workplace. This observation was borne out in Laxmi and Luqing’s cases, as demonstrated in this chapter. In addition, for mentoring to be effective, its effects need to be durable. Encouragingly, our findings seem to suggest both of them stood to benefit from their mentoring not only in the short term, where they would plough their new pedagogical knowledge back into their teaching of ED 482, but also potentially in the long term. Asked how they would have applied this new knowledge to change their instruction in China and Nepal, respectively, Luqing and Laxmi noted: In the future, I will encourage students to share more about their thoughts. Their sharing should not be limited to the knowledge about the specific course content but also anything that they could contribute to the class. Also, as a teacher who could also learn from her students, I will take this teaching and

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learning opportunity and make it a powerful tool to guide my future career aspirations. (Luqing) I think I would be able to change some of my practices in my Nepali classrooms. First, I feel more resourceful (in terms of content, and pedagogical and technological resources) now than I was in the past. This will help me draw from a vast resource that I wasn’t aware of previously. Due to the online modality of ED 482, I have been able to observe various tools that other instructor colleagues have used to engage students in collaborative learning. If I redo my class in Nepal, it will be more interactive, engaging and will have diverse sets of activities. (Laxmi)

Conspicuously, both Luging and Laxmi highlight how they plan to make their lessons more interactive. Such a decision was driven in part by their ability to observe and experience first-hand how effective dialogue can be incorporated into classroom instruction. The dialogic nature of the ED 482 planning sessions, coupled with their shadowing of ED 482 colleagues, gave them a pedagogical template to refine their instruction. Based on the positive effects of their experience, we surmise that mentoring needs to be a pivotal part of language teacher education programmes. Put differently, language teacher educators should emulate Dr. Torres’s mentoring practices, proverbially walk their talk, and lead by example.

Conclusion We acknowledge that teachers in all educational contexts inevitably face problems with respect to access to resources. What we should not forget, however, is that teachers are amazingly creative and agentive professionals, as Laxmi and Luqing have clearly illustrated in this chapter. To meet teachers like them halfway, concerted and deliberate efforts also need to be put in place so that an effective mentoring infrastructure is established in professional development programmes. These programmes need to take into consideration the complex identity work involved in preparing future teachers and teacher educators. While we have focused on how mentoring can help such professionals become more effective practitioners in this chapter, we cannot forget Dikilita¸s and Wyatt’s (2018) teacher-research-mentoring nexus that underlines the importance of helping teachers assume an equally important identity as researchers through research-mentoring. Space limitations did not allow us to further explore this aspect of developing a researcher identity in this chapter, but we hope others will investigate this complementary facet of mentoring. At the end of the day, we need to remember that teachers have to

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juggle multiple and fluid professional identities (De Costa & Norton, 2017; Dinkelman, 2011; Peercy et al., 2019).

Engagement Priorities • In your own context, what is the relationship between mentoring, socialization and communities of practice? • In what ways can pedagogical mentoring be viewed as a multidirectional enterprise, and who does such an enterprise involve? • How are novice teacher educators embarking on doctoral study also provided research-mentoring in your context?

References Barkhuizen, G. (2013). Narrative research in language teaching and learning. Language Teaching, 47 (4), 450–466. Barkhuizen, G. (2021). Language teacher educator identity. Cambridge University Press. Bullough, R. (2005). Being and becoming a mentor: School-based teacher educators and teacher educator identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(2), 143–155. Clark, J. B., Mady, C., & Vanthuyne, A. (2014). Exploring reflexivity and multilingualism in three French language teacher education programs. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17 (1), 129–155. De Costa, P. & Norton, B. (2017). Introduction: Identity, transdisciplinarity, and the good language teacher. The Modern Language Journal, 101-S1, 3–14. Dikilita¸s, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, 22(4), 537–553. Dinkelman, T. (2011). Forming a teacher educator identity: Uncertain standards, practice and relationships. Journal of Education for Teaching, 37 (3), 309–323. Faez, F., Karas, M., & Uchihara, T. (2019). Connecting language proficiency to teaching ability: A meta-analysis. Language Teaching Research. https://doi.org/10. 1177/1362168819868667 Gherardi, S. (2009). Community of practice or practices of a community. In S. J. Armstrong & C. V. Fukami (Eds.), The Sage handbook of management learning, education, and development (pp. 514–530). Sage. Hall, L., & Burns, L. (2009). Identity development and mentoring in doctoral education. Harvard Educational Review, 79 (1), 49–70. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

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Loizou, E. (2011). The diverse facets of power in early childhood mentor–student teacher relationships. European Journal of Teacher Education, 34 (4), 373–386. Lunn Brownlee, J., Ferguson, L. E., & Ryan, M. (2017). Changing teachers’ epistemic cognition: A new conceptual framework for epistemic reflexivity. Educational Psychologist, 52(4), 242–252. Malderez, A. (2009). Mentoring. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 259–268). Cambridge University Press. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for trainertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2017). Models of mentoring in language teacher education. Springer. Ojha, L. P., & Acharya, R. (2021). The potential of blogs as discussion forums for developing collaborative writing skills in higher education. In E. Carm, M. Johannesen, B. C. Luitel, L. Øgrim, & P. Phyak (Eds.), Innovative technology and pedagogical shifts in Nepalese higher education (pp. 86–103). Brill. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.), (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world . Teachers College Press. Peercy, M. M., Sharkey, J., Baecher, L., Motha, S., & Varghese, M. (2019). Exploring TESOL teacher educators as learners and reflective scholars: A shared narrative inquiry. TESOL Journal, 10 (4), 1–16. Swennen, A., Jones, K., & Volman, M. (2010). Teacher educators: Their identities, sub-identities and implications for professional development. Professional Development in Education, 36 (1–2), 131–148. Tsui, A. B. M., & Tollefson, J.W. (Eds.) (2007). Language policy, culture and identity in Asian contexts. Lawrence Erlbaum. Ustuk, O., & De Costa, P. I. (2020). Reflection as meta-action: Lesson study and EFL teacher professional development. TESOL Journal . https://doi.org/10.1002/ tesj.531 Walkington, J. (2005). Becoming a teacher: Encouraging development of teacher identity through reflective practice. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 33(1), 53–64. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Cambridge University Press. Williams, J., Ritter, J., & Bullock, S. M. (2012). Understanding the complexity of becoming a teacher educator: Experience, belonging and practice within a professional learning community. Studying Teacher Education, 8(3), 245–260. Yazan, B. (2018). A conceptual framework to understand language teacher identities. Journal of Second Language Teacher Education, 1(1), 21–48. Yuan, R. (2019). A comparative study on language teacher educators’ ideal identities in China: “More than just finding a middle ground.” Journal of Education for Teaching, 45 (2), 186–199.

5 Contradictions in a TESOL Mentoring Programme in Vietnam: Implications for Practice Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen and Thi Lan Anh Tran

Introduction Following recent reforms in English language teacher education over the past two decades, many teacher education programmes around the world have shifted their focus towards an emphasis on school-based learning. A number of researchers (e.g. Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Nguyen, 2017) have examined how pre-service teachers (PSTs) learn in the context of their school-based professional experiences and have repeatedly highlighted the value of mentoring in PSTs’ learning. There is ample evidence that a good mentor and a quality mentoring partnership are central to the success of PSTs’ professional learning experiences. Supported by an effective mentoring programme, PSTs can increase their capacities to tackle the various challenges of teaching. A successful mentorship can also contribute to PSTs’ smooth transition into the profession once they complete their practicum. Mentoring is traditionally understood as the process by which a PST receives support from an expert teacher through guidance and feedback. Yet, H. T. M. Nguyen (B) University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia e-mail: [email protected] T. L. A. Tran University of Languages and International Studies, VNU, Hanoi, Vietnam

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_5

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research has shown that mentoring should not be merely recognised as a one-way, hierarchical relationship whereby the experienced teacher imparts knowledge and/or offers feedback and advice to the novice teacher (Ellis et al., 2020). There is growing empirical evidence of mentoring models incorporating collaboration, collegiality and interaction being successfully implemented in diverse teacher education contexts (Cirocki et al., 2019; Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Nguyen, 2017). In this burgeoning literature on mentoring in TESOL, it has been shown that PSTs may engage in relationships with various others at school, namely university teacher educators, school mentors (SMs), peers, pupils, parents, and other professional staff. These various others are likely to become meaningful sources of learning for PSTs through the exchange of ideas and co-construction of new knowledge. PSTs and engaged stakeholders can share a range of different perspectives, creating meaning through conversation, discussion and dialogue. In this way, it is not an exaggeration to claim that mentoring practices have started to undergo a gradual shift from models of traditional apprenticeship to learning communities, with an emphasis on reciprocal learning for all parties (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020; Warner & Hallman, 2017). Nevertheless, despite considerable efforts in recent decades to enhance the quality of mentoring in teacher education programmes in different ways, there are continuing challenges. Firstly, research has identified miscommunication problems (Tran et al., 2019), which may be due to PSTs and SMs not having a shared understanding of the goals of professional experience. While SMs emphasise preparation of PSTs for real-life classroom situations, some PSTs may enter the practicum with an aim to apply in practice what they have learnt from their teacher education courses (Allen & Wright, 2014; Gan, 2013). Thus, there might be a misalignment between SMs’ requirements and PSTs’ expectations, which can potentially lead to tension. Another possible contradiction may arise between the pedagogical tools used by the subjects of the two systems in the mentoring activity. There might be divergence between the teaching methods PSTs have acquired from university training and those practised by SMs at school (Nguyen, 2017; Yan & He 2010; Yuan, 2016). Some SMs may find it difficult to give consent to PSTs’ pedagogical practices that are different from their traditionally practised methods and techniques (Le, 2014). The third issue emerging in the literature is the inequality in the relationship between SMs and PSTs (Mann & Tang, 2012; Tran et al., 2019; Yan & He, 2010). Some SMs are reported to exercise their power and authority in mentoring practice and take a domineering approach towards the process. This can be seen in PSTs’ overreliance on SMs’ feedback, feedback which

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provides limited support and freedom to experiment with new teaching methods and techniques. Due to unfairness in the relationship, many PSTs experience intense frustration and even fear of losing face (Asención Delaney, 2012). A further contributing factor to the failure of a mentoring programme is the frequently cited lack of mentoring skills among SMs. Research has shown that PSTs are generally paired up with SMs based only on their availability, often on a very ad hoc basis, rather than on their areas of expertise (Nguyen, 2017; Yan & He, 2010). Before undertaking the mentoring responsibility, many SMs are not sufficiently prepared for what and how to mentor PSTs. Without appropriate preparation, the quality of feedback and support from SMs is unlikely to meet expected requirements (Nguyen & Hudson, 2012; Ong’ondo & Borg, 2011). All these issues emphasise the need to enhance the quality of mentoring and further understand mentoring practice in different contexts. With these issues in mind, this chapter reports on a reform initiative in an English language teacher education programme in Vietnam where PSTs were given opportunities to engage with different stakeholders and receive various levels of mentoring support during their professional experience. More specifically, in the absence of much-needed SM support, the PSTs had a peer mentoring component embedded in their practicum to support their learning process.

Theoretical Framework The many challenges experienced in TESOL mentoring programmes reported in the literature are often examined from either the perspectives of PSTs or of SMs alone. However, a lack of attention to contextual elements and different facets of mentoring might give rise to the tensions discussed earlier. Accordingly, it may be appropriate to re-examine TESOL mentoring programmes from a fresh theoretical perspective, such as that provided by cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). CHAT is a theory of professional learning and development which initially emerged from Vygotsky’s (1978) work, subsequently extended and strengthened by Engeström (1987, 2001) and other scholars. Vygotsky’s (1978) theory on individual learning has been developed into a model of a joint activity system, suggesting that activities are realised by goal-directed actions (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). From the perspective of the third generation of CHAT (Engeström, 2001), mentorship in TESOL can be perceived as a professional relationship that consists of a multitude

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of dynamic relations within an activity system, and the reciprocal interactions between the two systems, one of the SM, and one of the PSTs, in its real-life context (Yamagata-Lynch, 2010). In this study, Engeström’s (2001) third-generation model of CHAT was employed to conceptualise a TESOL mentoring joint system (Tran et al., 2019) where SMs and PSTs (subjects) have their own object goals (objects). SMs, in theory, are expected to support PSTs to become classroom-ready teachers, while PSTs desire to become qualified graduate teachers after their participation in the mentoring programme. The two subjects share various mediating tools in the joint process including lesson plans, observation notes, curriculum documents, drawing on knowledge of learners, and knowledge of the target language. They work together in a community where there is interaction between and among a variety of stakeholders such as school leaders, teaching staff, practicum liaison officers, pupils and parents. Their mentoring activities are influenced by cultural, professional, and pedagogical rules and their own expectations for the practicum. Each subject is responsible for specific tasks assigned to them: the PST observes the SM’s teaching, plans the lessons, teaches pupils, and monitors student learning, while the SM can guide PSTs, observe their teaching, give feedback, and assess their performance. Being conceptualised this way, TESOL mentoring can be considered as a multi-faceted, socially embedded practice involving interpersonal and individual levels.

Contradictions in TESOL Mentoring A key principle of CHAT is that change in an activity system is driven by contradictions (Engeström, 1987). Contradictions are defined by Engeström (2001: 137) as ‘the historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems’, and by Kuutti (1996: 34) as ‘a misfit within elements [of an activity system], between them, between different activities, or between different developmental phases of a single activity’. While the term ‘contradictions’ is often used interchangeably with tensions or aggravated problems, contradictions are sources of tensions that trigger individuals’ efforts to ‘initiate innovative attempts to change the activity’ (Kuutti, 1996: 34). However, while contradictions can serve as driving forces for change, they can also become obstacles that might impede learning and development, depending on whether or not they are acknowledged and resolved. In other words, individuals experiencing contradictions in an activity system may not recognise them and consequently not talk about them (Engeström, 2001). As our goal was to understand how PSTs learnt in the mentoring process, we

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were thus interested in identifying the tensions that could arise, with a view to considering how these were solved or left unsolved by the participants.

Context With the objective of becoming qualified teachers, PSTs join a six-week practicum designed to give them experience of high school teaching. All participants in this study took part in a formal mentoring programme which was designed as part of a pre-service teacher education course at a teacher training university in Hanoi. It took place over a 6-week period in the final semester of the fourth year. The aim of the programme was to provide emotional and professional support to the PSTs and to create a community of practice for them to share perspectives during their professional experience at a secondary school. Prior to the practicum, PSTs had completed a variety of courses including English linguistics, cultural studies, and TESOL methodology. Some PSTs had previously taught at language centres; however, most participants participated in this practicum without formal teaching experience, and this was their first experience of teaching large classes. In the practicum, two pre-service EFL teachers were paired with an English-subject SM and a master teacher SM. The English SM was expected to guide the pairs in lesson planning, observe their teaching, and join in brief post-lesson discussions, while the master teacher SM was responsible for classroom management and policy issues. At the end of the practicum, both SMs completed practicum reports for their PSTs. A PST had the right to choose their peer, and both attended a training programme specialising in peer mentoring (Nguyen, 2017) prior to the practicum. During their time at the school, the PSTs supported each other within and beyond the school hours through various means of contact such as face-to-face meetings, emails, and telephone. In this chapter, we report on the findings from two groups of students (Group A and Group B) among the five groups of participants in the larger project. Group A had six members (coded as PST1-PST6), while Group B consisted of five members (coded as PST7-PST11). All PST participants were female. In the larger project, one of the researchers observed the lessons delivered by the PSTs and had informal talks with the teaching staff in the schools, but these data were not used in this chapter. Data for this chapter were collected from post-practicum focus-group interviews and peer mentoring conversations. Two focus group interviews at the end of the practicum with

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each group were conducted using the semi-structured interview protocol. The interviews lasted between 45 to 60 min and focused on the participants’ perceptions about their professional experience and mentoring practice. We also listened to the recordings of ten mentoring conversations between PSTs and SMs that followed lesson observations. For data analysis, a constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was employed for code identification and thematic analysis. For identifying activity systems, the comprehensive eight-step procedure suggested by Yamagata-Lynch (2010) was employed.

Insights Analysis of data from the two focus groups revealed many positive mentoring experiences. As self-acknowledged by the PSTs, these experiences contributed significantly to their learning in the practicum. Our analysis here, however, focuses only on the contradictions or tensions experienced by the PSTs and the extent of the resolutions (if any) undertaken by them. The findings reported in the subsequent sections are organised in the sequence of more to less prevalent tension. Data analysis identified two main contradictions in the joint-activity systems between: 1) subjects and division of labour within the community; and 2) subjects and mediational tools.

Contradiction 1 The first contradiction emerged from the tension between the subjects and the division of labour within the community in the mentoring systems. Three out of 11 PSTs in these two groups of participants described negative reactions towards their SMs’ mentoring dispositions and skills and their inefficient allocation of tasks in the activity of mentoring. The tensions derived from their experiences with both SMs. These PSTs complained that they had not received adequate guidance and feedback and experienced stress and frustration due to an unequal sharing of tasks. There appeared to be no evidence of collaboration with their SMs, as PSTs reported that their SMs did not make time for mentoring them. For example, PST3 claimed that her master teacher SM did not spend sufficient time guiding her and her peers to complete the work. She left them alone to work out solutions when problems occurred, so they, in fact, fulfilled the duties of a master teacher. The feeling of frustration can be felt in her comment about the way PST3 was treated by her SM:

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[…] She assigned me to do a task and never asked me further about it […] She completely handed the responsibilities of a master teacher over to me. She didn’t care. But when things happened, she questioned my abilities as if I could do nothing. (Focus-group interview, PST3, Group A)

The extract highlights the SM’s apparent lack of care and trust, which may have led to PST3 feeling discouraged and stressed while losing confidence in her ability to become a master teacher. To make matters worse, PST3 recounted an incident in which the SM used offensive language to criticise her in the presence of pupils. When things went wrong on a class field trip, the SM shouted at her publicly, which PST3 believed was intended to humiliate her. PST3 perceived her SM’s insulting behaviour as ‘unbearable’. This critical incident suggests that the SM lacked understanding of how to behave in a mentoring relationship. It is also an indicator of PST3’s unequal standing in the relationship, in which she was disregarded and needed to follow the SM’s rules. PST3’s negative mentoring experiences, as reported here, are far from the conception of mentoring as a journey in which the mentor can serve as a moral guide and a source of practical and emotional support. In an effective mentoring relationship, neither party holds power over the other (Awaya et al., 2003). Similarly, PST8 also reported that her English-subject SM did not give full attention to her teaching in observed lessons. For example, she complained about her SM’s unprofessional behaviour in one of the observed lessons: […] When we were teaching, she should be observing us but she didn’t. She was there [theoretically observing], but she spent time marking pupils’ papers. (Focus-group interview, PST8, Group B)

So PST8 did not feel the SM’s mindful companionship. The SM might not have been aware that the PST deserved the right to receive respect by her attentive observation, the right to be supported emotionally through her engaged attendance. As she was marking pupils’ papers while observing, this might suggest the SM considered mentoring as an extra responsibility she had to incorporate into her busy schedule. The tension was aggravated, as PST8 added: She asked us to design this test for her, design this activity, and then send her the test items. In the first week, she asked us to make an e-lesson plan and send to her for comments. But she was so busy…. I felt like I worked for her. (Focus-group interview, PST8, Group B)

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Like PST3, PST8 repeatedly shared feelings of dissatisfaction with the way her SM enacted her mentoring behaviour. The assigning of inappropriate duties resonates with Yan and He’s (2010) study that highlights PSTs being given unsuitable work. Nor was PST8 given regular, timely and critical feedback to help her to improve her teaching. Providing such feedback is a crucial mentor responsibility (Ellis et al., 2020). This lack of quality feedback was particularly unfortunate since, in the absence of the supervision by university mentors, it was potentially the SMs’ feedback that might become a key tool for mediating PST8’s practicum-based learning. When PST8 and other PSTs did not receive such feedback, they had little input for developing their expertise, leading to an unfruitful learning experience for them. This finding echoes that of previous studies in a similar Vietnamese context, where other PSTs expressed dissatisfaction (Nguyen, 2017; Nguyen & Hudson, 2012). The extent to which PSTs resolved this contradiction was a question of great concern to us while analysing the data. However, PSTs clearly recognized the role of peer observation and peer feedback as a crucial source of practical teaching knowledge. Indeed, most PSTs reported positive developmental experiences related to peer mentoring, including the PSTs who faced tensions in their relationships with SMs. For example, since PST6 did not receive quality mentoring from the English-subject SM, she resorted to support from peers. Observing her peers’ lessons frequently in the practicum helped her gain self-confidence in teaching. She was among those who appeared to appreciate the value of peer mentoring most, since she gained little help from any other source. She described her in-depth knowledge of her peer’s class level: Although I don’t share my class with her, but I understand her pupils and she understands mine... I did not teach them [her pupils] but I observed them and so I knew their level. (Focus-group interview, PST6, Group A)

PSTs in general seemingly regarded peer observation and peer feedback sessions as ‘intellectual dialogues’ with their inner selves and with each other, which is an indicator of stimulated reflection and learning from their own practice. For example, PST10 commented: Through observation, I could figure out what I haven’t done well, for example, teaching vocabulary. When I observed my peers, I could see how I could improve in my future teaching. (Focus-group interview, PST10, Group B)

Opportunities for collegial sharing in peer mentoring and gaining emotional support were significant influences for most PSTs, as shown clearly

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in the data. PST8 claimed that meetings with peers involving professional and non-work-related discussions helped her to ‘release stress’ and improved her self-confidence in the face of difficulties during the practicum. From a sociocultural perspective (Engeström, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978), the peer mentoring system had served as a tool to mediate PSTs’ learning, helping them negotiate tensions and contradictions with SMs.

Contradiction 2 The second kind of tension that arose in the mentoring system was between subjects and the tools used for teaching, even though both groups used the same mediating tools. Indeed, data from mentoring conversations suggested that some PSTs and their SMs were at different levels of instructional understanding when discussing lesson objectives, selection of materials and sequences of activities. The different instructional levels explain the contrasting meanings the PSTs and SMs made of the same tools, and triggered tensions in the mentoring system. Below are two examples from the mentoring conversations and focus-group interviews to illustrate these tensions. The first tension occurred with regards to the use of visual aids in the lesson. In one mentoring conversation after a lesson observation, the SM and PST were discussing what and how the pupils learnt in the classroom. While the PST was interested in using different visuals such as PowerPoint slides and pictures to arouse pupils’ interest and draw their attention to the lesson, the SM insisted on using the board as the main pedagogical tool. While acknowledging the benefits of the visuals used by the PST, the SM emphasised the necessity of using the board to organise the lesson content and to guide the pupils in self-directed learning. The two quotes below exemplified the different levels of appropriation of the visual aids as pedagogical tools and how these tools were perceived as ways to assist the learning of the pupils: In today’s lesson, I’m sure there was nothing in pupils’ notebooks. Things such as the name of the unit, the skills of the lesson were not there… nothing. They might have felt very excited in your lesson but then at home what can they retain after today? (Mentoring conversation 1). You needed to ask them to write down the new words, take notes or else they didn’t do it. They were looking very attentively at your slides. There were many new words today but the pupils didn’t take notes. You spent a lot of time preparing the lesson, but was it effective? (Mentoring conversation 1)

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It appears that the SM held the belief that the effectiveness of a lesson was determined by whether or not pupils took notes of key vocabulary items and structures for home revision. Pupils, in this SM’s belief, were seen as highly dependent on the teacher for knowledge gain in the lesson. This belief regarding teaching and learning is somewhat affected by Confucian heritage, which has ‘emphasized dependency and nurture rather than independence’ of students in learning (Sullivan, 2000: 121). In Vietnam, many teachers see language teaching as a knowledge–imparting process (Nguyen, 2009). Another example of this kind of contradiction was recorded in the mentoring conversation in which PST1 and her SM were discussing pedagogical techniques to introduce vocabulary in a reading lesson. In this discussion, the SM and PST disagreed over the sequence of activities and techniques to help pupils learn vocabulary in context. While the SM perceived that it was necessary to let the pupils read the text before requesting them to guess the meanings of the new words, the PST chose to introduce the words in the pre-reading activity. After some disagreement, the SM elicited the purpose of one activity to check if PST1 understood the way it should be sequenced in the lesson. However, in return, the PST insisted that she had followed her sequence as another teacher had recommended it to her. Clearly, the two participants had different resources of knowledge and appropriated them differently in planning and delivering lessons. This tension, however, was conducive for learning as it created an opportunity for the SM and the PST to reflect on the underlying reasons for activity sequence and to see one issue from alternative perspectives. Later, when asked in the focus-group interview, this PST reported that both the PST and SM were more understanding of alternative approaches when it came to vocabulary teaching. More specifically, the PST said: ‘After I followed what she advised me to do in another lesson, she finally told me to take it easy and she turned out to be more flexible’ (PST1, focus-group interview). This evidence shows that willingness to listen and engage in open discussion in the mentoring conversation, despite the emergence of initial tension, could potentially clarify and extend understanding of the other’s use of teaching strategies, and might result in more tolerance and shared appropriation of mediating tools. One noticeable feature of the data analysis was that SMs and PSTs employed textbooks, lesson plans and observation notes as main tools for checking, clarifying, and elaborating on their understanding of the lesson and pupil learning. Textbooks and lesson plans were obviously crucial mediating tools in the mentoring process in this study, as the focus of mentoring conversations was directed towards mentors and mentees’ analysis of lesson objectives, adaptation of practical tasks in the textbook, and assessment of

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student learning. This insight echoes findings in studies by Helgevold et al. (2015) and Ottesen (2008). Observation notes were also found to be an important tool used to facilitate PSTs’ learning in this mentoring context. In focus-group interviews, two PSTs said they were initially unused to the practice of taking detailed lesson notes while observing SMs and peers. However, as time progressed, they reported they learnt to socialise into the school culture and formed the habit of making detailed notes with the assistance of a structured observation sheet. The PSTs acknowledged that taking observation notes and using them to give feedback to peers or responding to SMs’ feedback and comments in mentoring conversations became ‘a professional working habit’ and a way to avoid ‘direct confrontation’, as revealed in a comment by a PST from Group B in the focus-group interview. The utilisation of these mediating tools, consciously used by the SMs and later adopted by the PSTs, appears to have contributed to lessening the impacts of the second tension on the PSTs.

Implications and Conclusion The emergent findings from this study have implications for both policy and practice. As found in the first contradiction, some of the participating PSTs’ comments about their negative experiences with their SMs generally portray the SMs’ dominant role, suggesting unequal relationships between them. In other words, there still exists a traditional division of labour between SMs and PSTs. While we accept that we might never eliminate the unequal power in mentorship in this hierarchical culture, which is dramatically influenced by traditional Confucian cultural values, we highly advocate the reconsideration of the participation of others such as peers, university mentors, and school coordinators in support of the PSTs’ learning teaching process during the practicum. If such others were more involved, this would lead to greater equality in relationships and to deeper teacher learning. The study also revealed that PSTs value the support from their peers. This underlines the critical importance of providing PSTs with the opportunities to learn from other stakeholders during the practicum, which hopefully can re-balance the division of labour. Engaged stakeholders should reach a shared vision of each participant’s roles and responsibilities during professional experience. Awaya et al. (2003) indicate that where there is shared understanding of each party’s roles and responsibilities, the relationship between SMs and PSTs is likely to contribute to experience and wisdom, notwithstanding SMs’ hierarchical positions.

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Unequal power in the mentoring relationship can be partially attributed to SMs’ lack of mentoring skills. This conclusion is supported by findings in the interviews with PSTs and informal talks with the teaching staff. These SMs might not receive official training about the principles and process of mentoring from the university or school before being asked to support PSTs’ professional experience. While some could excel in the mentoring process, others received complaints from PSTs for providing inadequate feedback and not maintaining sufficient interaction with them. This underlines the need for providing quality mentoring skills training for SMs and official recognition for their work in supporting PSTs’ development. One important aspect of mentoring which has been always neglected in mentoring practice in this context is the provision of emotional support. In the current context, evidence shows that PSTs felt discouraged and stressed, and lost confidence in their teaching. The practicum can be the most stressful part of a teacher education programme (Gan, 2013; Vo et al., 2018; Yan & He, 2010), and consequently PSTs are in particular need of emotional support from SMs and peers when they encounter difficulties. While peers are reported to provide excellent emotional support, what PSTs need is a similar level of care from SMs. This can involve empathy with the emotional turbulence that PSTs go through, or more than that, the offer of warm, supportive, face-to-face conversations (Ellis et al., 2020). This finding points to the need for mentor skills training. Numerous studies confirm that trained mentors provide better feedback and sustain higher levels of interaction with PSTs, providing more emotional and professional support than those mentors without training (Paulsen et al., 2015). As suggested in Nguyen (2017), within the Vietnamese context, some of the mentoring training topics such as defining mentoring, considering mentoring support functions, focusing on questioning and listening skills, and conducting mentoring conversations, could be introduced more widely to help equip SMs with necessary skills to support PSTs effectively. In addition to mentor skills training, it would also be beneficial to develop PSTs’ active agency in developing fruitful mentorships during the practicum. Our findings show that one of the causes of the tensions in the activity system is PSTs’ over-dependence on the SMs’ mentoring. Analysis of mentoring conversations in most cases showed that PSTs did not actually respond actively to the SM’s feedback. It can be explained that in the Vietnamese culture, the hierarchical relationship may have limited the interaction, perhaps leading to a less positive mentoring experience and impacting negatively on PSTs’ learning. It is critically important for teacher educators to provide mentee skills training and orientation for PSTs before the practicum.

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Findings also indicate that there is a necessity for the development of a common discourse on PSTs’ learning, as PSTs and SMs had various ways of appropriating their pedagogical tools. Thus, teacher education providers need to continue to work with school leaders and SMs to forge more collaborative and dialogic relationships to extend their understandings of these tools. Before the practicum, these stakeholders should reach a shared view of what constitutes good teaching and effective pupil learning and may agree on shared principles of employing mediating tools in planning and delivering lessons. Tools (e.g. observation notes, visual aids, lesson plans, mentoring conversation protocols) should be co-designed among the different stakeholders to support PSTs’ learning. From a CHAT perspective, PSTs’ and SMs’ activities are motivated by different objects. PSTs crossed the boundaries as they had to enact their teaching in a new context while SMs could only become incidental boundary crossers as they had not received proper training. In order to resolve the complex problems in SMs’ professional experience, PSTs and SMs require knowledge that may be jointly developed by the different stakeholders. In other words, expansive learning requires the expertise of both activity systems. The core standards for teaching in the context of Vietnam should be developed and embedded across the two systems (university and school). Then, it can be used as a common language for all stakeholders in teacher education programmes. Through this study, we have gained insights into prominent contradictions faced by PSTs in the mentoring programme. In the light of CHAT, some strategies, such as providing both SMs and PSTs a comment tool, having shared objects and creating a community of practice, are recommended to potentially help to overcome existing challenges and transform current mentoring practices. Rather than focusing on the perspectives of either SMs or PSTs, we argue that we need to consider the mediated nature of the subject-object relationship in mentoring, the role of extending the learning community, and the vital role of any mediating artefacts for achieving the shared object in the mentoring relationship. Both physical and conceptual mediating tools are areas for professional training and development for both SMs and PST mentees. Further research could explore the extent to which viable strategies suggested here can help make PSTs’ learning teaching more meaningful in the context of TESOL mentoring practice in Vietnam.

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Engagement Priorities • How is the mentoring programme structured in your context? • How does TESOL mentoring in your context appear when viewed through the CHAT framework? • How do any contradictions impact the pre-service teachers’ learning? • What strategies do different stakeholders use in your context to address the kinds of challenges analysed here?

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6 Systematic Informed Reflective Practice: Facilitating Knowledge and Agency Co-construction Through Mentoring Elena Oncevska ˇ Ager

Introduction I started my career as a teacher educator in 2014 in a pre-service English as a foreign language context at a university in North Macedonia (which was formerly part of Yugoslavia in the Eastern Bloc), where I still teach. In my post-observation discussions, I used the only approach I had ever been exposed to: the so called ‘sandwich approach’ (Schwarz, 2013), i.e. presenting negative feedback between two shares of positive feedback. However, researching my own teacher education (TE) practice, I became concerned about the negative effects of my directive supervision (Gebhard, 1984) on my pre-service teachers (PSTs). Specifically, my directive feedback did not always seem to be in line with what the PSTs were ready to work with (Onˇcevska Ager & Wyatt, 2019). Also, the existing power differences appeared to prevent genuine two-way communication to the point of stifling discussion (Onˇcevska Ager, 2020) and, by extension, possibly restricting PST agency. I worried about judgementoring, which has been defined as:

E. Onˇcevska Ager (B) Saints Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_6

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a one-to-one relationship between a relatively inexperienced teacher (the mentee) and a relatively experienced one (the mentor) in which the latter, in revealing too readily and/or too often her/his own judgements on or evaluations of the mentee’s planning and teaching (e.g. through ‘comments’, ‘feedback’, advice, praise, or criticism), compromises the mentoring relationship and its potential benefits. (Hobson & Malderez, 2013: 90)

Such concerns prompted me to seek more mentee-centred alternatives which would afford scope for agentic co-construction of teacher knowledge. So, after introducing the concepts of teacher knowledge and agency, I will discuss how I use Systematic Informed Reflective Practice (Malderez, 2015), a mentoring model which presents a clear departure from judgementoring.

Teacher Knowledge According to Malderez and Wedell (2007), there are three main types of teacher knowledge, the first of which, ‘Knowing About’ (KA), primarily concerns us here. Drawing on Shulman (1987), Malderez and Wedell theorise KA as being comprised of: • subject-specific (content) knowledge • general pedagogical knowledge, which includes cross-subject considerations, e.g. classroom management, assessment • pedagogical content knowledge, which refers to subject-specific teaching techniques • curriculum knowledge • knowledge of learners and their characteristics • knowledge of educational context (from broad, system-wide, to narrow, e.g. school considerations) • knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values, including their historical and philosophical underpinning. In this chapter, by ‘teacher knowledge’, I mean KA, because this tends to be the kind of knowledge that gets co-constructed in the context of postobservation discussions. Malderez and Wedell (2007) conceptualise KA as feeding into Knowing How (KH), i.e. the practical use of specific teaching strategies to create opportunities for learning. KA and KH, in turn, are simultaneously employed when teaching becomes ‘automated’, i.e. when responding to contextual demands is effortless and appropriate. This, they term as Knowing To (KT).

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Agency Agency is broadly defined as the ability to initiate and guide one’s own actions and interactions with others (Bandura, 2006). However, developing learner agency, i.e. giving over control to learners, can prove to be a challenge, particularly for PSTs in the context of maintaining classroom discipline, which often means limiting learner control. Agency can manifest itself not only by constructive membership of a community of practice, but also by resisting dominant narratives—hence the threat to classroom discipline (Rainio, 2008). Rainio (2008) theorises several types of agency, or, as she terms them, individual learner initiative, as operationalised in the context of a primary role-playing Playworld activity. The following types of learner initiative appear relevant to TE: • constructive, as in suggesting new directions for the group to pursue • supportive, as in building on others’ contributions and • resistant, as in challenging the existing social structure in the classroom by testing or teasing those that may hold higher position. Rainio (2008) suggests that student resistance can be seen as an act of creativity and has the potential to positively impact classroom dynamics. The group also has power to shape agency. Lipponen and Kumpulainen (2011: 813) argue that it is through dialogue that agency is constructed, contested, negotiated and re-negotiated. They write about relational agency, i.e. the ability to use others’ support and offer support to others. Agency, therefore, seems to be multifaceted, relational and, arguably, learnable. Teacher agency is not dissimilar in nature to learner agency. It refers to teachers’ ability to initiate and control their behaviour and interactions with learners in order to maximise learning in the classroom (Pyhältö et al., cited in Schoon, 2018). If teachers are to act as agentic practitioners, capable of supporting the development of their learners’ agency while nurturing their own professional agency, teacher agency would ideally be promoted in TE in the context of co-constructing teacher knowledge, be it KA, KH and/or KT.

Context After reviewing emancipatory mentoring frameworks, e.g. Nguyen’s (2017) work on peer mentoring, to help me move away from directive mentoring

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while promoting teacher knowledge and agency, I settled on Systematic Informed Reflective Practice (SIRP) (Malderez, 2015). This mentoring model is designed to take teachers on a five-step journey of systematic reflection, which relies on the skill of noticing (Mason, 2002), in one-to-one in-service contexts. However, it can be used in various TE contexts for fostering informed reflective practice. To provide more information on my TE context before introducing SIRP: • My PSTs are in their final two (out of 8) semesters of their undergraduate TE programme. • Each semester, groups of 10–15 PSTs observe 4–5 lessons taught by practising primary or secondary English language teachers before teaching 7–8 lessons in the same classes. The PSTs’ lessons are typically shared with peers due to the limited number of practicum hours per semester (one per week) and the large number of PSTs in a group. This results in each student observing around 12 45-min lessons delivered by school-based EFL teachers and by peers, and teaching one shared lesson per semester. • Each classroom observation session is followed by a 45-min discussion, following the structure of SIRP. Scarcity of time and TE support for PSTs makes this a challenging context in which to support PST learning, as has been documented in Onˇcevska Ager and Wyatt (2019). SIRP is reminiscent of Kolb’s model of experiential learning (1984) in that it foregrounds the importance of engaging in and reflecting on concrete experiences and anchoring them in relevant theories so as to be used for practical decision-making. SIRP’s five-step structure, therefore, gets teachers to: 1. Review a salient classroom episode, e.g. problem, success, puzzle, by describing it in factual terms, e.g. What stood out for you in the lesson? 2. List as many explanations as possible for the episode described in Step 1, e.g. How can you understand this? 3. Reflect on the literature and/or other contextual information to understand the episode better, e.g. What have others said/written on the topic? Think of any ‘theories’ suggested in books, articles, talks, conversations with trusted others, etc. What do you know about the context, e.g. student(s), class, school in question? 4. Decide on the most likely reason for the episode taking place, e.g. What is the most likely explanation? Use your reflections from Steps 2 and 3 to make an informed guess.

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5. Reflect on the implications of the five-step exercise, e.g. Assuming your Step 4 explanation is correct, think about what it means for: (a) your future teaching, (b) your learners and/or their learning, (c) your future learning as a teacher and (d) any other aspect(s) of your professional/personal life. As early as in Step 1, SIRP puts mentees centre stage: mentees are encouraged to notice for themselves (Mason, 2002) rather than the mentor noticing for them, as is often the case with the ‘positive–negative-positive feedback sandwich’. Step 2 gets mentees to reflect on multiple reasons for Step 1 taking place, thus discouraging them from making hasty conclusions on the basis of limited data. Step 3 gets mentees to link their KA to practical classroom situations. This is where mentees may need support, as they typically struggle to link what was discussed in previous theoretical modules to what they observe in the classroom. This is also an opportunity for the mentor to introduce relevant literature that the mentees may not be familiar with and/or point the mentees to specific resources. At Step 4, mentees formulate informed assumptions, and at Step 5 they sketch future development avenues. My discussion sessions are often too short to contain a full, 5-step SIRP cycle; time usually runs out after Steps 3 or 4, and PSTs are encouraged to finish reflecting in their own time on the basis of the ideas shared thus far. This by no means represents a problem, because Steps 4 and 5 typically lend themselves more to individual work: after group brainstorming, PSTs formulate their own informed assumptions and then reflect on their future development. The discussions are useful preparation for my PSTs to write several individual SIRP reflections during the semester as compulsory course work. This is another use of a model which was originally designed for mentoring in real time. I have found that giving PSTs more, and varied, opportunities to use SIRP helps them perform better in our spoken discussions and develop useful reflection habits. SIRP was originally designed to feature a mentor who mainly listens and guides a mentee’s reflection, offering any support if and when needed. However, my resource-scarce TE context means that I need to work with groups of PSTs whose learning requires scaffolding in various ways and within a very limited timeframe. Therefore, I cannot afford to only act as a discussion moderator; to pace the scaffolding, I join in as a discussion participant from Step 2, when I feel the discussion needs it, e.g. to challenge my PSTs’ assumptions about education, which can be constrained by their apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975). This willingness to intervene is in line with my ideological stance that education has a duty to interrogate the status

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quo in society. I therefore take on the devil’s advocate role when appropriate and to a degree that a learner group is able to work with it. I make my groups aware of this. I therefore mainly adopt the ‘educator’ mentor role, scaffolding my PSTs’ learning (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). However, I also assume the ‘supporter’ mentor role in attempting to provide safe, agencypromoting learning spaces where PSTs can test ideas and vent emotions. PSTs who may be less willing to participate actively in group discussions are encouraged to engage more in individual, written SIRP reflections, on which I comment, triggering written exchanges. Moreover, I am available in my pastoral capacity. However, my other role, arguably less conducive to PST learning, is that of module assessor.

Insights In this section, I use transcribed excerpts from a discussion session with a group of 10 PSTs to explore the affordances for KA and agency coconstruction of my adapted use of SIRP. This is a group that I had previously taught academic writing, which allowed us to develop positive group dynamics while challenging each other’s arguments freely, often playfully. This prior experience facilitated freer discussion exchanges than might emerge with a group I had not as yet bonded with. With the group’s permission, all our discussion sessions were recorded. Having listened back to all the discussion sessions with this group, I chose to focus on analysing one discussion session which appeared to encapsulate a range of KA/agency-promoting features. Focusing on one discussion session also meant that all excerpts shared the context of one observed lesson, which aids reader navigation. The lesson we discussed was taught by a pair of PSTs (in the transcript pseudonymised as Tim and George) in Grade 8, which corresponds to age 13, and an English language level of A2, according to CEFR. The other PSTs who feature in the discussion excerpts are pseudonymised as Ian, Mia, Isra and Kai. The teenage learners are referred to as ‘learners’; I, the teacher educator, am labelled TEd. I organise the findings according to SIRP’s steps, and then highlight the types of KA and agency that can be identified as being facilitated by the use of SIRP in the analysed discussion. Finally, I discuss my PSTs’ reflective feedback on using SIRP, and my own feedback.

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Step 1: Reviewing a Salient Classroom Episode In Step 1 of the analysed session, PSTs Tim and George, who had taught the lesson, took the floor first, as is typical. As the group was discussing salient moments from the lesson, PST Ian singled out a particularly proficient learner who, talking about sports, used advanced lexis associated with levels B2 and above, such as kayaking and buoyancy vest. The group took Ian up on this and reflected on what else they knew about this specific learner from previous classroom observations. One recalled that in a previous lesson, when learners were asked to write up the introductory page of their imaginary website (presumably a not very challenging task for the learner in question), he completed the task assuming the role of a Russian mafia boss, producing a very elaborate text in accurate, complex and appropriate language (at least at B2), which he read with a convincing Russian accent, evoking humour in the class for both its content and delivery. During another lesson, he was heard casually swearing aloud in class. Intrigued by this, by now rather intricate, profile of a proficient, initiativetaking and apparently rebellious learner (given his readiness to swear in class), Ian posed the following puzzle to the group: ‘How do you get to be like that? That’s interesting.’ This is an instance of constructive initiative on the part of Ian: he identifies a theme (the talented/initiative-taking/rebellious learner) in the group’s discussion and suggests that the group explore it further, which the group, indeed, chose to do. We then went on to speculate about how we can account for such agentic learner behaviour.

Step 2: Listing as Many Explanations as Possible As the discussion progressed with personal, family, education and peer environment factors being discussed as potentially driving learners’ agentic behaviour, the PSTs spontaneously added more Step 1 observations from the lesson which supported the same theme: that of learners venturing beyond formal class expectations/rules. For instance, the group noticed another learner briefly using their phone during the lesson, despite an existing no-phone class rule. Acting at this stage as a group participant, I suggested that rebellious behaviour in education can be more usefully considered as a symptom, rather than as a problem in itself. I argued that it can even be seen as a creative act of taking the initiative to provide feedback on what goes on in the classroom, rather than, for example, simply acting as one is instructed:

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TEd: Again, I see it as an act of being creative, you know… pushing the limits of the system. I suppose all of us, citizens, should be doing that all the time. We do that, I suppose, with regard to the government – we try to keep them in check… because we want the system to function better, right? I do believe that if a system is strong, [it] can do with any kind of challenge, so it’s our responsibility as citizens to continue to challenge the systems… to help them improve. So, if there’s a system in place, I would always welcome people who challenge it Ian: If you pressure something too much, you’ll break it. […] There’s a difference between non-conformism and creativity. Those two things are not synonymous TEd: They don’t have to be Ian: Just in this context… this is more non-conformism to me TEd: Yeah, but again… what can you [possibly] do to this system… There is this no-phone policy, OK? A student is challenging it. Can it crush the policy? I don’t think it can do anything to the policy, but it’s a statement. It questions the […] system. […] Ian [scoffing]: Does education need this kind of challenge? TEd: Of course! It’s a sign of life: you’re not a robot, doing whatever the system tells you You question the system, you push the limits, you say that you don’t agree with the system Kai: It’s a sign that students are bored! TEd: And it should be possible [to push the limits in the classroom] Ian: What do we [teachers] do with it [such contributions]?

Ian demonstrates resistant initiative when he questions the necessity for system challenges in education (line 15) and creativity as a label for such behaviour (lines 8–9). Following my argumentation and Kai’s supportive initiative in line 18 (that such ‘challenges’ could also be interpreted as a sign of learner boredom), Ian’s initiative changes to constructive in line 20: how can teachers work with such learner content? Ian’s initially resistant initiative suggests that he feels free to question content he is not convinced by, regardless of what source of power it comes from. It can be argued that exercising such freedom has potential to prevent or limit directive mentoring. The discussion continues with me suggesting that teachers can use any such content volunteered by learners to inform their teaching. This is followed by Mia joining in to reflect on what constitutes good challenge in professional contexts:

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TEd: If you care about the system enough, then you’d genuinely welcome criticism so as to improve it, wouldn’t you? Mia: Yeah, of course! TEd: Imagine you have a [commercial] company. You know your company is not perfect, you want to improve it, you welcome all kinds of feedback, including feedback by doing… by people pushing their limits. […] That’s wonderfully constructive, isn’t it? Mia: It depends on what the criticism is like. [Silence] If a person tells me and gives good argumentation about why the system is wrong, that’s really good. That’s good criticism But if a person talks on their phone in the class, I don’t think that’s good criticism TE: Why not? Mia: What kind of criticism is that? [Unclear] TEd: That’s a message. That they might have different needs, they might need something else Isn’t that a reason enough for you to dig deeper to find out what the issue is? They might have had a family emergency – you don’t know! We don’t know the background to their behaviour Isra: Then, you go out of the door [to take/make the phone call] [Overlapping voices of multiple students] TEd: Not if you’re upset, Isra. Not if you have this mad emergency… no, you don’t Sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, we behave in weird ways. And that’s fine. We can’t know everyone’s background to be able to judge

Mia displays constructive agency in lines 27–29, attempting to draw a line between good and bad feedback, without, however, being able to explain why she considers breaking classroom rules to be inferior student feedback to any other. This results in an instance of resistant initiative in line 31: ‘What kind of criticism is that?’ In response, I build on Kai’s suggestion that such learner behaviour might be a signal for the teacher that the learner is bored (line 18), adding other potential reasons for learners behaving atypically (e.g. family issues) and highlighting the importance of teachers investigating atypical learner behaviour rather than stigmatising it. When Isra joins in with another resistant initiative, which elicits animated response in the PST group (lines 36–37), I go on to foreground once again the importance of context in education.

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To what turned into a long Step 2 discussion, Kai adds another Step 1 perspective to the theme of learners challenging existing classroom norms: 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Kai: I have one more thing with regard to pushing the limits. When it came to the last task, when they [the PSTs] said: Work in pairs, two of the girls said: Can we work in a group of four? […] And could [Another learner’s name] [join us] so we can be five? […] They created their own rules in a way, I would say. The initial rule was: Work in pairs. Then they decided to take a step forward: Can we work together, the four of us? And [then]: Teacher, can she come, too, [so we can work as a group of] five? TEd: OK, it’s [also an instance of students] creatively pushing their limits [in the group] Kai: Yeah [the learners wanted to check]: how far can we go? TEd: This is that moment of: I’m going to check my status with this teacher… how far can I go? […] And, when you have your own classes, you’ll see this on a more regular basis, you know… People trying to find [out what] power they possess in this little community Tim: That means they feel comfortable working with those students, so why not let them? TEd: Yeah, sure, and they did, George did, they did work together [as a group of four, but not as a group of five]. Kai is saying that while they might have [had] their request granted, they might push for more. And that might have implications for your group dynamics Ian: So, what if they were creative enough to work together? [Probably meaning, to disobey the teacher, because working in a group of five was not accepted] TEd: They were [creative] by suggesting… That’s a creative thing to suggest, but it’s the teacher’s right to suggest that there might be a limit Ian: Excluding a student from a class is also a limit TEd: Sure, but he, George, didn’t [do that]

Kai’s contribution is another example of constructive initiative. By providing another illustration of learner agency, she brings up issues of group dynamics: how welcoming should a teacher be to learner initiative, especially if learners seek further concessions? This motivates Tim to join with some supportive initiative, suggesting another way to interpret the learners’ proposal to work in a bigger group: the learners might have been driven

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by the prospect of working together, rather than necessarily aiming to challenge the teacher (line 52). Ian goes on to suggest, in a resistant manner, that instead of teachers celebrating learner initiative, they might want to consider sanctioning it (line 60). This might point to experiences of apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975), as asking learners to leave the class is a relatively common classroom management ploy in the local educational system. Trying to stir the discussion back to Ian’s earlier question about how teachers can use such information volunteered by learners, I explain: TEd: […] To me, using the phone [in class] is [similar to] ‘Can we work in a group of 5?’ It’s behaviour that suggests overreaching, pushing the limits. And then you [the teacher] decide ‘No, I’m not going to have that… That’s not on in this classroom.’ […] I’m not suggesting that such [learner] behaviour is [necessarily] fine. I’m just happy to see people overreaching. That’s creative. That means that they feel alive, that they don’t feel stifled […] in my class. And then, what I do with that liveliness is a different thing. I might have… very strict […] rules. I might not. It depends […] on the class maturity.

Step 3: Reflecting on the Literature and/or Other Contextual Information The transition to Step 3 was facilitated by another constructive initiative by Mia (line 62 below) geared at understanding learners’ seemingly unmotivated disruptive behaviour. This takes us to Step 3, where we reflect on how the literature can help us make sense of Step 1. I bring in Glasser’s (1990) Basic Psychological Needs as having the potential to account for atypical learner behaviour: 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Mia: What if a student is disobedient and breaking the rules… just because? [One ST chuckles] TEd: That’s again a signal. That’s […] a symptom of… you know, a need. They might have a need [that’s not being met]. [TE shows Glasser’s basic psychological needs illustrated: Survival, Belonging, Power, Freedom, Fun]. People’s behaviour sometimes… […] might be a symptom of one of these needs [as theorised by Glasser] not being met. For instance, if someone feels that they don’t belong […] in this classroom… the whole class just sees them as a… Mia: As an outcast (continued)

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(continued) 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

TEd: An outcast of some kind. That might create this rebelliousness ‘for no reason’. It might be an attempt to rebel against the class’s rebellion against them. […] So, if someone behaves in a weird way, there must be a reason. […] This [Glasser’s] theory could suggest some sources of [problematic behaviour] and by eliminating some of them, you might [be able to] narrow down your [options]. The best way to find out, I guess, is to get in touch… to talk to them [learners], to see how you could help. And this might be a process, but it’s worth undertaking if the prospect of this prolonged disruptive behaviour really upsets you

This monologue on the part of TEd, which may take place when the group struggles to make links between what was observed and what the literature says, takes us to the end of our 45-min discussion session. The reader might wonder why the teacher educator features prominently elsewhere in the excerpts. This is because some types of initiative (e.g. resistant) were difficult to identify in PST-PST exchanges, perhaps due to the PSTs not necessarily having the resources to challenge each other’s apprenticeship of observation or choosing to maintain face and/or group harmony. Because of the animated group discussion, we were only able to do the first three steps of SIRP, which still gives a flavour of the kinds of support for KA and agency co-construction that this model affords. Later in the chapter, I discuss the benefits of Steps 4 and 5 through the prism of my experience using SIRP.

Summary of the Types of Initiative and KA Illustrated in Steps 1–3 This discussion session provided a forum for PST agency work (constructive, supportive and resistant initiatives) with regard to initiating and guiding the discussion (Rainio, 2008). The excerpts also feature a recurring theme of relational agency (Lipponen & Kumpulainen, 2011), with the discussion participants giving and using support to co-construct each other’s KA (Malderez & Wedell, 2007). Table 6.1 provides a summary of PSTs’ initiative and KA moves. It is interesting to observe some PSTs (e.g. Ian and Mia) oscillating between opposing types of agency, while others appear more consistent (e.g. Kai). With regard to KA, the PSTs oscillated between addressing their (a)

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Table 6.1 Types of initiative and KA, and their effects on the discussion PST

Type of initiative

Type of KA

Context of KA

Ian

Constructive

K of learners

Ian

Resistant

K of learners

Kai

Supportive

K of learners

Ian

Constructive

General pedagogical

Mia

Constructive

K of learners

Mia

Resistant

K of learners

Isra

Resistant

Kai

Constructive

General pedagogical General pedagogical

Tim

Supportive

K of learners

Ian

Resistant

Mia

Constructive

General pedagogical K of learners

Understanding talented/rebellious learners Understanding learner challenge in education; Is it an act of creativity? Learner challenge as expression of boredom How can teachers work with learner challenge? What’s (un)acceptable learner feedback? Learner behaviour is unacceptable feedback Teachers to sanction learner challenge How welcoming should a teacher be to learner challenge? Learner challenge needn’t be seen as rebellion Teachers to sanction learner challenge Understanding ‘unmotivated’ disobedience

Contribution to discussion Initiates

Guides

Guides

Initiates

Guides

Guides

Guides Initiates

Guides

Guides Initiates

knowledge of learners and their characteristics and (b) general pedagogical knowledge, specifically classroom management. Such oscillations might be indicative of knowledge- and agency-related developmental processes at work, though further research would be needed to explore this assumption.

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Reflective Notes on SIRP: PST and Teacher Educator Voices SIRP’s KA- and agency-promoting benefits were echoed in the PSTs’ endof-module reflective accounts. Most PSTs reported appreciating the opportunities to reflect in depth on discrete classroom episodes of their choice, i.e. one per discussion session. However, some would prefer discussing multiple critical incidents without necessarily going into much detail with regard to any. While some PSTs reported struggling to identify relevant literature for the topics they were exploring, others were surprised by the potential of the literature to widen their horizons and make them feel ‘less alone’ when writing their individual Five Steps reflection papers. So they were developing the habit of consulting the literature when in doubt, which is an important professional strategy. My experience of using SIRP suggests that it has potential to promote agentic development in teacher educators adopting mentor roles. The unpredictability of each discussion session requires regular following of the developments in teaching and TE, as well as quick thinking, which can result in co-constructing new, sometimes surprising knowledge. Going back to the transcript, my point in Step 2 on the creative nature of rebellious classroom behaviour was an idea that I developed there and then, while interacting with my PSTs. Through challenging my perspective, my PSTs prompted me to test that assumption and read up on the topic, only to learn that student resistance can indeed be conceptualised as a creative endeavour (Rainio, 2008). This adds a new role to the repertoire of mentor roles discussed above: that of (co-)learner.

Implications Providing that the group dynamics not only allow, but also actively encourage the sharing of multiple and at times conflicting perspectives, SIRP can create a forum for a good deal of PST agency work in the process of co-constructing teacher knowledge. With regard to co-constructing KA, the benefits of using SIRP are manifold. SIRP, therefore: • elicits from PSTs the focus of the discussion (Step 1), so the teacher educator can ‘meet’ them where they are ready to learn (Malderez & Wedell, 2007)

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• moves the focus from the PSTs’ teaching onto the learning they are ready to engage in, especially as they do not only discuss their own, but others’ teaching, too • invites PSTs to agentically shape the trajectory of the discussion: PSTs decide how detailed their brainstorming (Step 2) needs to be and if they need any ‘detours’ to develop richer understandings • foregrounds the notion that context is key, i.e. to understand a classroom episode, one needs to be prepared to consider a number of potential explanations for it—the group format provides particular richness for that • highlights the need to suspend judgement (Step 2) until there is sufficient support for making claims (Step 4); Step 2 is especially useful for teacher educators to challenge PSTs’ existing KA so as to consolidate it—a prerequisite for developing more confident KH and more robust KT (Malderez & Wedell, 2007). In order to co-construct their KA, the PSTs were experimenting with various, sometimes conflicting, kinds of agency, individual and relational, to initiate and guide their interactions. Such peer modelling of agency as was illustrated in the discussion exchanges can encourage PSTs to consider engaging in agentic behaviour in and beyond the TE group, whether it is in the context of developing teacher knowledge or other kinds of professional development. The PST group also demonstrated agency in facilitating an almost seamless transition to Step 3. Steps 4 and 5 are no less agencypromoting, even though they may lend themselves less easily to group work: PSTs are invited to arrive at their own informed stance and sketch their individual learning plans, respectively. The analysis of the transcript, however, made visible the difficulty to neatly distinguish between the separate steps, especially in the context of group discussions, which typically abound in perspectives. For instance, Step 1 observations kept coming in during Step 2, which is presumably not something to be avoided as it reflects real life: we often need to go back and forth between framing the issue (Step 1) and deciding on what might have caused it (Step 2) to understand its complexity. So long as the PSTs’ Step 1 contributions are evidence-driven, the likelihood of understanding the issue more fully is greater. In our case, learners ‘pushing the limits’ was understood as a twofaceted phenomenon manifesting itself by either (a) learners taking initiative with regard to their learning, e.g. creating a bigger task challenge for themselves or suggesting alternative grouping, or (b) challenging classroom rules, e.g. using the phone in class or swearing in class. In both cases, learners chose

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not to do as they were told, but to contribute to what goes on in the classroom and how. It is such proactive behaviour that is considered creative in nature (Rainio, 2008).

Conclusions In this chapter, I have illustrated some ways in which using SIRP can facilitate exercising professional agency in the context of developing PSTs’ KA, ranging from constructive membership of a group to resisting dominant group narratives. SIRP’s agency-promoting benefits were also echoed in the PSTs’ reflective accounts, and extended to me, the teacher educator. In challenging my PSTs’ KA, I craft for myself new development pathways, positioning myself as a co-learner. My experience in supporting PSTs with SIRP has suggested that it can be used flexibly in a variety of TE situations, so long as its essence is adhered to: gradual, evidence-driven reflection on a discrete classroom issue to understand it more fully. However, PSTs usually need some time to get used to its systematicity, i.e. focusing on one classroom episode at a time, hypothesising, consulting relevant literature and reaching informed conclusions. Forging links with the literature may be particularly challenging since this requires consolidated KA and an ability to use it flexibly. An issue teacher educators might face with SIRP is that, by choosing to follow the PSTs on their learning trajectories, they might feel that they are denied the chance to push the PSTs to their limits, e.g. by getting them to consider areas that they would not on their own. Going back to my transcripts, the PSTs did not seem ready to consider aspects of learner learning: they appeared to be focused on teacher and learner behaviour. One of the mentor’s tasks, therefore, could be to help guide PSTs’ attention to the learners’ learning, e.g. as part of their work at Step 5, which explicitly features this aspect. Another challenge that might arise when using SIRP is PSTs’ expectations that teacher educators should ‘tell’ them what they noticed and how to improve. Onˇcevska Ager and Wyatt (2019) highlight the risks of judgementoring and the value of promoting PST noticing, with teacher educators ‘meeting’ the PSTs where they are. This is why, at the start of the module, I talked the PSTs through some of the mentor roles I was going to adopt: educator and ‘challenger’, helping them arrive autonomously at and/or revise their informed judgements. I warned my PSTs not to expect the usual praise for and/criticism of their teaching, typical of judgementoring, as it deflects

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from learning and can be detrimental to the group dynamics. We agreed instead we were going to consider any lesson taught, regardless of its outcome, as an experiment in teaching from which to learn in the safety of the group. This is not to say, however, that all emotional content was going to be put aside. In teacher education, cognition cannot be divorced from emotion (how PSTs feel) and motivation (what PSTs need or want) (Korthagen, 2017). The emotional and motivational content of the module was galvanised by the opportunities for PSTs to work with issues they themselves were passionate about, in the knowledge that it was safe to share emotional content, either in the group, in their individual SIRP reflections and/or in conversation with me. It is important to have such alternatives since some PSTs might feel uncomfortable to have their views challenged in front of the group and/or need a more nurturing approach. Moreover, in the future, I would like to vary my use of SIRP to a greater extent, alternating devil’s advocate sessions with sessions in which I take a back seat and only join the group as and when needed, guiding rather than participating in explorations, and sharing any additional comments following the session. This might support greater agency development. Seeing as supporting PST learning is a complex matter and SIRP can be used flexibly to support it, more research would be useful to understand the effects of SIRP on teacher development in other contexts and/or to explore other uses that it may lend itself to.

Engagement Priorities • Considering your own context, how do you support teacher knowledge and agency? • What kinds of teacher knowledge and agency do you find yourself supporting? How can you expand your repertoire? • Would you consider using SIRP in your own context? If so, how would you use it?

References Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180. Gebhard, J. G. (1984). Models of Supervision: Choices. TESOL Quarterly, 18(3), 501–514.

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Hobson, A., & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108. Korthagen, F. (2017). Inconvenient truths about teacher learning: Towards professional development 3.0. Teachers and Teaching, 23, 387–405. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. University of Chicago Press. Lipponen, L., & Kumpulainen, K. (2011). Acting as accountable authors: Creating interactional spaces for agency. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27 , 812–819. Malderez, A., (2015). On mentoring in supporting (English) teacher learning: Where are we now?. In: D. Holló & K. Károly (Eds.), Inspirations in foreign language teaching: Studies in language pedagogy and applied linguistics in honour of Péter Medgyes (pp. 21–32). Pearson Education. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor Courses: A resource book for trainertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Malderez, A., & Wedell, M. (2007). Teaching teachers: Processes and practices. Continuum. Mason, J. (2002). Researching your own practice: The discipline of noticing. Routledge. Nguyen, H.T.M., (2017). Models of mentoring in language teacher education. Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland. Onˇcevska Ager, E., (2020). Power relationships and learning to teach: Insights from discourse analysis. English Studies at the Interface of Disciplines. Skopje, 21–23 March 2019. Onˇcevska Ager, E., & Wyatt, M. (2019). Supporting a pre-service English language teacher’s self-determined development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 78, 106– 116. Rainio, A. P. (2008). From resistance to investment: Examining agency and control in a Playworld activity. Mind, Culture and Activity, 15, 115–140. Schoon, I., (2018). Conceptualising learner agency: A socio-ecological developmental approach. https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/contact/Draft_ Papers_supporting_the_OECD_Learning_Framework_2030.pdf. Accessed 28 January 2021. Schwarz, R., (2013, April 19). The “sandwich approach” undermines your feedback. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2013/04/the-sandwich-approachundermin

7 Learning to Mentor Junior High School Teachers in Japan James M. Hall and Fiona Copland

Introduction Mentors of novice teachers are generally perceived as having a responsibility to improve teaching standards and to ensure that the teacher is adhering to national and school policies, while also listening to the teacher’s concerns and providing support. While carrying out their duties, the mentor will likely observe the teacher’s class and then provide oral feedback. The activity of giving feedback after an observed class—whether in pre-service or in-service education, or in teacher evaluation—is called a post observation feedback conference (POF) (Kobayashi, 2021) in the research literature. The POF is a complex event; Copland and Donaghue (2019) write that such factors as the participants’ expectations, the relationship between the observer and observed, and teacher experience will influence how dialogue develops. In addition, circumstances such as location and time of day play important roles.

J. M. Hall (B) Iwate University, Morioka, Japan e-mail: [email protected] F. Copland University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_7

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Mentor and mentee dialogue within the POF in the Japanese context has not received extensive attention (although see Asada, 2012; Hall, 2020; Yamamura & Okazaki, 2019). In this chapter, we examine the POF in a mentorship relationship in a Junior High School in Japan. We focus specifically on dialogic and monologic talk in the POF because recent scholarship in education in general (e.g. Lefstein & Snell, 2014) and in English language teacher education in particular (Copland & Donaghue, 2021) suggests that dialogic approaches benefit learning in ways that monologic approaches do not. We first reveal common features of dialogic and monologic mentoring practices. Next, we provide an overview of mentorship in Japan. The literature and James’ anecdotal evidence indicate that the POF event is largely monologic. After that, we move on to analyse James’ POFs. His primary challenge was attempting dialogic talk in a context where apprenticeship learning (Asada, 2012) and a large volume of mentor feedback (Yamamura & Okazaki, 2019) are a standard practice in mentorship. Lastly, we offer suggestions to other mentors who must balance maintaining and improving standards with providing support and being collaborative.

Monologism vs. Dialogism It was Bakhtin (1986), a philosopher of language and literary scholar, who, drawing on Socrates, first coined and theorised the terms dialogism and monologism. For Bakhtin, dialogism is the recognition that ‘utterances are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another’ (91). In other words, no utterance exists in isolation: each utterance responds to those which have gone before and those which come after. It is through this interaction between utterances that meaning is created. In contrast, Bakhtin believed monologism represented ‘a discourse in which only one point of view is represented’ (Hays, 2008: 7). Dialogism in pedagogic practices has been influenced by Paulo Freire (Skidmore & Murakami, 2016), a Brazilian academic who was dismissive of what he called the banking model of education in which teachers are considered fonts of knowledge and students empty vessels into which this knowledge is poured, an archetypal monologic approach. Instead, he believed learning and teaching should be considered a social activity, in which students and teachers are co-constructors of knowledge, in an approach he called ‘dialogic pedagogy’ (Freire, 2017). Dialogic pedagogy occurs in the POF event when the mentor and mentee collaboratively develop new understandings of phenomena they have experienced.

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Dialogic approaches to teaching and learning have developed greatly in recent years and can be applied to mentorship (Copland & Donaghue, 2021). Lefstein and Snell (2014) suggest that four specific principles can be used to assess educational discourse for dialogic features: dialogically organized instruction, exploratory talk, accountable talk, and Alexander’s ‘dialogic teaching model’ (Alexander, 2005). Dialogically organised instruction entails asking genuine questions (to which there is no correct answer, e.g. ‘what do you think of Bakhtin’s ideas?’) rather than display questions (which have a correct answer, and one that is known to the mentor, e.g. ‘who was Bakhtin?’). The mentor should also show interest in the mentees’ responses and challenge them to develop their answers and to move ahead with their thinking. Mentors should ‘uptake’ these answers, weaving them into the discussion. In exploratory talk, the participants in the POF listen to and engage with each other’s ideas. Mentees (including those in group situations—Onˇcevska Ager, Chapter 6) learn to listen to and respect the views of others and allow their own opinions to develop and change. Accountable talk, as described by Lefstein and Snell (2014), involves mentees in making logical connections and in reaching reasonable conclusions (Michaels et al., 2008). Alexander’s ‘dialogic model’ is concerned with interactive talk being collective, reciprocal, supportive, cumulative, and purposeful, ‘where questions, answers, feedback… progressively build into coherent and expanding chains of enquiry and understanding’ (Alexander, 2005: 3). In the POF, characteristics such as mentee choice, intermentee talk, an even distribution of turns between mentees and between mentees and mentors, open questions to which there are no clear answers, and an absence of mentor evaluation can all be part of a dialogic approach. This approach also requires mentees to demonstrate comprehension, analytical and evaluation skills. However, according to Kachur and Prendergast (1997), talk is not dialogic merely because it includes these features; talk is dialogic when the mentor uses these features to involve all participants in creating meaning. One way to better understand dialogic practices in mentorship is to compare these practices with a monologic approach. In a monologic approach, knowledge can be considered a product, delivered to the mentee, often through lecturing or through the canonical initiation, response, feedback/evaluation (IRF) pattern of talk (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) (cf Freire’s banking model). The mentor chooses the topic (I), asks a question to check knowledge (I), requests an answer (R) and evaluates it (F). Having provided an overview of dialogism and monologism and how they can play out in developing teachers, we now focus on mentorship in Japan and show how

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one of the authors, James, moved from a monologic to a dialogic approach as a result of reconceptualising the aim of POF talk.

Context Mentorship in Japan In Japan, most novice teachers have only four weeks of on-site experience before entering the profession. The first year of a teacher’s career is considered probationary (Nanbu, 2018), in which they must pass an induction system (shouninshan kenshuu). Nevertheless, despite still undergoing training, novice teachers are often already expected to take on the roles fulfilled by experienced teachers, such as being a homeroom teacher, club coach, or chair of a school committee. During this time, they are mentored by two kinds of supervisors. The first are senior teachers appointed by local boards of education, who are either veteran teachers already placed at the school or retired teachers who work at the school two or three days per week. The senior teacher will provide advice to the novice teacher, team teach, and give formal lectures about all aspects of the profession. The second supervisor is a teacher’s counselor from the board of education who supervises novice teachers throughout the district. This supervisor will occasionally observe a novice teacher’s classes and provide advice. Here, we use the words mentorship and supervision interchangeably as they can be difficult to distinguish in the Japanese context. For example, Yamamura and Okazaki’s (2019) case study of a mentoring senior teacher focuses on the content of the mentor’s feedback and argues that the mentor was encouraging communicative language teaching. It takes for granted that the type of feedback was purely monologic, meaning that this style was likely the norm. Asada (2012) explains that, in the Japanese induction programme, senior teachers usually instruct the mentee on teaching and classroom management techniques based on their own teaching, an approach which he calls apprenticeship learning. Watanabe (2017) highlights that there is no direct translation for ‘reflective practice’ in Japanese, and it is often equated with hansei. Hansei is a kind of talk in which speakers identify their own shortcomings and seek and accept criticism. These studies summarise common approaches to POF in Japan: the novice teacher often identifies his or her own shortcomings and expects to receive some kind of critical feedback as well as suggestions on how to improve, i.e. monologic mentoring. It

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is unlikely that the novice teacher and mentor will reach a mutual conclusion through dialogic talk in the POF. It should be noted that despite the monologic, critical nature of POF talk, a culture of collaboration exists between novice and experienced teachers within schools. According to Ahn (2016), the school staffroom (shokuinshitsu) promotes collegiality; all teachers work in the same room and their desks are grouped by the grade they teach. Younger teachers actively seek advice and support from senior colleagues who teach students in the same grade. In ethnographic research done in elementary schools, Shimahara (1998) has written about how teaching is developed as a craft as teachers form collaborative networks and plan, carry out, and discuss lessons together. However, this collaboration likely does not carry over when the mentor is not a member of the school community. This is the situation in which James found himself.

James’ Ethnographic Research of the POF Event James researched the development trajectories of three novice junior high school English teachers in Japan over the span of 18 months by observing their classes monthly and speaking with them after their classes. His regular job was as a pre-service teacher educator at a local university. In addition to his university lectures, James assisted in supervising student-teachers’ onsite practicums and served as a teachers’ consultant for local schools when requested. Due to James’ regular job, he was expected by the school principals and the teachers themselves to provide evaluative/regulatory feedback to teachers, focusing on what they could do better (Hall, 2017). Most of the POFs were done in the middle of the day directly after a class in whatever room in the school was available as the teachers’ time was limited. James personally felt that he needed time to prepare so he could best nominate issues to discuss, but given the timetable, this was not possible. Although James was a member of the local community and mostly fluent in Japanese, there still existed some linguistic and cultural barriers. The teachers chose to speak in English most of the time but used Japanese to say what they could not express in English. James, following their preference, also spoke in English but frequently switched to Japanese. James remembers often struggling to express himself while searching for an appropriate way to respond or a suitable follow-up question while using a mixture of English and Japanese. The study started mid-way through the teachers’ first year and lasted until the end of their second year.

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The purpose of this study was to examine the POF and specifically the discussion between James and the teachers. Over the span of 18 months, James observed 50 classes for the three teachers and conducted 48 interviews. As indicated above, these discussions were not done under ideal conditions. Van Manen (1991: 64) argues that ‘we need to realize that life is complex, never perfect and that living requires compromise with pragmatism’. Although the circumstances were less than ideal, it should be noted that lack of time to conduct POFs effectively is an issue often identified by researchers in this field (e.g. Copland & Donaghue, 2021). In the next section we focus on his discussions with one of the teachers, Risa. Risa had entered teaching one month after graduating from university with an English teaching license and a major in literature. At the time of the study, Risa’s school had 387 students from Grades 7 to 9, with four homerooms per grade. In both years of the study, Risa taught approximately 16 English lessons (four per homeroom) a week in addition to discharging her daily duties as a homeroom teacher, sports club coach, and school committee chair. Risa’s duties were no different from an experienced teacher.

Insights To gain insights into how James’ mentoring varied and developed, we discuss four extracts from James’ POF meetings with Risa which took place over a year. The first extract occurs after Risa has taught a lesson which included reading aloud (ondoku), a common pedagogical practice in Japanese English classes. Transcription conventions can be found in the Appendix. Extract 1: Monologic Mentoring (October 28, 2013) 1 J Now, zenzen mushi shitemo ok desu [=It is completely ok 2 to ignore me]. This is something I have done with 3 students. My idea came from this book. ((JAMES shows RISA a book on ondoku and a worksheet he has designed. He then demonstrates ways to do ondoku for five minutes.)) 4 J ((After finishing)) Zenzen tsukawanakutemo ii desu [= You do not have to use this] 5 6 R No, it’s very good. ((JAMES gives RISA photocopied pages of the ondoku book.)) (continued)

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(continued) 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

J

R

Konomama tsukatte inai kedo, kore wo yonde, nanika, kore ni motoduite jibun no aideia, iroiro shikou sakugo wo shite, jibun no sutairu ga dekita. [Risa] mo onaji desu [=I do not use this exactly, but I have read this and based on it come up with my own idea, and through some trial and error, make my own style. You can do the same]. Oh, thank you so much. That is useful.

James’ mentoring approach in this extract is monologic. James talks for the majority of the time and does not include Risa in the discussion. Risa, like a good student, listens politely and thanks James for his advice. James is keen to create a respectful relationship with Risa through hedging his advice and telling her it was fine to ignore what he was about to tell her (Line 1). Furthermore, after his five-minute explanation, he told her she did not have to use the idea (Line 4). Nonetheless, this is not a dialogic discussion of how to conduct reading aloud and Risa’s polite ‘thank you so much. That is useful’ could be ambiguous: by complimenting James on the idea, even if she did not intend to use it, Risa prevented James from losing face. A few months later, James went on to observe Risa teach an English lesson in which students had to write about which was better: summer or winter vacation. This was a writing exercise from their textbook. There were approximately 30 students attending, and Risa had requested that James assist her in helping the students with their writing. The writing activity was highly structured: students first wrote a guided outline and then the short essay. In the class, James was surprised by how many students literally did not lift a pen to write without receiving support, encouragement, or orders from the teachers. In the POF conference, James wanted to discuss the students’ unwillingness and whether any measures could be taken in future classes. Extract 2: An Attempt at Collaborative and Interactional Mentorship (December 17, 2013) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

J

R J R J

Challenges of writing classes. One, you mentioned, um, you know, you are by yourself, right, and you have to help all the students. That’s one challenge. What’s another challenge? One of you, many students to help. What would you say is another challenge for doing writing? Maybe I can make them= =Right I can make them= =So I (continued)

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(continued) 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 29

R J R J R J

R J R J R J R J R J R

I /can/ /(xxx)/ I can make them teacher for their -Ah! OK. Oh, so you are already talking solution. Un°. (3) Solution, alright, so … make, like, “A Students” teachers ((James is writing down the solution)). Okay, I see. (…) Okay. What’s another solution? U:n, make a pair of group. And, teach, uh, tell help each other in pair or group. Okay. But, it’s my. It maybe a little noisy. ↓ /Ahhhh./ /Un./ Could be noisy.↓ Un°. Okay, (2) okay. (5). Any, any other, any other possible solutions you can think of? Solutions?° Unnnn. (4) I have no idea.(laughs) Okay. Sorry

James begins this section of talk by asking Risa about the challenges of writing classes (Initiation). James remembers the question being ‘genuine’, in the sense that he was hoping that Risa would provide her own insight, but ‘display’ in that he had already concluded what the challenges were. At line 12, Risa provides an answer (Response), encouraged (or hindered?) by James’ active interactions. James acknowledges Risa’s suggestion at line 13 (Feedback) but does not immediately comment on it. Rather he is surprised that she is able to come up with any kind of solution so quickly (‘oh, so you are already talking solution’). James’ feedback move is drawn out as he comments, writes the suggestion down, and provides positive evaluation of the idea (‘okay’), bringing the first IRF to a close. James then asks for another solution (line 17), to which Risa quickly responds and James positively evaluates. At this point, line 21, there is a shift in the interaction, when Risa takes a turn and provides a negative evaluation of her own suggestion, that peer teaching might result in a noisy class. James verbally acknowledges this idea, and then seems to take it up as a topic when he repeats ‘could be noisy’. Risa agrees. At this point, James has choices: he can either continue with the nominated topic (noise) or he could change the topic. In asking for another solution (line 26), James chooses the latter. Risa seems surprised at being asked for another solution (perhaps at being asked for even more suggestions

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given she has just provided two plausible ideas and because she has nominated a topic for discussion) and states she has ‘no idea’ and apologizes. James had hoped this POF conference would be collaborative, and there is evidence of this in the interaction. He asks questions, seems to take Risa’s answers seriously (e.g. by writing them down) and positively evaluates what she has to say. However, up to line 19, the sequence is canonically IRF and James does not build on Risa’s suggestions or refrain from evaluating them. When Risa provides her own evaluation of the pair work activity at line 21, the IRF pattern breaks down and for a short time there is an opportunity for both James and Risa to pursue the pair work idea and work out how noise could be kept to a minimum perhaps. But this does not happen. Instead, James asks for yet more suggestions and Risa’s response (‘solutions…no idea’) could be interpreted as frustration on her part. The third extract comes from a post observation conference after James had watched Risa teach her new Grade 7 homeroom class at the beginning of the new academic year. There were 33 students there on that day and Risa was being assisted by Charles, her Assistant Language Teacher.1 The dialogue which Risa was to teach is shown below. Basic Dialogue A: Are you a Giants2 fan? B: Yes I am./ No I’m not. I’m not a baseball fan

The lesson was designed to follow a Presentation (Present new language), Practice (Practise the new language), and Production (Use the language in a communicative activity) (i.e. PPP) format. The bulk of the class was supposed to be devoted to the latter two stages. Risa, however, spent 41 minutes (of 50) teaching and practising new vocabulary for the entire textbook chapter, explaining the basic dialogue for the day’s lesson, and drilling the new dialogue. This left no time for the students to practise in pairs or groups, which was the aim of the lesson and which the behaviour of the children— who shouted out answers in English—seemed eager to fulfill. James wanted to understand the rationale behind Risa’s instruction on that day. At the

1

Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs) are non-Japanese instructors who serve as assistants to their licensed Japanese counterparts. 2 The Giants are a professional baseball team in Japan.

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beginning of the conference, James gave Risa an overview of the activities, emphasizing their time allotment. Extract 3 followed on: Extract 3: Towards Dialogism: Listening and Responding to Risa (May 9, 2014) 1 J 2 R 3 J 4 R 5 J 6 R 7 J 8 R 9 J 10 R 11 J 12 R 13 J 14 R 15 J 16 R ((Abbreviated)) 17 J 18 19 R 20 J 21 R 22 J 23 R 24 J 25 R 26 J 27 R 28 J 29 R 30 J 31 R 32 J 33 R 34 J 35 R 36 J 37 R 38 J 39 R

So, yeah, talk to me about today’s class. What happened↓? What happened. Yeah.↓ And what not happened.(laugh) Uh hm. I was planned Uh hm. to do by here. ↑ Uh huh. But I couldn’t maybe I talked too much or (laugh) Ah huh↑ taked too much time to returning, return the = =Uh hm= =return the worksheet. And checking the notes. (laugh) Uh hm. So, hmmm. Where do you think you might have, if you talked too much, where did you talk too much? = = Ah, to, to, ahh, lecture↑ the new grammar↑= =Ah huh, /okay/↓. /uh/°It’s too much explanation. (laugh) Uh huh. = = Cause I think almost, um, so many students already know Uh hm. The grammar↑ Uh hm. So, the expression, so I didn’t have to Uh hm. talk so much. Okay.↑ But, a few people, a few boys Uh hm. are not good at, good at, or (laugh) Uh hm. English↑ Uh hm. Some boy, even can’t read the words, easy words. Oh reAlly↓ Yeah. (continued)

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(continued) 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 51 52 53 54 55 56

J R J R J R J R J R J

Aaahh. ((writing notes)) I see. So, I, I took too much time So, are you saying that a reason why you take so much time, or the /reason/ /yeah, yeah, yeah/ why you think you take a lot of time Um. is because you’re thinking about the two students who don’t understand? Yeah. un° Yes?= =Yes. I see°

In this extract, James’ question, (‘talk to me about today’s class. What happened?’), provides an opening for Risa to select her own topic and provide her own interpretation. While the choice of ‘happened’ may suggest a negative evaluation, Risa’s own comment—‘and what not happened’—also indicates she was not happy with the class. After this initial negotiation, Risa launches into an extended explanation of both her intentions for the class and what played out in practice. James contributes acknowledgement tokens (e.g. ‘uh hm’, ‘I see’). At line 16, Risa seems to end her turn at the floor, and James takes a turn. He asks Risa where she thought she talked too much, picking up on the point she has made and asking her to develop it further. Risa then takes another extended turn in which she suggests she spent too much time explaining the grammar. Apart from providing more acknowledgment tokens, James does not contribute again until line 42. When he does, his question is characteristic of a ‘reflection’ type question (Edge, 2011), ‘so are you saying… the reason why you think you take a lot of time is because you’re thinking about the two students who don’t understand?’. In short, James seems to be taking time to understand the class from Risa’s perspective. The next extract took place 5 months later. Risa had been struggling to teach her homeroom in particular. The primary issue was that a number of boys in Risa’s homeroom seemed to relish behaving badly and annoying her. This made it impossible for her to concentrate on providing an engaging lesson. Before the POF, James recorded in his field notes that he was starting to feel fed up with the boys! The extract follows after James asks Risa how the boys behave in other classes.

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Extract 4: Dialogic Talk (September 26, 2014) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

R J R

J R J R J R J

R J R J R J R J R

((abbreviated)) in other classes [the boys] can listen. They cAn They can listen to the classes and concentrate. And they say they can’t do, but, maybe amaeteiru [=they are spoiled]. Amaeteiru? Yeah. To you? Yeah, I am so, I think, I am not so strict so, Uh hm Da kara, da to omou [=I think that is why]. Yeah they say, so. Well, I see that you do have rules. You dO [give] chuui [= warnings] and things like that. What would you say is the difference between a strict teacher and you? I try to but Uh huh. But they won’t listen. Uh hm. Because, nandarou [=I wonder?], they want to show themselves better good to other teachers. So they want to show their good side or their kinben no gawa [=diligent side]、right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To other teachers. But they don’t want to show it to you. Sotsuzura ga ii to iu ka. [=I guess you can say they have good tactics.]

In this section, rather than only listening, James is more involved. At line 13, he contradicts Risa’s self-evaluation and then asks a challenging question about the difference between ‘a strict teacher’ and Risa, an answer to which there is no easy answer. Risa engages with the question and together James and Risa construct a sophisticated response to the boys’ conduct: that they want to show good behaviour to other teachers but feel free to misbehave with their homeroom teacher, an explanation that is rooted in cultural norms and assumptions. It is interesting that in this section, James and Risa construct their response using both Japanese and English. Risa introduces amaeteiru to explain their behaviour, which seems to give them both the permission to use Japanese, both to oil the conversation (e.g. nandarou—I wonder) and to continue to understand the boys’ behaviour through a Japanese cultural lens. Indeed, James paraphrases Risa in saying the boys want to show their ‘kinben no gawa’ , a personal quality valued at Japanese schools, to other teachers, which Risa readily agrees with.

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Three Different Approaches to POF These four extracts demonstrate three different approaches to POF from the supervisor. The first could be characterized as both monologic and authoritative as James does not provide opportunities for Risa to speak and he is focused on giving Risa his ideas about how to teach reading aloud. A senior teacher passing on an idea to a junior can be considered common in the Japanese mentoring context (Asada’s [2012] apprenticeship model) but, as our analysis suggests, it is unlikely it will have the required effect of improving teacher quality in this case as Risa does not engage with the ideas. Had James taken a more dialogic approach here, for example jointly identifying issues with Risa, it may have been more successful. Edge (2011) argues that a negative outcome of this working style is impotence, as ‘the learner has to accept other people’s way of making sense’ (23), which is what Risa’s apology seems to imply. In the second extract, the collegiate aspect of responding to issues seems to be more apparent. Both James and Risa are engaged in developing solutions to the problem of involving all learners in the writing activity. The extract begins in quite a traditional, monologic way, with James eliciting solutions using the IRF pattern. It has been shown that teachers often begin sections of more dialogic teaching with this more monologic approach in order to ease learners into the discussion before asking more challenging questions or before students begin to self-nominate. In this extract, Risa self-nominates at line 21 countering her own suggestion of doing pair work with a negative evaluation, that the class will be noisy. James, however, does not move forward with it and loses the opportunity to move into a dialogic space with Risa where they co-construct the solution to the problem together. James reflected that he prioritized pursuing his conversational objectives of brainstorming challenges and solutions in teaching writing rather than listening and responding to Risa’s contributions. An overlooked but absolutely essential aspect of dialogic talk is the ability to listen. The third extract seems to be qualitatively different from the other two. There is no evidence of the IRF pattern, and the talk seems to progress according to the norm of adjacency pairs (see Liddicoat, 2007, for a discussion). While this in itself does not indicate dialogism, it is a good start. Risa takes most of the turns and tries to explain to James what went wrong in the class. James listens. He does so actively without trying to take the floor and at the end of Risa’s extended turn he reflects back what he has heard to Risa. Once he has established he has understood Risa, James then asks a question which seems to be a genuine request for information—‘is that

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because you’re thinking about the two students who don’t understand?’. The discussion, therefore, has all the features of dialogic talk. In the fourth extract, turn taking is even and relations between James and Risa respectful. The genuine question from James (‘what do you think is the difference between a strict teacher and you?’) creates a space to discuss this issue in a reasonable and purposeful way, with both James and Risa building on each other’s turns to arrive at a joint understanding. From the data and analyses presented, we contend that the quality of talk in Extracts 3 and 4 is more appropriate for a mentoring relationship that aims to do more than monitor and evaluate teaching. In both these extracts, James allowed Risa to interpret the issues which, according to Edge (2011), can be emancipatory for the teacher. Although Risa was never able fully to resolve her issue with the boys, she never stopped exploring it, and she was able to build a close relationship with her class, because, James surmised, the students knew that they mattered to her. The discussions between James and Risa provided her with a chance to reflect on and learn from her experiences and were invaluable for James himself to learn how to mentor inexperienced teachers (Hall, 2020). The discussion leaves us with two questions: why is James’ mentoring behaviour so different across the extracts, and what are the conditions for dialogic talk in this context?

Implications Although James had 8 years of experience mentoring pre-service and inservice teachers before the data were collected, he had not previously examined his own mentoring practice. He had been apprenticed into the role by colleagues at his university and training had been informal. This consisted of shadowing colleagues at the university (during students’ teaching practicums) and members of the Board of Education (in lesson studies conducted at local schools), who tended to follow the apprenticeship model (Asada, 2012). He had never had the opportunity to discuss how to support teachers in the POF or what he should say. His approach in Extract 1 was typical of the feedback conferences he conducted, in which he provided evaluation of the class and gave advice to the teachers about what they could do better. This was despite the fact that Risa had not indicated that reading aloud was an issue for her, and so from Risa’s perspective, James was likely giving unnecessary advice. A critical moment in his own development came when examining classroom data with Fiona as part of his doctoral study. He realized that the

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POF could be most effective when classroom problems were conceptualized as ‘puzzles’ (Hall, 2017), which both the teacher and mentor could have a role in solving. Fiona suggested reading about dialogic teaching as a sensitizing concept which could help him to work in a different way. Doing so led to a change in James’ talk—from being monologic and authoritative— to being dialogic and reciprocal. This change happened gradually towards the end of the study. However, his understanding of how a mentor’s words impact novice teachers is strongly influential in his current practice, which provides space for teacher-learners to discuss failure and confusion. This does not mean that James has stopped giving direct advice, but he gives much less of it and only when he feels the timing is right. James realized that the benefit of the POF was not producing quick solutions but rather facilitating the process of trying to improve one’s classroom. As Duckworth (2016), the author of Grit, wrote about teacher development: When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee that they won’t. (178)

We recognize that teachers may want and expect to receive advice from mentors and that evaluation will be a key feature of the POF in many contexts (see, for example, Donaghue, 2020). However, if an aim of a POF is also to come to joint understandings of classroom phenomena in order to respond effectively to them, it is also important for the POF to have some elements of dialogic talk. In contexts where POFs have traditionally been an opportunity for mentors to talk to teachers, providing wisdom and drawing on their own experience, we suggest that training in dialogic approaches is developed so that mentors can expand on their feedback repertoires. Dialogic approaches provide the opportunity for both teachers and mentors to learn from classroom practice, enhancing the expertise of both. Surely this is something we can all agree is good practice wherever in the world we find ourselves?

Engagement Priorities • What are the expectations of teachers and mentors of the POF in a context with which you are familiar? How do these expectations shape feedback talk? • Is there a place for both monologic and dialogic approaches in your mentoring context? In what ways?

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• Have you ever recorded yourself ‘doing’ mentoring talk? If yes, how did you analyse it and what did you gain? If no, what do you think you might discover?

Appendix: Transcription Conventions (()) [=] (laugh) (.) (2) = ↑↓ Nihon [] /Hi/ HEY um° (xxx)

Author’s comment Author’s translation A nonverbal sound A pause of less than a second A pause given in seconds A turn follows another without a pause A turn is interrupted Changes in intonation Italics indicates Japanese One word is substituted for another Overlapping utterances Part of an utterance spoken loudly Talk quieter than surrounding speech Unintelligible speech

References Ahn, R. (2016). Japan’s communal approach to teacher induction: Shokuin shitsu as an indispensable nurturing ground for Japanese beginning teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 420–430. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.07.023 Alexander, R. J. (2005). Teaching through dialogue: The first year. Barking and Dagenham Council. Asada, T. (2012). Mentoring novice teachers in Japanese schools. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1, 54–65. https://doi.org/10. 1108/20466851211231620 Copland, F., & Donaghue, H. (2019). Post observation feedback. In S. Walsh & S. Mann (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English language teacher education (pp. 402–416). Routledge. Copland, F., & Donaghue, H. (2021). Analysing discourses in teacher observation feedback conferences. Routledge. Donaghue, H. (2020). Teachers and supervisors negotiating identities of experience and power in feedback talk. Modern Language Journal, 104, 401–417. https:// doi.org/10.1111/modl.12633

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Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverence. Scribner. Edge, J. (2011). The reflexive teacher educator in TESOL. Routledge. Freire, P. (2017). Pedagogy of the oppressed . Penguin. Hall, J. M. (2017). A linguistic ethnography of learning to Teach English at Japanese junior high schools [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Stirling. Hall, J. M. (2020). A self-critique of facilitating dialogic reflective practice with novice teachers. Reflective Practice, 21, 672–685. https://doi.org/10.1080/146 23943.2020.1798920 Hays, C. B. (2008). The Silence of the Wives: Bakhtin’s Monologism and Ezra 7— 10*. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 33, 59–80. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0309089208094460 Kachur, R., & Prendergast, C. (1997). A closer look at authentic interaction: Profiles of teacher-student talk in two classrooms. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), Opening dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. Teachers College Press. Kobayashi, E. (2021). Learning to teach English as a foreign language in Japan: A linguistic ethnographic study of post-observation feedback conferences [Unpublished doctoral thesis]. University of Stirling. Lefstein, A., & Snell, J. (2014). Better than best practice: Developing teaching and learning through dialogue. Routledge. Liddicoat, A. J. (2007). An introduction to conversation analysis. Continuum. Michaels, S., O’Connor, C., & Resnick, L. B. (2008). Deliberative discourse idealized and realized: Accountable talk in the classroom and in civic life. Studies in Philosophy and Education., 27 , 283–297. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-0079071-1 Nanbu, H. (2018). Teacher system. In The Kansai Society for Educational Administration (Ed.), Japanese educational system and administration (pp. 96–108). Toshindo Publishers. Shimahara, N. K. (1998). The Japanese model of professional development: Teaching as craft. Teaching and Teacher Education, 14, 451–462. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/S0742-051X(97)00055-3 Sinclair, J., & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. Oxford University Press. Skidmore, D., & Murakami, K. (2016). Dialogic pedagogy: An introduction (pp. 1– 16). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781783096220-002 van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching. The Althouse Press. Watanabe, A. (2017). Reflective practice as professional development: Experiences of teachers of English in Japan. Multilingual Matters. Yamamura, H., & Okazaki, H. (2019). A qualitative case study on the postobservation feedback in the practicum. Memoirs of the Faculty of Human Development University of Toyama, 14, 73–83. https://doi.org/10.15099/000 19736

8 Reflections on Mentoring In-service English Language Teachers in Oman While Drawing on Malderez and Bodóczky’s ‘Mentor Courses’ Mark Wyatt

Introduction In June 2018, I attended a workshop at an IATEFL Research Special Interest Group conference in Istanbul ‘On Noticing’ given by Angi Malderez for preand in-service language teacher educators and teachers. Angi provided a series of carefully structured practical activities sensitizing participants to the skills needed to observe classrooms from a non-judgemental mentoring perspective. These activities encouraged participants to see events through fresh eyes. Such a perspective is necessary since ‘the mentor’s interpretations and judgements may well be misguided unless they are very conscious of the effects of the context of what they are seeing, as well as the influences of their own background’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 66). At points during the workshop, participants appeared struck by sudden insights as they reflected on Angi’s profound words after engaging not entirely successfully at first with her challenging activities before they were able to see anew. Listening to Angi, I felt like something of an insider as I had used her materials on observing classrooms myself, as had various other colleagues, in the context of an INSET and Mentoring module on a University of Leeds BA TESOL Project in Oman (Atkins, Lamb & Wedell, 2009; Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). Attending Angi’s M. Wyatt (B) Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_8

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workshop in Istanbul reminded me of that module. Moreover, her 2018 workshop participants’ initial struggles to divest themselves of the ‘baggage’ they had brought to the training room with them, which may have blinkered their perspectives before they were able to see clearly, reinforced for me the need for the kind of experiential mentor mentoring that Angi was offering. In many contexts, mentors are offered no support (as in Mann & Tang, 2012), so that they are expected to learn on the job. Furthermore, where formal mentor courses are provided, they tend to be under-researched, both in general (Aspfors & Fransson, 2015), and in English language education (Nguyen, 2017). This is unfortunate, given that mentoring in English language education often fails to provide mentees with adequate support (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5). If mentoring is not working, it would help to know why. Moreover, a concern highlighted by the limited research available is that where formal mentor mentoring is provided, knowledge transmission models, i.e. where input is provided for possible future use, tend to predominate (Wang & Odell, 2002). I would argue that, to have a deeper impact on mentoring practices, mentoring models based on knowledge transformation, rather than knowledge transmission, are required. Appropriate models might include those building the theory-and-practice connection and/or involving collaborative inquiry (Aspfors & Fransson, 2015; Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002), of which I say more below. However, without first-hand experience of having been involved in one, it may be difficult for teacher educators to visualize such a mentor course, notwithstanding the guidance provided by practitioners such as Malderez and Bodóczky (1999) and Smith and Lewis (2018). This concern motivates the current chapter, which focuses on what can be learned from the INSET and Mentoring module I worked on in Oman more than a decade ago (and have drawn upon since in workshops). Based on the work of Angi Malderez, the module (focused on supporting current and future mentors) was taught and co-ordinated, in six of eight Omani summers between 2001 and 2008, by Angi’s colleagues from the University of Leeds. The module was warmly received (Al-Bureikhi et al., 2009; Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). Participating teachers tended to find ‘the experiential and group interactive approach refreshingly different from other modules’, highlighting in feedback that the module was ‘stimulating, enjoyable and relevant to their needs’ (Atkins, 2006: 24). So, a question that may be of interest is: if this mentoring module helped in-service English language teachers to make connections between theory and practice, and engage in collaborative inquiry, how did it do this?

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Context The INSET and Mentoring module that is the focus here was a final year elective on a three-year BA Educational Studies (TESOL) offered by the University of Leeds to diploma-qualified Omani in-service English language teachers working in government schools. The aims of the project included building greater professional expertise in the approximately 900 participating teachers (studying part-time in six successive cohorts over a ten-year period), as the honing of such expertise would enable them to contribute to curriculum renewal (Atkins & Griffiths, 2009). Benefits participating teachers derived from the BA TESOL included the development of more elaborate academic literacies (Green, 2020), deepened practical knowledge and stronger self-efficacy beliefs in curricula areas such as the design of communicative tasks and the use of group work to promote learner engagement (Wyatt, 2010, 2014; Wyatt & Borg, 2011). Such kinds of growth enabled participating teachers to research their own practices in meaningful ways (Wyatt, 2011), with many then continuing to study at postgraduate level (Wedell & Atkins, 2009), and some going on to doctorates. A possible reason for the INSET and Mentoring module’s beneficial impact relates to optimal timing: within the degree programme, the lives of many of the participating teachers, and the developing educational system. With regard to the last of these points first, educational reforms in the late 1990s had seen the introduction of a more learner-centred curriculum phased in gradually to coincide with a school-building programme around the country (Atkins & Griffiths, 2009). In the new system, children started learning English from Grade 1 (rather than from Grade 4, as previously) through games, songs and action rhymes, and now sat in groups (rather than long rows as before) (Wyatt, 2008). Teachers no longer reported directly to inspectors (typically expatriates from North African countries in the twilight of their careers), who sometimes obsessed with instructions in the teacher’s guide being followed to the letter; they now reported instead to newlypromoted (typically young Omani) senior English teachers (SETs), who were based in the same school and had a facilitative role in encouraging reflective practice (Wyatt & Darwish, forthcoming). Various short in-service methodology courses, including a 25-hour orientation course for new SETs, accompanied these changes. During the life of the BA TESOL Project (1999– 2008), many of the participating teachers (then typically in their late twenties or early thirties) were promoted into SET roles. Indeed, at least 230 had made that transition by 2009 (Wedell & Atkins, 2009). Consequently, late in their

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personal journeys through the BA TESOL programme, after having developed their reflective and critical thinking skills over the previous two and a half years, and, in many cases, soon after having moved into SET roles, many participating teachers felt ready for the INSET and Mentoring module. The module was taught in the following way. There were eight 150minute taught sessions over two weeks during the final year summer school, when teachers from different regions came together in the capital, Muscat, or another regional centre, to attend classes. These classes were taught by University of Leeds lecturers, who had flown in for the purpose, working in tandem with (mostly British) regional tutors based in the country (who were employed as part of the BA TESOL Project). At the end of the summer school, the participating teachers would return to their regions, attend day release sessions (typically structured around a lecture, a seminar, and tutorials) once a week for 16 weeks with their regional tutor, and engage in practical assignments while teaching four days per week in their schools. There was only one specific day release session in the semester devoted to supporting the teachers’ work on the INSET and Mentoring module, as their dissertations and other modules also needed to be supported, but in practice there were many one-to-one tutorials. The regional tutor would also visit the teachers in their schools once during the semester to observe a class and discuss it beforehand and afterwards. As Wyatt and Arnold (2012: 221) explain: these observations were not assessed, but provided opportunities for mentoring conversations and the development of relationships characterized by trust… post-lesson discussions were learning, sharing experiences, focused on helping the teachers relate classroom practice to theories encountered on the course and aiming to stimulate reflection, knowledge growth and the ability to handle professional discourse.

To explore the key characteristics of this INSET and Mentoring module that helped to make it transformational, I draw on various resources. These include the tutor’s notes that I was provided with by the university when I last taught the module in 2007 as well as my teaching notes from that and previous years. I also refer to other locally-produced documents (collected between 2002 and 2007), and compare the module materials to activities in Malderez and Bodóczky (1999). Of course, Angi has refined her theoretical ideas since she produced that book, for example in defining ‘judgementoring’ (Hobson & Malderez, 2013) and in developing a systematic informed reflective practice model (Malderez, 2015; Onˇcevska Ager, Chapter 6). The analysis below will consider these developments and others in the field.

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However, a key point that I would emphasize is that the humanistic philosophy underpinning Malderez and Bodóczky (1999), with its emphasis on relationship building and its provision of highly engaging reflective and interpersonal activities, is as relevant to mentoring conversations now as when the book was produced. For example, the mentor adopting a facilitative role to boost motivation, self-confidence, and a sense of autonomy in their mentees (after Smith & Lewis, 2018) or championing peer mentoring (after Nguyen, 2017) will also find much of practical use in Malderez and Bodóczky (1999), as I highlight below. So, from that perspective, the volume is still current.

Insights This section is organised in the following way. I first provide a snapshot of the first session to elucidate the theory-and-practice connection aspects of the mentoring model (Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002) that were embedded in the course. I then elaborate on how participating teachers were helped through the use of this model in developing qualities needed for ‘educator’ and ‘supporter’ mentor roles (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999); the ‘educator’ acts as a sounding board for the articulation of ideas, while the ‘supporter’ is there for the mentee ‘for cathartic reasons’, sometimes providing a shoulder to cry on (4). I next explain how the module assignment supported collaborative inquiry (Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002), and finally consider how benefits were achieved through combining these knowledge transformation models.

Mentoring Through the Theory-and-Practice Connection Model As Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 39) reflect, ‘the first steps on any journey are often the hardest’. This might be particularly so when the mentor mentoring takes place in group settings that present their own challenges regarding the building of relationships and the lowering of the affective filter (Smith & Lewis, 2018). Consequently, to promote vicarious understanding in the reader interested in how this course was set up to negotiate such challenges, I provide a detailed description, below, of the first session (Day 1).

Aim

Encourage positive group dynamics through interaction involving safe self-disclosure

Provide a clear framework for the course

Support goal setting

No.

1

2

3

(continued)

Day 1 commenced with a lead-in activity adapted from Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 64–65) entitled ‘What’s the question?’. Lead-in activities can play a crucial role in mentoring courses, as Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 40) explain, both in supporting group dynamics, for example in ice-breaking, and in ‘awareness raising’. This particular lead-in activity involved participants in choosing which information they would like to share about themselves, i.e. thus permitting safe self-disclosure, and then drawing answers (on coloured card paper) to four possible questions that they could be asked. Participants then moved around the room, asking and answering, i.e. getting to know each other better and practising questioning as a lead-in to subsequent work on honing questioning skills (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 64) With participants relaxed, the next step was to talk through the underlying philosophy of the course. It was explained that the focus would be on personal practical knowledge development and that, rather than there being any pre-determined aim, the aims of the course would depend very much on individual experiences and needs. Participants were then introduced to the practice of recording, reflecting on and interrogating all activities done in class through a grid sheet. This grid sheet included columns for naming the activities and highlighting feelings about them, providing brief descriptions of the procedures followed and speculating on why they had been used. So, it was emphasized that participation would involve active, systematic reviewing, ‘promoting the sharing and development of constructs [and providing opportunities for] practising skills of articulation’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 33). The course outline was then presented Using a journey metaphor, as for example discussed in Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 39), participants were invited to brainstorm why they had chosen the elective and what they hoped to achieve from it. They would have target needs (i.e. relating to destination) and learning needs (i.e. relating to form of transport) to consider, and sentence stems were provided: By the end of this module, I hope… I hope this module includes… Participants developed their ideas individually, then discussed in small groups, with a spokesperson next presenting in plenary, and their ideas were then collated and summarized

Procedure and commentary

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Aim

Raise awareness as to the importance of communication in building positive relationships and achieving goals

No.

4

(continued) Procedure and commentary

(continued)

Participants were introduced to a light-hearted problem situation that could potentially cause conflict. Standing in two rows facing each other across an imaginary blue line, their task was to get the person directly opposite them onto their side of the line. Some pairs would give up, remaining in the same place, while in other pairings, one person would join their interlocutor on the other side or attempt to pull that person gently towards them; some pairs would straddle the line or swap places. This activity led into a short presentation about approaches to resolving conflicts, for, as Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 107) explain, regardless of how generally positive the relationship between mentor and mentee might be, there are still ‘likely to be difficult moments’, for example if the mentor faces any conflict in juggling between ‘educator’ and ‘supporter’ roles. In such a scenario, these authors suggest, the mentor might need to consider the relative importance to them of protecting the relationship or achieving the goal, but ideally securing both through communication. In the face of conflict, it was highlighted that there might be different strategies; so, for example, a ‘teddy bear’ might give in, putting the relationship ahead of the goal, while the ‘shark’ might do the opposite; the ‘tortoise’ might withdraw, with neither party succeeding, while the ‘fox’ might seek a compromise that might satisfy no-one. The ‘owl’, though, would try to help both parties to succeed in fulfilling their goals harmoniously. ‘Owl-like behaviour’, Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 169) explain, which involves talking about the problem openly and negotiating a solution, through which ‘both parties are satisfied’, allowing the relationship to remain intact or grow stronger, ‘is most likely to be needed in mentoring’. During and after this input, participants were encouraged to relate these approaches to conflict resolution in the earlier activity and to their own professional experiences

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Aim

Support theorizing on practice

Encourage reflective feedback

No.

5

6

(continued)

At the end of each of the previous activities, participants had briefly gridded them, recording what had been done. They now considered the purposes of the activities in groups, completing the last column in the grid, before sharing their ideas with other groups. In plenary, there was then a discussion about building on experience to develop personal theories and then relating these personal theories to public theory. Participants were then invited to reflect on some of their personal theories to discuss At the end of the session, participants were asked to anonymously complete reaction slips, considering what they had gained, what had helped or hindered them, any questions they had and how they were feeling. These reaction slips were then collected and analysed by the course tutor before they were examined by participants at the start of the next session

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It should be acknowledged that the reader familiar with humanistic language teaching, well-versed in the use of ice-breakers to lower the affective filter and conversant with ‘loop input’ activities (Woodward, 1991) such as employed in Step 4, might read the description above and think ‘so what?’. I would ask that reader, though, to imagine what the session would be like without all the reflective and interactive activities, i.e. if it was reduced to knowledge transmission in the form of decontextualized input. With the content delivered only through lecture, there would no fostering of group dynamics, no safe self-disclosure, no opportunities to relax and have fun, no awareness-raising and reflection on experience, no sharing of personal theories. Such ingredients are vital, though, if participating teachers’ mentoring knowledge and skills are to be actively constructed by them and related to their real-life professional contexts, which should be the goal (Nguyen, 2017). Through use of a theory-and-practice connection mentoring model, key qualities required in ‘supporter’ as well as ‘educator’ mentoring roles (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999) can be developed, and such development is needed. For example, in this Omani context, teachers had become familiar with their inspectors providing directive rather than collaborative or nondirective feedback and were consequently still in some cases very much learning to reflect on their practice when invited to by their SETs and regional tutors (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012; Wyatt & Darwish, forthcoming), who were thus operating as ‘educating’ mentors; they therefore needed further support in reflecting on their practice and facilitating reflective practice in others. One must remember too that there are worldwide contexts (e.g. Vietnam, see Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5) where school-based mentors do not appear to provide emotional support. So, I will consider briefly how the INSET and Mentoring module prepared participating teachers to assume ‘supporter’ and ‘educator’ mentoring roles. • Active listening was encouraged, for example through an ‘I’m a person who…’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 50–51) activity on Day 2. Working in pairs, participants took it in turns to share information about themselves and have it mirrored back to them: You are a person who… So, this activity, while providing further opportunities for the self-disclosure that is so crucial for the building of trusting relationships, required focused, empathic listening. At the conclusion of the activity there was a discussion about what good listening, from the participants’ perspectives, involves. There were further practical activities on listening behaviour throughout the course, including on the use of welcoming body language (Randall & Thornton, 2001) on Day 7.

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• There were role plays designed to help participants centre mentoring relationships on mentees’ needs, for example ‘Butterflies’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 85–87) on Day 3. In this activity, butterflies needed to convince reluctant caterpillars to join them by becoming butterflies. Through an evocative example of this process failing, the point was made that ‘however well-meaning and energetic a mentor is, inappropriate intervention may do more harm than good’ (85). • There was practical input on supporting reflective practice in a mentee in a non-judgemental way through asking post-lesson discussion questions such as ‘How did you feel?’, ‘How did the lesson go?’, ‘What were you pleased with?’ (Randall & Thornton, 2001: 162) on Days 3 and 5. • There were practical activities highlighting the difficulties of seeing clearly on Day 4, for example a variation of ‘Rabbits and snakes’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 71–75), where readers search a complex picture for all the instances they can find of one creature or the other, but tend to completely miss all the instances of the other, as they were not looking for them. Through these activities, it was highlighted that observers need to acknowledge the ‘baggage’ that they bring to the classroom with them, that their perspectives are blinkered and only ever partial, that if their observations are to inform an ensuing discussion then it is necessary to keep an open mind. • There were real-life observational and interview data of lessons observed and discussed, in the form of videos and transcripts, for participants to analyse on Days 4, 5, 7 and 8. Observational tasks that focused on providing descriptive rather than evaluative feedback, as in ‘I heard, I saw, I noticed’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 76–78), were set. • There was support in planning continuing professional development sessions for teachers on Days 6, 7 and 8. As part of their mentoring work, senior teachers in the Omani context need to plan and facilitate small group development sessions. • Theoretical input was presented throughout in a way that invited participants to connect it to their practice and experience, for example on mentor roles (model, acculturator, sponsor, supporter, and educator) on Day 2; models of teacher education (craft, applied science, and reflective) on Day 3; types of observation (evaluative, training, and developmental) on Day 4; stages of professional development (becoming, growing, and maturing) on Day 5; stages of learning (from noticing to transformative learning) on Day 6.

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As this summary of the content suggests, through adopting the theoryand-practice connection mentoring model to facilitate experiential learning, the course focused on developing key mentor competences, primarily in relation to ‘supporter’ and ‘educator’ roles (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). While engaging in activities designed to help them reflect on, deepen their knowledge of and practise mentoring skills, participating teachers could use the course tutor as a ‘sounding board’ (Nguyen, 2017: 77). There are, however, limitations with a theory-and-practice connection mentoring model. While it can be a highly effective alternative to a knowledge transmission model when working with groups (of 15–20 in this case) of participating teachers (Wang & Odell, 2002), the course tutor employing this model can still be remote from the school contexts where the participating teachers’ mentoring takes place (Nguyen, 2017). Fortunately, though, in this case, the INSET and Mentoring module assignment also allowed for use of the third mentoring model described by Wang and Odell (2002): collaborative inquiry, which, like the theory-and-practice connection mentoring model, aims for knowledge transformation.

Mentoring Through the Collaborative Inquiry Model The collaborative inquiry mentoring model involves participating teachers in focusing on some form of practitioner research in relation to their schoolbased mentoring, while working with their peers and/or accessing support from course tutors (Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002). Opportunities for the use of this model were built into the INSET and Mentoring module assignment design. This assignment required participating teachers to focus on practical tasks in the 16-week semester following the summer school, when they would benefit from regional tutor support while working in their own school contexts. They each needed to develop a mentor development portfolio that consisted of three activities, the first of which, planning, implementing and evaluating a group development session, was compulsory to align with Ministry of Education goals. The five optional activities, of which two were to be selected, included: • reporting on an idea that had been introduced on the course and reflectively developing it; • reviewing literature to deepen understanding of a core concept; • engaging in a reflective cycle in relation to an aspect of their teaching that puzzled them;

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• planning personal development in a particular mentor role; • planning and conducting peer observations with a colleague. Clearly, several of these activities (the workshop, the mentor development task, and the peer observations) involved collaborative interaction with colleagues, while collaborative inquiry in other tasks could be realized through discussions with the regional tutor.

Achieving Benefits Through Combining Knowledge Transformation Mentoring Models As with the theory-and-practice connection model, the collaborative inquiry mentoring model stresses participating teachers’ ‘active construction of mentoring knowledge through the integration of their practical knowledge of teaching and experience of learning, the application of what they have learned in practice, and constant dialogue with teacher educators’ (Wang & Odell, 2002: 529). I would suggest that the effectiveness of the INSET and Mentoring module in Oman was an outcome of blending these two models of mentoring to support knowledge transformation processes. This combination of models supported the development of vital interpersonal skills, which ‘can only become genuine tools in a mentor’s repertoire if repeated practice has made them almost second nature’ (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999: 25). Evidence that the INSET and Mentoring module had an enduring beneficial effect is provided by six graduates reflecting on their experiences of the BA TESOL in Al-Bureikhi et al., 2009). No fewer than four of these six specifically highlighted what they had gained from this particular module. For Moza Al-Bureikhi and Ashraf Darwish, a key gain was the development of interpersonal skills. For Moza, a revelation was learning ‘the importance of cooperating with colleagues’; she indicated she had ‘learnt how to be a good listener and how to deal with different personalities and styles’ (50). Ashraf reported learning how to develop supportive relationships with teachers ‘to enable them to do their jobs more effectively and with a positive attitude’ (56). Regarding course content, Moza reported she gained ‘rich information’ as a SET in ‘planning in-service training through workshops, seminars and peer observation’ (50). Likewise, Zainab Al-Tobi indicated that interactive input on conducting workshops had helped her realize that they ‘should consist of practical activities rather than just theory’ (52). She added: ‘Before studying the module INSET and Mentoring, I was not aware that my work as a mentor should be based on clear principles and I found it particularly useful to verbalize my principles, particularly regarding peer observation’ (53). For

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Sabah Al-Shibli, the module led into her dissertation research, which was focused on supporting the teachers in her school to become more reflective practitioners confident in discussing their lessons in English. She reported now, for example, being better ‘able to use a range of methods to enhance the effectiveness of peer observations’ (52). Further evidence of such growth is provided by Wyatt and Arnold’s (2012) case study of a participating teacher. As these authors report, Maryam reported feeling ‘very positive about her action research experience and about the INSET and Mentoring module, which she “loved” for the “free” way in which she “learned the concepts” and for their relevance to her role’ (227). Maryam had clearly taken the underlying philosophy of the module on-board as she maintained that ‘“enquiry should start from teachers themselves”; [she reiterated that] “the teacher is the one who should have the power and the tools of change in order to develop professional competence”’ (227); in Maryam’s view, ‘mentors were required to help teachers develop reflective tools’ (227). So, evidence from participating teachers suggests that the module fulfilled its goals.

Implications The sceptical reader might nevertheless wonder what there is to learn from a formal mentor course taught more than a decade ago. In response, I would highlight firstly that courses centred on knowledge transformation processes, rather than knowledge transmission, remain seriously underresearched (Aspfors & Fransson, 2015; Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002). Given the need for such courses to tackle ineffective mentoring in different contexts (e.g. Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5), light needs to be cast on transformative mentoring models, such as that employed in this Omani context. Certainly, though, a contemporary mentor course would be refreshed to include up-to-date input, with ideas that were embedded in Malderez and Bodóczky (1999) in an earlier form made more explicit. These authors argue powerfully, for example, that evaluative comments on a lesson are rather useless, in line with a need to avoid practices now labelled as ‘judgementoring’ (Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Malderez and Bodóczky (1999: 97) also argue that mentors have a responsibility to ask challenging questions to ‘delve into the mentee’s knowledge, understandings and beliefs about teaching and learning’ if deep reflection is to be supported. The development by Angi Malderez (2015) of her systematic informed reflective practice

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model (see Onˇcevska Ager, Chapter 6) can be seen as an extension of this insight. Other contemporary work on observing and questioning, e.g. on encouraging a growth mindset through forms of mentor response (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 121), would also be drawn upon in the refreshing of the theory-and-practice connection elements of this mentor course. Regarding the collaborative inquiry elements, attention would be drawn to the transformative potential in mentoring relationships of various forms of practitioner research, including action research (Smith & Lewis, 2018) and exploratory practice (Hanks et al., Chapter 12). If mentoring is to take place at scale (see Borg, Chapter 9, for example), then the designer of the formal mentor course may adopt or blend (somewhere on a continuum) the knowledge transmission and theory-and-practice connection mentoring models. The limited research available suggests that even a knowledge transmission model may be better than no mentor course at all (Nguyen, 2017; Wang & Odell, 2002). However, deep learning would appear to be far more likely if the course is as experiential as possible, as was the case with the course based on Malderez and Bodóczky (1999) analysed here. Certainly, the recollections of participating teachers quoted above suggest that the INSET and Mentoring module had the desired ‘catalytic’ effects (Smith & Lewis, 2018). Such mentor courses need to be carefully attuned to participating teachers’ needs and their contexts. For example, although it may not be successfully introduced everywhere, peer observation (Nguyen, 2017) did appear to work well as a collaborative inquiry mentoring task in this Omani context, as indicated by the words of participating teachers (Al-Bureikhi et al., 2009). When planning such courses, it is crucial to consider the developmental stages of the participating teachers and the roles they are starting to take on in their developing educational systems, as was the case here.

Engagement Priorities • To what extent are mentoring courses in your own context based more on knowledge transformation or knowledge transmission models? • Which theory-and-practice connection activities discussed here could you use in your own context to facilitate practical knowledge growth in ‘educator’ and ‘supporter’ mentoring roles? • How could you incorporate collaborative inquiry activities into a mentor course in your own context?

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References Al-Bureikhi, M. A., Al-Shibli, S. S., Al-Tobi, Z. M., Al-Snaidi, F. S., Darwish, A. S., & Al-Jahdhmy, H. N. (2009). Being a student on the BA Educational Studies (TESOL) Programme: Six graduates’ perspectives. In J. Atkins, M. Lamb, & M. Wedell (Eds.), International collaboration for educational change: The BA project (pp. 48–59). Ministry of Education. Aspfors, J., & Fransson, G. (2015). Research on mentor education for mentors of newly qualified teachers: A qualitative meta-analysis. Teaching and Teacher Education, 48, 75–86. Atkins, J. (2006). BA (TESOL) Project manager’s annual report 2005. Ministry of Education. Atkins, J., & Griffiths, D. (2009) Background to the BA Educational Studies (TESOL) Programme and Project. In J. Atkins, M. Lamb, and M. Wedell (eds.) International collaboration for educational change: The BA project (pp. 1–10). Ministry of Education. Atkins, J., Lamb, M., & Wedell, M. (Eds.). (2009). International collaboration for educational change: The BA project. Ministry of Education. Green, S. (2020). Scaffolding academic literacy with low-level users of English. Palgrave Macmillan. Hobson, A. J., & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108. Malderez, A. (2015). On mentoring in supporting (English) teacher learning: Where are we now? In D. Holló & K. Károly (Eds.), Inspirations in foreign language teaching: Studies in language pedagogy and applied linguistics in honour of Péter Medgyes (pp. 21–32). Pearson Education. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for teachertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Mann, S., & Tang, E. H. H. (2012). The role of mentoring in supporting novice English language teachers in Hong Kong. TESOL Quarterly, 46 (3), 472–495. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2017). Models of mentoring in language teacher education. Springer. Randall, B., & Thornton, M. (2001). Advising and supporting teachers. Cambridge University Press. Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2018). Supporting the professional development of English language teachers: Facilitative mentoring. Routledge. Wang, J., & Odell, S. J. (2002). Mentored learning to teach according to standardsbased reform: A critical review. Review of Educational Research, 72(3), 481–546. Wedell, M., & Atkins, J. (2009). The BA project as an example of large-scale educational change. In J. Atkins, M. Lamb, & M. Wedell (Eds.), International collaboration for educational change: The BA project (pp. 201–211). Ministry of Education.

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Woodward, T. (1991). Models and metaphors in language teacher training. Cambridge University Press. Wyatt, M. (2008). Growth in practical knowledge and teachers’ self-efficacy during an in-service BA (TESOL) programme [Unpublished PhD dissertation]. University of Leeds, UK. Wyatt, M. (2010). An English teacher’s developing self-efficacy beliefs in using groupwork. System, 38(4), 603–613. Wyatt, M. (2011). Teachers researching their own practice. ELT Journal, 65 (4), 417–425. Wyatt, M. (2014). Action research on a teacher education programme. ELT Research, 29, 5–8. Wyatt, M., & Arnold, E. (2012). Video-stimulated recall for mentoring in Omani schools. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1(3), 218– 234. Wyatt, M., & Borg, S. (2011). Development in the practical knowledge of language teachers: A comparative study of three teachers designing and using communicative tasks on an in-service BA TESOL programme in the Middle East. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 5 (3), 233–252. Wyatt, M., & Darwish, A. (forthcoming). Tensions regarding reflective practice in the continuing professional development of language teachers: A case study of an evolving educational system. In Z. Tajeddin & A. Watanabe (Eds.), Teacher reflection: Policies, practices, and impacts. Multilingual matters. https://www.multil ingual-matters.com/page/detail/Teacher-Reflection/?k=9781788921022.

9 Mentoring at Scale in India: The English Language Initiative for Secondary Schools Simon Borg

Introduction The English Language Initiative for Secondary Schools (ELISS) was a four– year teacher development project for government secondary school teachers of English in Maharashtra, a large state in the west of India. The project ran from 2014 to 2017 and was implemented by the British Council in partnership with the Government of Maharashtra. A needs analysis of secondary English lessons in the state (Mody, 2013) had highlighted the prevalence of didactic teaching focused on textbook content with limited opportunities for students to use English purposefully. The educational authorities had thus determined that ELISS should seek to promote more communicative secondary English lessons, with a focus on: • • • •

encouraging teachers and students to use English more widely in class making lessons more interactive, motivating and enjoyable giving more attention to students’ spoken fluency equipping teachers to use a wider range of non–textbook materials.

This chapter is an extended version of the analysis reported in Borg and Parnham (2020).

S. Borg (B) Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_9

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ELISS initially employed a cascade model before switching to mentoring. A group of 420 secondary school teachers were chosen (on the basis of experience, motivation to develop professionally, and English language skills) to become Master Trainers and in each of Years 1 and 2 they received six days of intensive training in communicative language teaching methodology. After each training block, they cascaded five days of ELT workshops to teachers in their districts and over 16,000 teachers received this training. The evaluation results at the end of Year 2 (Parnham & Mukherjee, 2014) were encouraging, but questions were starting to arise about the value of a cascade model. Echoing critiques noted in the literature (see Hayes, 2000; Wedell, 2005), there were doubts, for example, about the quality of the training that was being cascaded, its transformative effects on teaching and learning, and, given its short–term nature, its sustainability as a productive model of teacher development for ELT in Maharashtra. One particular gap that was noted in the cascade model was that there was limited evidence that teachers were enhancing their reflective skills. In response to such concerns, the education authorities were willing to explore an alternative approach to professional development that was more on–going and classroom–based and which could be applied at scale. It was thus agreed that in Years 3 and 4 of ELISS a mentoring model would be introduced. Following a brief comment on some relevant background literature, this chapter describes the preparation for their role that ELISS mentors received before presenting an analysis of the evaluation of the impact of the project. Impact was analysed in terms of participants’ perceptions of the benefits of mentoring as well as through the observation of mentoring sessions and mentees’ lessons. The chapter concludes with a series of recommendations for setting up mentoring projects.

Mentoring The theoretical bases for mentoring as a professional development strategy are reviewed in the Introduction to this volume and a brief overview will suffice here. The value of mentoring has been widely discussed in education generally (Davis, 2014) and in ELT (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). It is the dialogic, collaborative and non–judgemental process through which one teacher (the mentee) receives support from a colleague who is typically (but not necessarily—see Nguyen & Ngo [2017] on peer mentoring) more experienced and/or qualified (the mentor). A wide range of benefits of mentoring for language teachers have been identified (Asención Delaney, 2012), including enhanced reflective skills, deeper understandings of teaching and learning,

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and improved collegial relationships. While often discussed with reference to novice teachers (for example, Mann & Tang, 2012), mentoring is equally valuable in the professional development of experienced practitioners. As illustrated in this volume, mentoring can target specific areas of professional competence (such as the development of research skills), though in teaching it has more conventionally been utilised, as discussed in this chapter, to enhance teachers’ pedagogical competence more generally. Several analyses (for example, Martin et al., 2014) have suggested that professional development is more likely to lead to sustained positive change in teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and practices when it • • • • •

involves teachers in decisions about what they learn fosters collaboration and the sharing of expertise among teachers is situated in schools and classrooms values inquiry and reflection as central professional learning processes is seen as an ongoing process rather than a periodic event.

Against these criteria, mentoring rates well. The focus of mentoring is determined by teachers themselves, which immediately enhances the relevance of the process. It is also clearly a collaborative activity through which the mentor and mentee share, discuss and learn together. Mentoring takes place in schools and is thus an inherently situated form of professional development. Inquiry and reflection (rather than input and knowledge transmission) are also central to mentoring, as teachers are encouraged (with support from their mentor) to critically examine how they teach, why they do so in particular ways, and how their work impacts on students. Finally, mentoring occurs over time, through repeated encounters between the mentor and the mentee and ongoing processes of planning, acting and reflecting by the teacher. It is clear, then, that mentoring incorporates many features which are seen to make professional development for teachers more effective.

Context Mentoring in ELISS As part of their discussions with the educational authorities in Maharashtra, the British Council produced a document (‘ELISS Phase 3 Mentoring Model’) which outlined their conception of mentoring. According to this,

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‘primarily the role of mentors is to work with teachers in order to help them develop as classroom practitioners and support them in their professional development’ (1). The document also noted that ‘the role of a teacher mentor is varied and requires the mentor to be skilled in numerous areas’ (1). Examples of the kinds of activities envisaged for mentors were listed in this document and these included: • • • • •

support and provide feedback to teachers facilitate teacher meetings and clubs deliver INSETTS [in–service workshops] and demo lessons support teachers’ CPD [continuing professional development] be observed by teachers.

In Year 3 of ELISS, the new mentoring model was piloted. Eighty Master Trainers from Years 1 and 2 of the project voluntarily attended a five–day Mentor Skills Course. This was designed and delivered by the British Council and consisted of workshops on the following topics: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What? Who? Why? Roles and goals Action planning, reviewing and reflecting Mentoring relationships Observation, CPD, Teacher Clubs and Reflection.

Workshop 1 introduced mentoring and its importance. Participants engaged in a range of discussion activities and also produced posters which defined key aspects of mentors’ work. The second workshop covered important content relevant to the different roles of mentors and the kinds of activities mentors do. Three stages of mentoring (goal setting, action planning, and reviewing and reflecting) were introduced along with SMART goals. In Workshop 3, the focus was on action planning, reviewing and reflection. Participants were introduced to action planning and the steps involved, together with strategies for helping teachers review and reflect on their plans. Workshop 4 examined mentoring relationships. Important issues such as active listening and building good relationships were covered. Workshop 5 (which spanned the final two and a half days of the course) was about observation and feedback and CPD for teachers, including enabling teachers to take more responsibility for their own professional growth. Following the course, each mentor was allocated up to 15 mentees from amongst teachers who had attended the earlier cascade workshops and who

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worked both in the mentors’ own schools and in other schools in the same district. While this arrangement required mentors to travel around schools, it also meant that a wider range of teachers were able to participate in the project. Most teachers volunteered, though in some cases they were nominated to participate by their school principal. All teachers on the project worked with the same secondary curriculum and, as experienced teachers, mentors were familiar with this curriculum and the quite homogeneous public school system in their districts. While the number of teachers each mentor worked with may seem high, it must be acknowledged that in large–scale projects of this kind tensions often arise between what is theoretically desirable (maximising contact between mentors and teachers) and what educational authorities demand (maximising the number of teachers involved). It was thus decided that 15 teachers per mentor, while involving a larger group of teachers, would still feasibly allow mentors to support their mentees in the ways envisaged. In the final year of ELISS, the mentoring pilot was scaled up to involve the remaining 340 Master Trainers. There were thus a total of 420 mentors working with around 6,300 teachers of English across Maharashtra. Mentors formed a professional learning community via two WhatsApp groups. Mentors’ online interactions in these groups have been discussed in detail elsewhere (Parnham et al., 2018) and are not addressed here. It was recognised from the outset that the extent to which mentoring became effectively embedded in the local education system would depend on certain facilitative conditions, including stakeholder awareness and buy– in, and systemic recognition of and support for mentoring, including the allocation of an appropriate official workload.

Project Evaluation Evaluations took place at the end of Years 3 and 4 in order to examine the following questions: 1. What were mentors’ and mentees’ perceptions of the impact of mentoring on their work? 2. In pre–observation and post–observation meetings with teachers, to what extent did mentors apply effective mentoring skills and strategies? 3. In the observed lessons of mentees, to what extent were they teaching English more communicatively and interactively? 4. What challenges did mentors face in their work?

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To answer these questions, information was collected from various sources. Focus group interviews were conducted (by the author, as an external evaluator) separately with mentors and mentees (keeping the groups separate meant each could talk more freely about their experiences). A total of 90 mentors and 88 mentees contributed to these sessions (in groups of 6–10), which focused on the extent to which, and how, ELISS had impacted on the work of both groups. Written notes of the discussions were made and recurrent themes across the focus groups were extracted through a thematic analysis of these notes. A total of 45 mentoring sessions were also observed by the author and British Council Training Consultants. Written notes were made of how the mentoring session was conducted and these allowed for an analysis of the nature of the interaction between mentors and mentees, including the balance of talk and turn–taking, and the topics covered during the meetings. Observations (by the author and British Council Training Consultants) were also conducted of 30 lessons (approximately 40 minutes each) taught by mentees in six districts. Descriptive notes about what teachers and students did were made and these were subsequently reviewed to identify recurrent features of the lessons observed. Mentors and teachers knew that they would be observed. Although the mentoring sessions generally seemed quite natural, the presence of an observer will have inevitably affected how relaxed or spontaneous the interaction was. It was clear at times, too, that observed lessons had been especially prepared for the occasion. Finally, questionnaires were completed by 166 mentors (a 39.5% response rate) at the end of the project. They were asked for their views on the difference that ELISS had made to their work as mentors and to the work of their mentees. They were also asked about any challenges they had faced during the project.

Insights Perceptions of Impact Mentors and teachers were asked for their views about the impact of mentoring on their work. Their responses were overwhelmingly positive. For example, in Year 3, focus groups with 37 mentors consistently highlighted the collective view that they had become more confident in their ability to support mentees and that they felt more knowledgeable in giving teachers

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advice. A further 53 mentors taking part in focus group discussions in Year 4 also identified many ways in which they had benefited from the project. They said that they: • were more confident as a result of the mentor training they had received • felt mentoring breaks down barriers to observation by making it a more positive experience for teachers • were getting experience of what happens in different schools (when they visit their mentees) • were receiving more recognition in their own schools as a result of being mentors • were learning much about supporting teachers from collaborating with other mentors • had been able to reflect on and develop their own teaching as a result of observing and talking to their mentees. Earlier it was noted that, in response to a needs analysis of secondary ELT in Maharashtra, the educational authorities wanted ELISS to promote communicative language teaching (CLT). During focus group discussions, mentees were asked if they felt the project had made a difference to their work; they were consistently positive in their responses and identified a wide range of impacts ELISS had had on them as teachers, including: • • • • • • •

greater professional confidence in the classroom willingness to use new activities and materials more communicative lessons less traditional teaching (e.g. reduced use of translation) more student–centred lessons increased enjoyment from teaching greater use of English in class.

Mentors and mentees also felt that students were benefiting in several ways from the changes teachers were making to their teaching as a result of mentoring. Student benefits that were repeatedly mentioned were, for example, increased confidence in speaking English, increased motivation to learn English, more positive attitudes, and greater participation during lessons. It must be acknowledged that these are the perceptions of mentors and mentees and no comparative evidence (for example, from before and after the project) was available to verify how students had changed.

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At the end of the project, mentors’ perceptions of impact were assessed more quantitatively (on a scale of high, moderate, low and none) and the figures here were also encouraging: over 82% of 166 mentors said the impact of the project on them had been high while over 97% felt there had been at least moderate impact on their mentees.

Mentoring Practices Observations of mentoring sessions provided evidence that mentors were implementing ideas and strategies promoted during the mentor preparation course, such as asking a range of questions to stimulate mentee reflections and providing constructive feedback. For example, in one meeting where a teacher said she felt the lesson had been effective, the mentor encouraged her to reflect further by asking ‘how do you know that this part was most successful?’ In other observed sessions, teachers were given the chance to comment on the lesson before any feedback from the mentor. Relationships between mentors and mentees were also seen to be consistently good, reflecting key ideas promoted on the Mentoring Skills Course. There were, though, various aspects of the pre– and post–lesson discussions observed which suggested that mentors would have benefited from further opportunities to reflect on and develop their mentoring skills. For example, the discussions were often brief, as in the example from a post–lesson discussion below (M = Mentor, T = Teacher): M: T: M: T: M: T: M: T: M:

Lovely, nice lesson. Thanks What do you think about the lesson? Not very nice. Which things? Student participation, I should have more participation. How? Does not respond . Use pairs or groups more. Give them more time to discuss. Everything went well. You monitored very well. But give chance to some students. Praising and encouraging was very nice. You could use the L1

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to explain vocabulary. Introduction was clear and you monitored nicely. The students were engaged. To take another example, the post–lesson discussion below lasted a minute or so. The mentor went through a series of questions rather mechanically and the teacher gave short answers. This is the entire conversation: M: T: M: T: M: T: M: T: M: T:

What went well in your class? Group activity. What didn’t go well? When they read the passage they needed more time. What will you do? Not do all the activities, just two questions. How do you think you can engage your learners more? More … the activities were enough. We could not hear the audio properly. How can you encourage students more? Some were passive. Next lesson … Role play, one student will take role and present information from text.

Of course, at times post–lesson discussions were hurried because one or both of the mentor and mentee had to get back to class for their next lesson, but it is clear that the developmental potential of such short meetings was rather limited. The same applied to pre–observation meetings: quantitative data collected from 33 mentors indicated that the typical length of these was 3–5 minutes. The observations also highlighted cases where the mentors tended to dominate the discussions and found it difficult to balance speaking and listening to their mentees. This is how one post–lesson session started: M: So madam, very good lesson, very nice lesson. I observed six areas. Your instruction was very clear, very clear … use of time effectively. Lesson was too long (?). Very nice. Teachers’ simple English language. Good. Use Marathi. Ok. Group activity properly monitoring. You guided them very well, very nice. I have some questions. Do you think your lesson is successful? The mentor seemed to be working through a template with pre–defined areas for discussion but the mentee, understandably, did not have much to add to the mentor’s detailed analysis, and the meeting ended soon after.

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Overall, then, observations of mentors at different points of the project suggested that they were aware of and had adopted a range of effective mentoring practices (as defined in the literature and promoted on the mentor training course) such as encouraging dialogic discussion and facilitating teacher reflection. There was also, however, scope for the further development of these, and, in absolute terms, it might be argued that many of the mentoring interactions observed during the project did not reflect theoretical ideals characterised by deep, reflective, mentee–driven encounters. However, it is important to remember that mentoring (including reflection) was a wholly new idea for both the mentors and the teachers they supported. Receiving supportive advice from a fellow teacher was a significant departure from the kinds of evaluative supervision teachers were used to. Given the limited awareness of mentoring that existed prior to ELISS, then, the achievements of the project in enabling mentors and mentees to engage in regular supportive discussions (albeit with varying degrees of reflective quality) were noteworthy.

Mentees’ Lessons Observations of mentees’ English lessons highlighted a number of common features: • • • • • •

group work opportunities for students to speak English teaching aids such as posters and pictures game–like activities limited use of languages other than English by the teacher and students positive rapport between the teacher and students. Notes from one particularly effective lesson illustrate many of these issues: The lesson was in a Standard 9 class with almost 90 students. For the lead– in the students listened to riddles related to local festivals and had to guess which ones were being referred to. Groups were then formed (and benches rearranged) and the first activity was matching words with meanings using cut–ups. Next, students read a text from their books and matched headings to different paragraphs. Then questions were taped onto the walls and students worked in pairs to answer them by reading the text again. The last part of the lesson was discussion in groups of two questions about kite–flying, which was the theme of the text.

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There was clear evidence, then, that mentees were, in line with the goals of the project, making lessons more communicative, interactive and enjoyable. However, it is also clear that while teachers were adopting new techniques and activities, they needed more support in designing coherent lessons which have clear objectives and which support the development of students’ English. Many lessons did, in fact, also have the following characteristics: • a sequence of activities which were not linked in any logical way • activities without any specific focus on the language these might develop or which students needed to complete them • no teacher feedback on the accuracy of students’ language • a focus on learning content (e.g. information in texts) rather than English • reliance on choral responses with limited evidence of teachers nominating specific students to check their understanding • no real group work (so physical groups but no activities that require students to interact or work together). For example, the lesson notes below illustrate the tendency in some of the observed lessons for teachers to equate learning with presence of particular activities, strategies or resources. In this lesson there were charts, group work, audio, and slips of paper for students to manipulate, but the way they were used did not enhance learning. This 50–minute lesson was rather staged. It was conducted in a hall (not a normal classroom) and the teacher addressed students with a microphone (this actually made her hard to understand because it echoed). The teacher wrote the title of the lesson on the board then started with a listening activity. It was not clear what the students were supposed to do and the quality of the audio was also very poor. The teacher then wrote on the board words (e.g. plethora, profound) and meanings and asked the students to match these (these were already listed correctly in their textbooks). Feedback was very brief – doing the activity took less time than it did for the teacher to write the words on the board. Next, students worked in groups and drew a web diagram about ‘serving needy people’, then the teacher took feedback – one idea per group. The teacher now put a poster on the board (the text was too small for anyone to read) and students took it in turns to go to the board and fill in some text in the blank grid on the poster. Students next read the text, then listened to the audio version of it being read out by the teacher (again, very poor–quality sound).

Overall, though, compared to how English was being taught at the start of the project, it was clear that, with the support of their mentors, teachers

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had become more aware of the value of making lessons more communicative, familiar with a range of ways of doing so and willing to try out new activities in class.

Challenges Mentors were also teachers and it had been stipulated that they would get a workload reduction of one day per week for mentoring work. In Year 3, mentors reported that this reduction was not always being provided by school principals. To address this, in Year 4 the Government of Maharashtra issued an official resolution which formalised mentors’ roles, including the associated workload. Nonetheless, at the end of the project, over 57% of mentors reported ongoing difficulties in securing a reduced teaching load. As a consequence, mentors varied in how often they were able to visit their mentees or how long they were able to spend in schools. Not every school visit, therefore, included the full cycle of pre–observation meeting, lesson observation and post–lesson discussion. In fact, at the end of the project, fewer than 30% of the mentors said they always completed all stages of the cycle, and pre– observation meetings were often held over the phone. This is an example of the kind of administrative challenge that can arise on large–scale teacher development projects in complex and often bureaucratic state educational systems. Various other administrative and attitudinal challenges emerged from the evaluation of the project, including the following: • some mentees did not want to be observed • some mentees did not feel they needed to improve their teaching (especially where their students were doing well) • mentees were worried about being assessed by mentors during observations • mentees did not sometimes understand the purpose of mentoring • some mentors felt that visiting their mentees’ schools involved too much travel (for which they incurred costs) • local education authorities were not always aware of or supportive of mentoring. A number of the administrative challenges on the project were related to the pre–conditions for the effective integration of mentoring into the local educational system highlighted earlier. Although the British Council was responsible for the academic side of the mentoring project, it had no control over the educational system more generally and challenges of this kind (such

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as limited interest by head teachers, as discussed below) were thus difficult to address.

Implications for Mentoring Projects ELISS was a large–scale project that took place in a specific ELT context but the insignts presented here have implications for the use of mentoring in ELT professional development more generally. Below are nine suggestions which will be of value to organisations who (irrespective of scale) are considering a mentoring scheme for ELT. 1. The ongoing, collegial, constructive and classroom–based nature of mentoring can provide an appealing alternative to conventional forms of teacher training. In many contexts worldwide, infrequent lectures or workshops are the only form of professional development teachers have access to. Mentoring provides an alternative which, as the results here have illustrated, teachers perceive as valuable in enabling them to enhance their work in the classroom as well as also improving their confidence and motivation. Teachers also believed that, as a result of what they learned through mentoring, students enjoyed English lessons more. 2. It is important to provide initial preparation for mentors. It cannot be assumed that every experienced teacher is ready to become a mentor and it is thus important to consider the attributes that mentors require and to provide initial support to foster the development of these attributes. The literature on mentoring discussed earlier provides much helpful advice in this respect. On ELISS, mentors did clearly benefit from the training they were given in preparation for their new role and there is no doubt that, compared to the start of the project, by its end mentors had developed a much greater awareness of what mentoring is and acquired enhanced mentoring knowledge and skills. 3. Mentor training can be significantly enhanced through the use of concrete examples from the local context. In Year 3 the Mentor Training Skills course was somewhat generic, which was understandable given the lack of localised examples of mentoring to draw on. In Year 4, though, examples of actual mentoring sessions (transcripts, audio or video) could have been built into the course, along with a range of real examples based on mentors’ experiences over the previous year. Mechanisms for capturing such local examples and using them to support mentor development need to be built into projects.

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4. All target areas of mentor competence need to be addressed through initial and ongoing development opportunities. The Mentor Skills Training course covered several key topics relevant to the work that ELISS mentors were expected to do. One area that was not covered, though, was that of workshop design. As part of their role, mentors were expected to organise periodic workshops for teachers and observations of these indicated that designing and delivering workshops were issues mentors needed further support with. Common limitations that were noted in observed workshops were too much content, unclear objectives, and insufficient opportunities for teachers to discuss and draw on their own experiences. Mentoring projects should ensure that either initially or in an on–going manner, mentors receive support for the tasks they are expected to carry out. 5. Ongoing support for mentors’ development is also essential. Although the initial training was beneficial and well–received, ELISS suggests that mentors needed further support to develop higher levels of competence in observing teachers, helping them identify areas for development, and guiding teachers to reflect and act on these. Mentors would have benefited during the project from ongoing opportunities to reflect on and develop their own mentoring practices and it is recommended that professional development initiatives that utilise mentoring consider ways in which such opportunities can be created. For example, peer observation among mentors might be a feasible way for them to continue their own development. Where feasible, technology can be utilised for such a purpose; for example, mentors might audio or video record examples of their pre– and post–lesson discussions, share these (within an ethically sound framework) digitally with other mentors or advisors, and receive feedback on these in writing and/or through online discussion. Overall, outside the formal training provided, ELISS mentors did not have well–defined opportunities for continuing job–based development. 6. Where a strong tradition of observation for teacher evaluation exists, time and support will be needed for teachers and other stakeholders to understand how mentoring is different. In many ELT contexts, teachers are observed only for the purposes of evaluation, and observers are in a position of authority. Mentoring offers a more positive role for teacher observation, including a more collegial observer–observee relationship, but teachers may need time and support to appreciate this. As ELISS showed, initial resistance to being observed by some teachers is to be expected, while others will not adopt a sufficiently active role in their own professional learning and

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defer unquestioningly to their mentor. It is thus important for organisations planning to set up mentoring to take account of existing attitudes to teacher observation and to provide the support teachers and other stakeholders (such as school principals) need to understand the non–evaluative and more collegial role of observation in mentoring. 7. Support for mentoring from educational authorities or organisational leaders will make a big difference to its effectiveness. It is important to identify individuals within an organisation or educational system who have leadership and/or powerful administrative roles and to ensure that they engage positively with mentoring from the outset. ELISS was an official State Education Department project, but the size of Maharashtra meant that local districts retained significant levels of autonomy. At the start of Year 3, orientation sessions for the headteachers from the 80 schools where mentors were based had been organised, but levels of attendance were not high. Headteachers were thus often insufficiently aware of the project and of the processes and purposes of mentoring. For example, some headteachers reportedly joined mentors in class when they were observing mentees and openly criticised the teachers; this created additional stresses for mentees and countered attempts to help them see observation as a positive and non–threatening process. The need to engage leaders and administrators positively is thus another key implication from ELISS which has broader relevance for the implementation of mentoring in ELT. 8. Expectations about how much change can be achieved need to be realistic. Various factors will determine how much change in teachers’ work mentoring can lead to. The quality of mentors, how often they can work with their mentees, teachers’ willingness to engage in the process, and (as just discussed), the degree of systemic support for mentoring, were all influential factors on ELISS. Teachers on the project did make positive changes to their teaching and although there was much room for further development, it would have been unrealistic given the project’s parameters to expect many teachers to achieve radical changes in how they teach. In setting up mentoring, it is important to consider the prevailing conditions and to ensure expectations are set accordingly. Highly skilled mentors who work regularly with motivated teachers in a supportive environment can be expected to achieve more than is possible in a context with less favourable conditions. 9. Impact evaluation is an important part of mentoring projects. ELISS was characterised by a robust evaluation framework and evidence of impact was collected at different points of time from a range of sources. Due to the large scale of the project, various technical challenges did arise,

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for example in terms of obtaining representative insights into the work of mentors and mentees. However, irrespective of scale, it is important in mentoring initiatives that sufficient attention be given not just to the implementation of mentoring but to the evaluation of the impact it has on key stakeholders. Ideally, impact will be assessed using both quantitative and qualitative measures, but it must be recognised that budgetary and other resource constraints will always require compromises to be made between what is desirable and what is feasible. The goal should thus be to have in place evaluation mechanisms which are not only robust but also feasible given the resources available (see Borg [2018] for a discussion of evaluating professional development initiatives).

Conclusion The mentoring phase of ELISS was ambitious, involving many mentors and teachers across a large geographical area and in a bureaucratically complex educational system. The shift from a cascade model to mentoring was also a significant one both for the educational authorities and for the mentors and mentees involved in the project. Overall, despite the various challenges highlighted here, there is no doubt that mentoring generated high levels of enthusiasm among mentors and mentees, instilled a desire to innovate among many of them, made English lessons more enjoyable for many teachers and students, and promoted the kind of collegial professional learning climate that makes a strong case for the wider adoption of mentoring as a professional development strategy in ELT. At the same time, a more critical analysis has also highlighted various ways in which the impact of the project could have been enhanced even further and which have implications for future initiatives of this kind.

Engagement Priorities Here are some questions for consideration by readers interested in promoting mentoring, particularly at scale: 1. To what extent do some of the pre–conditions (as highlighted in this chapter) for effective mentoring exist in the target context? For example, to what extent are teachers accustomed to school–based, less centralised and

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more teacher–led forms of professional development? How much awareness exists of concepts such as reflective practice that are central to effective mentoring? 2. What specific tasks will mentors be required to complete (for example, observing teachers, providing individual or group feedback, writing evaluation reports, designing and delivering workshops for teachers)? What are the implications of mentors’ role specification for the criteria that will applied when mentors are being chosen and for the kinds of initial training they will need to receive? 3. How will the quality of mentors’ work be monitored and what forms of ongoing support will be provided to allow mentors to continue developing their mentoring competences? 4. How will the overall impact of mentoring be evaluated, including the benefits for mentors themselves, mentees, learners and schools?

References Asención Delaney, Y. (2012). Research on mentoring language teachers: Its role in language education. Foreign Language Annals, 45 (Suppl. 1), s184–s202. Borg, S. (2018). Evaluating the impact of professional development. RELC Journal, 49 (2), 195–216. Borg, S., & Parnham, J. (2020). Large-scale teacher development through mentoring. The Teacher Trainer, 34 (2), 2–7. Davis, E. (2014). Making mentoring work. Rowman & Littlefield Education. Hayes, D. (2000). Cascade training and teachers’ professional development. ELT Journal, 54 (2), 135–145. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for teacher trainers. Cambridge University Press. Mann, S., & Tang, E. H. H. (2012). The role of mentoring in supporting novice English language teachers in Hong Kong. TESOL Quarterly, 46 (3), 472–495. Martin, L. E., Kragler, S., Quatroche, D. J., & Bauserman, K. L. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of professional development in education: Successful models and practices, prek-12. The Guildford Press. Mody, R. (2013). Needs analysis report: Maharashtra English Language Initiative for Secondary Schools (ELISS). Retrieved from Mumbai: Nguyen, H. T. M., & Ngo, N. T. H. (2017). Learning to reflect through peer mentoring in a TESOL practicum. ELT Journal, 72(2), 187–198. Parnham, J., Gholkar, R., & Borg, S. (2018). Using Whatsapp for peer support in a mentoring programme. The Teacher Trainer, 32(1), 1–7.

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Parnham, J., & Mukherjee, R. (2014). English Language Initiative for Secondary Schools (ELISS): Year 2 report (2013–14). The British Council. Wedell, M. (2005). Cascading training down into the classroom: The need for parallel planning. International Journal of Educational Development, 25 (6), 637–651.

10 Is It Cultural or Personal?: Exploring Interwoven Factors Influencing Mentoring Conversations Melissa K. Smith and Marilyn Lewis

Introduction In this chapter we examine the debate about whether it is cultural or personal differences that sometimes make the mentor–mentee relationship problematic. The topic of cross-cultural encounters has been dealt with from different angles, including problems that can arise in interpreting or translating between languages. When it comes to conversations between two people using the same language but coming from different cultural backgrounds, there are, not surprisingly, frequent misunderstandings. As one example, problems may arise when one culture tends to be more direct than the other or when people have different understandings of rules of politeness or power relations (Bowe et al., 2014). Differences in purpose can also lead to miscommunications when one person, for instance, is interacting on a social level and the other is transacting and hoping for an outcome. Monaghan

M. K. Smith (B) Ningxia University, Yinchuan, China e-mail: [email protected] M. Lewis University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_10

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et al. (2012: 2) highlight that much ‘is at stake for people in the ways they communicate’. As an example of how culture may complicate communication, consider the cultural construct of power distance, defined as ‘the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally’ (Hofstede et al., 2010: 61). It is often claimed that people from a low power distance society enter into relationships with the underlying belief that both parties are on the same footing and that treating the other party as an equal shows respect. When the other party is from a high power distance society, however, their first topics of conversation may include age and position, having been taught from childhood to show deference up the social hierarchy to those who are older, teachers, and leaders. When misunderstandings occur, they are often not the result of a single factor but a combination of factors. Let us assume, for example, that a conversation is occurring between Party A from a low power distance society like the United States and Party B from a high power distance society like China. Their potential clash could be exacerbated as they each work harder to show respect. Party A may become friendlier and more informal—on a first-name basis—for ‘ease of communication’ (Bowe et al., 2014: 146). Party B, on the other hand, having come to the conclusion that Party A is older, more experienced, or of higher status, may endeavor to maintain harmony by showing deference up the hierarchy (Han & Han, 2019). They may do this by using formal terms of address, indirect communication, or by giving face and so preserving [Party A’s] positive self-image (Bowe et al., 2014: 53). Moreover, if Party B is actually of higher status, Party A may never know since Party B is likely adhering to a ‘modesty maxim’ (52) that requires self-deprecation. When attempting to sort out misunderstandings, it is important to know which are or are not attributable to culture. Storti (2017), while explaining what culture is not, puts it in the middle of a continuum between universal and personal. We have depicted his continuum in Fig. 10.1. His point is that in cross-cultural communication not every behaviour will be different from our own and not every difference can be explained by looking at cultural constructs. Some behaviours are universal, some are cultural, and others are personal.

Fig. 10.1

What culture is not

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Understandings of cross-cultural communication come into play in interactions between mentors and mentees, starting with how each views the role of mentor. The word ‘mentor’ ‘itself may imply different roles or responsibilities’, depending on different cultural interpretations (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 12). In fact, a good starting point in any mentoring relationship and particularly in ones that cross cultures is a conversation in which mentor and mentee negotiate understandings of the term and what roles each will play. The potential for misunderstanding does not end with the initial conversation, however, since the two parties may hold differing perspectives on how their roles should be fulfilled. Randall and Thornton (2001: 13), for example, talk about the mentor’s responsibility for motivating, building confidence, and ‘helping to reduce feelings of anxiety’. Individuals from different cultural backgrounds may make different assumptions about how these roles play out. Within a cross-cultural mentoring relationship, specific constructs like power distance can lead to misunderstandings about roles and responsibilities. In many Western and low power distance settings, for example, mentoring has trended toward a facilitative approach that attempts to equalise the relationship between mentors and mentees by giving mentees power in decision-making and ownership of change (Smith & Lewis, 2018). Even further down the path toward parity are approaches like peer mentoring, where ‘equality replaces hierarchy in the mentoring relationship’ (Nguyen, 2017: 36), and learning is collaborative, occurring within a community of practice and through ‘equally-conducted peer talk’ (Çomo˘glu & Dikilita¸s, 2020: 34). These approaches to mentoring can be problematic in contexts like Mongolia where only well-experienced ‘white beards’ are viewed as mentors (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 7) or in Confucian-heritage societies like Vietnam or China, where only experts have the right to mentor down the hierarchy by passing on their expertise to younger or novice teachers (Nguyen, 2017; Smith & Lewis, 2018). In relation to power distance, potential misunderstandings in mentoring relationships can be exacerbated by a combination of factors including those mentioned earlier—terms of address, formality, indirectness, and a modesty maxim. Moreover, the power mentors sometimes have can be multi-faceted, considering their position, the information they have access to, and their expertise, in addition to their ability to offer rewards or punishment and exercise control over decisions (Bailey, 2006). The changes over time in these ‘power roles’ (63) in Western settings can shed light on cross-cultural mentoring relationships where differences across cultures can lead to different expectations and applications of how power is accessed and wielded by both mentor and mentee.

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Storti’s (2017) explanation of what culture is not also comes into play in mentoring interactions. Not every miscommunication can be understood by examining differing cultural perspectives. As noted earlier, some come about because of personal differences. At the same time, mentor and mentee may find a wealth of shared values and ideas, universals that transcend individuals and societies. Elsewhere (Smith & Lewis, 2018), we have raised the question of whether differences in understanding are cultural or personal and explored the interwoven factors, including culture, society, and education systems, that influence the contexts of mentoring. We have also suggested how raising awareness of personal values may help mentor and mentee relate successfully across various boundaries. In this chapter, we delve into these interwoven factors and demonstrate how both cultural and personal differences may shape mentoring interactions. We do this by examining misunderstandings between mentors and mentees, centring on one misunderstanding involving an American mentor, who set up a mentoring programme at a school and invited a group of Chinese teachers of English to participate. We begin with a universal desire to collaborate harmoniously, and then we work our way through a number of cultural to personal factors that may have played a role in causing disharmony. Although the miscommunication took place in China between an American mentor and Chinese in-service teachers, we use other cases to show how our analyses may apply in other settings with different individuals.

Context An American mentor had been working with a group of Chinese teachers of English for a semester in a semi-formal setting.1 With the school’s approval, the mentor had taken a facilitative approach, collaborating with the teachers as they prepared and taught their courses. After some intensive work including individual discussions about lesson-planning, observations, and post-observation meetings as well as workshop-style group meetings, the mentor determined that the teachers would benefit from ‘going it alone’ and encouraged them to make their own decisions about their professional development, preferably in cooperation with another colleague or two. The mentor’s stated intention was that each of the teachers would engage in a peer mentoring relationship with another colleague. It was at this point that the relationship between the American mentor and the Chinese teachers began

1

Some details have been changed in order to protect the privacy of mentor and teachers.

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to falter. Some of the teachers expressed fear, not of taking responsibility for their own professional development but of leading a colleague down the path toward growth. The mentor emphasised that they could work together collaboratively with their colleagues, peer mentoring, and reminded them of their initial definition of ‘mentor’ as a friend who gives help and advice. Yet, they continued to express concern about finding a collaborator who was younger and less experienced. Some wanted to invite their collaborators to join the original group so that the mentor could guide them. Two teachers eventually gave up.2 Throughout and after the mentoring, the mentor reflected on the misunderstanding. In particular, she and the two who gave up, Teachers F and G, each wrote and shared reflections on what had happened. Their initial response was that the issue was cultural, which seemed reasonable, but the mentor desired to dig deeper. With our input, she sent out a simple questionnaire asking the two questions below and invited all the teachers to help her figure out how to approach similar situations in the future. Five of the teachers responded. 1. When I asked you to mentor a colleague, what were your initial reactions or feelings? Please try to list and explain two or more different thoughts or feelings you had when you first heard about this ‘assignment’. 2. At first, most of you seemed to feel anxious about mentoring a colleague. What do you wish you could have said to me about the ‘assignment’, or what do you wish I had understood?

Insights The teachers’ responses to the questionnaire, along with reflections from Teachers F and G and the mentor, led to a realisation that reasons for the misunderstanding ranged from cultural to personal. In the paragraphs below, we explore these different reasons. In each case, we start with a Chinese teacher’s response and then, while highlighting particular ideas, draw on reflections from the mentor and Teachers F and G while also bringing in our personal experiences and ideas from other sources.

2

Throughout this chapter, the American is referred to as the ‘mentor’, the Chinese teachers as the ‘teachers’, and their collaborators as ‘colleagues’.

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Although lengthy, Teacher A’s response to the questionnaire seems worth quoting as a basis for our later analysis of the problem. It offers an overview of whether the miscommunication was cultural or personal. Teacher A Reflection When I was asked to find a colleague to mentor, the first question that came to my mind (you know, I like to ask questions) is ‘Am I qualified?’ and if the colleague will think I am qualified enough to be a mentor. Although we define ‘mentor ’ in a very detailed way, I still feel I am a student because I am inspired and passionate again for teaching during the mentoring. I could feel my colleague also thought maybe she should learn something from me in the beginning of mentoring. After the observation, I asked her a lot of questions, and I learned a lot from her classes. After I shared my feelings, I think she maybe changed a little bit because she said ‘Thank you very much!’ or ‘真的谢谢你!’. Thanks for introducing this colleague to me, otherwise I really do not know whom I would find to be my mentee. It’s quite hard to find a suitable one who is eager to develop professionally and a little bit younger than me ☺ In the beginning, I do feel anxious because I am not confident enough to be a mentor. But as the mentoring went on, the negative feeling was fading through the discussions we had. Maybe in the beginning, I would rather tell you how I feel and we could discuss it. The earlier we discussed, the easier I would be relieved. Just like any other negative feelings, we should accept rather than ignore or digest little by little. Fortunately, I digested fast. Thanks for those discussions in your office, I learn how to observe the classes in a diverse way. Mentoring actually helped me to be engaged in professional development in a different way that I am realizing now when I am answering these two questions. Hope these will help you a little bit. ☺ ☺ Teacher A’s response is a good starting point for understanding what went wrong because she hints at various aspects of the misunderstanding, each of which we will explore in more detail in the paragraphs below. Teacher A was the only teacher who was introduced to a colleague by the mentor. Her gratitude and relief at being assigned a mentee, and in particular one who was suitably younger, hint at cultural reasons for the teachers’ initial reaction to the peer mentoring. Her desire to work with a colleague who was ‘eager to develop professionally’ and her descriptions of the reciprocal learning in the relationship may suggest societal aspects. From an educational standpoint, Teacher A feels that a slow digestion of how to mentor helped her, on a personal level, to overcome negative feelings toward the challenge and a lack of confidence in her qualifications.

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A Universal Desire Before exploring different aspects of the miscommunication hinted at in Teacher A’s response, we first note that her overall tone, including her use of emojis, is representative of a universal attitude held by the teachers and their mentor. Teacher A does not complain; on the contrary, she holds a positive view of the whole experience and what she learned right up to the point of expressing her heartfelt desire to help the mentor. In similar fashion, the mentor in reflecting on the miscommunication had this to say: Mentor Reflection 1 In addition to the feelings I’ve mentioned throughout my reflection, I also felt sad that something seemed broken in our relationship. As far as it depends on me, I want to live in peace with those around me. The mentor and teachers obviously did not set out to have a miscommunication. Rather, they began with a desire to cooperate. Furthermore, none of the participants were forced to engage in the mentoring. Each initially chose to do so out of a desire to grow professionally and to help others do the same. In this setting, mentor and teachers began with an intention to collaborate harmoniously. Storti’s (2017) point that not every cross-cultural encounter involves differences is applicable here. This group began with a universal or shared desire, building a strong foundation for cooperation, which for most of the group withstood the winds of misunderstanding brought on by the cultural to personal factors described in the paragraphs below.

Cultural When asked to help the mentor figure out what went wrong, Teachers F and G described the issue from a cultural standpoint. Further exploration reveals that culture did, in fact, come into play. Teacher B’s questionnaire response introduces three cultural constructs which contributed to the misunderstanding.

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Teacher B Reflection The first idea that came into my mind was that it’s an impossible task because it was embarrassing to explain to my colleague that I was going to mentor him or her. According to Chinese culture, an elderly teacher could mentor a younger one, otherwise it would be regarded as immodesty. Although I could tell her [Teacher B’s colleague] in an indirect way, the future tasks would not be accomplished properly. I could wish that you could understand Chinese culture as to the relationship between the colleagues, especially 知识分子 (intellectuals). A Chinese saying goes like this文人相轻 (Scholars tend to scorn each other.). That you mentor me suggests that you are much more professional than me which is embarrassing.

Power Distance The teachers’ initial scrambling to find a younger and less experienced colleague was the first indication that power distance was coming into play. Teacher B’s response expands on this scrambling by explaining the hierarchical nature of Chinese culture. Younger and less experienced teachers respect those who are older and more experienced and in particular welldecorated and ‘widely recognised experts’ (Teacher G). Teachers F and G further explain that teachers respect administrative leaders, and if mentors are officially appointed to an administrative-like position, they deserve respect from those down the hierarchy; however, colleagues of the same level cannot take an authoritative position over their peers. Without time to ‘digest’ the more facilitative approach the mentor was encouraging, most of the teachers were desperate to find colleagues who already viewed them as authorities at least slightly higher up the hierarchy because of age or experience.

Chinese Modesty Teacher B’s use of the word ‘immodesty’ is a reference to the Chinese concept of 谦虚 which is often translated as ‘modesty’ but is perhaps better understood as ‘humility’ or ‘self-deprecation’, a modesty maxim. To put oneself forward as a leader, or in this case a mentor, may come across as prideful. Instead, ‘everyone wants to act modestly and humbly so that they are likable and respectable instead of arrogant and annoying’ (Teacher G). In spite of the mentor’s use of the term ‘peer mentoring’, the teachers struggled to see the task as anything other than a conceited presumption to a position of authority, or rather they feared that their colleagues would judge it as such.

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Indirect Communication Teacher B’s mention of communicating with her colleague in an indirect way hints at a struggle which the mentor had in communicating with the teachers, though with the added element of crossing cultures. Mentor Reflection 2 Second, I wonder if the miscommunication would have happened if I had provided something in writing about the expectations of what the mentoring would look like this semester. To me, the biggest issue was that I could not seem to communicate clearly what a peer mentoring relationship would look like, and I felt frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get my ideas across. The mentor communicated her expectations about the peer mentoring directly to the teachers and assumed they would in turn communicate directly with their colleagues. Teacher B seemed to think indirect communication would on one hand resolve some of the issues related to power distance and Chinese modesty, but on the other hand pose challenges as she tried to justify tasks assigned by the mentor. Exacerbating the issue, Teacher B and the other teachers, in order to be polite toward the mentor, may have communicated their concerns indirectly, while the mentor, thinking she was being unclear, became more and more direct.

Societal The teachers’ desire to collaborate harmoniously has deeper roots in Chinese society where harmony is considered a core value of their Confucian heritage. Vital to a successful society, harmonious relationships are reached only when order is maintained within the hierarchy and respect is given appropriately within and particularly up the hierarchy (Han & Han, 2019). In an education setting, ‘avoiding direct confrontation’ and also ‘compromising’ may be seen as key to maintaining harmonious relationships (7). To the teachers, maintaining harmony with their colleagues was vital. If a peer mentoring relationship were to take them outside hierarchical boundaries, harmony might be restored by a level of reciprocity like the one Teacher A seemed to be looking for with her colleague. Until they understood that potential collaboration, however, the thought of causing disharmony by stepping outside hierarchical norms was embarrassing to Teacher B. Moreover, it was so disturbing to Teachers F and G that they chose to leave the group rather than attempt to balance their relationship with a colleague against that with an outsider, the American mentor.

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Educational In Mentor Reflection 2, the mentor seems to sense that some problem in her teaching practice played a role in the misunderstanding. Teacher C’s reflection sheds light on the issue. Teacher C Reflection 1) Nervous. I felt a little bit nervous when I first heard about mentoring a colleague because I don’t think I am qualified enough to be a mentor. 2) Confused. I didn’t know how to mentor a colleague, what to do and how to communicate at first. If my mentor had told me this was a kind of sharing or cooperation between colleagues for the purpose of effective teaching, I would be less stressed and not confused either. Teacher C’s confusion could mean that the mentor failed to explain the peer mentoring task well. Giving something in writing, as she suggested in Mentor Reflection 2, might have solved the problem. However, given the cultural and societal differences mentioned above, it seems likely that the teachers’ understanding was hindered by a ‘mentoring affective filter’ (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 86), which the mentor needed to lower before expecting them to follow through on the assignment. Rather than a slow digestion, perhaps the teachers needed an overview of what they would learn about facilitative mentoring before embarking on collaboration with a colleague.

Personal Teacher Views of Their Qualifications to Mentor Teacher D Reflection My initial reactions were whether I was qualified enough to mentor a colleague and who was the suitable person to be chosen to mentor. For the first reaction, I think I felt less confident facing my colleague. After all, most of my younger colleagues have got the master’s degree and they have formed their own teaching style after years’ teaching. I was afraid what I did was to teach a fish to swim. For the second reaction, I think what I considered was who was easy to communicate with about his/her teaching and who was friendly to cooperate with me. Would they accept my mentoring? I wish you could understand that there was much difficulty for me when mentoring a colleague, for I myself had not got more excellent teaching method

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than others, therefore, I feared I would fail in this assignment. I would have said to you ‘Once I cannot do the job well, please do not blame me’. Teacher D’s response is an interesting contradiction to other teachers’ assessment that something cultural was going on. She is an older, wellexperienced professional. Yet, even though she has the hierarchical position to mentor, she expresses fear that her younger colleagues are already professionals in their own right and, even more, are better educated and equipped. It is possible that a teacher could lack the knowledge or skills to be a mentor and should be gently pointed in another direction. More likely in this case, however, Teacher D is encountering a feeling common to experienced mentors in various settings, that they are ‘sometimes a novice and sometimes an expert’ (Orland-Barak & Yinon, 2005: 557). Mentors, like other professionals, may experience imposter syndrome, the fear well-qualified individuals sometimes have that they will be exposed as imposters (Bleak & Batavia, 2019). Teacher D may be experiencing imposter syndrome exacerbated by a sense of being a ‘second class teacher’ because she is not a native speaker of English (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 13). For her, further developing ‘a sense of ownership of the English language’ (Kamhi-Stein, 2009: 96) might alleviate fear.

Facing a Challenge Teacher E Reflection Frankly speaking, I took that as an assignment, so it was a bit like a burden to me, as most students would respond the same to their teachers’ assignments. But then I said to myself, ‘this is a good chance for you to learn new teaching skills and other teachers’ strong points may be the fresh air in your own classroom teaching’. With this thought in mind, I talked to [her colleague], who is my friend and was my mentee, and we discussed about the details of the mentoring assignments. At first, [her colleague] had a little pressure on it, and I was an inexperienced novice. Sometimes I don’t think I explained the details of the tasks clearly enough to her, so it took a while for me to adjust my way of communication with her. We talked in our leisure time in an informal way. Gradually both of us were relieved and cooperated better and better. I was anxious and worried I could not finish the mentoring task well. I wish I could say ‘no’ to you because I was not ready for being a mentor. I still remember the feeling—like ‘a duck being driven onto a perch’. But looking back, I feel grateful for those struggling moments in the mentoring task. ‘If you don’t get in the water, you’re never gonna learn to swim’, and it is a truth.

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For Teacher E, the peer mentoring task was clear. She mentions no struggles with any of the cultural issues, perhaps because she is an older, experienced teacher who has the ‘right’ to mentor and also feels confident in her abilities. Moreover, although she mentions steps she took in order to cooperate well with her colleague, she expresses no concern about maintaining harmony. Rather, the source of Teacher E’s worry is a desire to perform well. Initially, she viewed the peer mentoring as a burdensome assignment slightly beyond her capability. She uses a Chinese saying to express how she felt, 赶 子上架, which is similar to the English one, ‘like a duck out of water’. Then, with some encouraging self-talk, she overcame her anxiety, jumped in the water, and learned how to swim.

Implications We now pass on implications which we noted initially for the mentor and ourselves.

A Web of Interconnected Factors Misunderstandings in mentoring relationships are not rare and not limited to cross-cultural settings. When mentor and teacher come from different cultures, a first and easy assumption is that the problem is cultural, while when they share a culture the focus may be on personal differences. However, such snap conclusions lose sight of the fact that mentor and mentee are teaching and interacting in a particular setting (which may or may not be their own) and drawing on experiences from other cultural, societal, or educational settings. Moreover, the mentor faces responsibilities as an educator, not least of which is allowing for teachers’ individual needs. In other words, a variety of factors from universal to personal may come into play. All are important, and rather than on a continuum (Fig. 10.1) are better illustrated as a web of interconnected reasons for the misunderstanding (Fig. 10.2).

Using the Web to Analyse Incidents In order to illustrate how the web of factors may influence communication in a variety of settings, we analyse three incidents. The first is a composite based on misunderstandings we have experienced in our mentoring. Like our example, it resulted in a departure. The second and third incidents come

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universal

personal

educational Fig. 10.2

cultural

societal

Web of factors

from other sources. All three involve mentors working one-on-one with preservice teachers from the same culture. Factors that potentially influenced communication and caused disharmony are highlighted. Note the overlap between factors at times. Incident 1 An American teacher had just arrived in another country to teach English and was assigned a mentor. At the outset, finding a universal or shared desire to collaborate harmoniously was difficult and may have exacerbated other issues. Unlike in our example, the American teacher was required to participate in mentoring as part of his training and seemed to lack ‘buy in’ (Smith & Lewis, 2018: 11). While mentor and mentee shared a culture, their societal and educational experiences diverged, potentially causing misunderstandings. The teacher came from a business background. The mentor had more than five years of experience teaching English in the new country as well as advanced training in the field, but she was twenty years younger than the teacher. Moreover, the differences between their collective culture and that of the new country perhaps influenced the teacher on a personal level. Anxiety, for example, or a sense of being an imposter in the new culture could have contributed to misunderstandings that eventually led to his departure from the country.

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Incident 2 Nguyen (2017; see also Chapter 5) explores a mentoring programme for pre-service English teachers in Vietnam, which she describes as a Confucianheritage culture. The Vietnamese teachers experienced conflict with their Vietnamese mentors in a number of areas. The teachers felt silenced by their mentors who were acting as experts up the social hierarchy in accordance with cultural traditions of power distance. In addition, perhaps in part because of an age difference, the teachers were attempting to implement newer methodology while their mentors emphasised traditional approaches (societal, educational). Furthermore, the teachers felt their mentors failed to provide adequate feedback primarily because of busyness, and a few teachers also reported on what might be described as personality differences (personal). Incident 3 Yuan and Lee (2016) describe the struggles of a pre-service teacher in China during his practicum. From the outset, he felt ‘overwhelmed’ and struggled to know how to manage his negative emotions of shock and guilt (11) (personal). These internal conflicts sprang from a contradiction between his beliefs about teaching (learner-centred, communicative ideas) and his mentor’s traditional, exam-based approach. His struggles deepened when his mentor asked him to publicly name students who had failed an exam, a direct departure from his desire to create a ‘caring and harmonious’ atmosphere in the classroom (11) (personal, educational). Yuan and Lee attribute this pre-service teacher’s conflict to the mentor’s ‘top-down’ (16) approach in an institutional culture where the teacher felt like he was ‘at the bottom of the school hierarchy’ (14) (educational, societal) and to ‘traditional…barriers posed by deep-seated structures and conventions’ (20) (societal, cultural).

Untangling the Web Conventional wisdom states that the key to resolving misunderstandings in relationships is communication. In our example, the shared reflections and questionnaire, being after-the-fact, did not resolve the problems but at least offered an opportunity for healing. As we reflect back on our example, we come to a similar conclusion Nguyen (2017) did at the end of her study, the need for collaboration between stakeholders (see also Chapter 5). The teachers would have benefited from some ongoing communication with their mentors, particularly that of a collaborative nature where teachers ‘share an open and democratic relationship’ with their mentors (Yuan & Lee, 2016:

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19). Given the societal and cultural differences in our example, the collaboration would have needed to return to initial conversations in which the group defined ‘mentor’ as a friend who gives help and advice and described the relationship as an egalitarian one. Such collaborative conversations have the potential to resolve issues as they are occurring and potentially forestall them. In the next few paragraphs, we expand on ideas in our previous writing in order to explain what these conversations look like.

Participants In a collaborative mentoring setting, untangling the web is the responsibility of both mentor and mentee. Obviously, mentors are often the facilitators of conversations that lead to deeper understandings and helpful conclusions, but teachers are full participants. The interactions are negotiations rather than monologues with an appropriate balance of input and output from both mentor and mentee (Smith & Lewis, 2018).

Goals Some goals for these conversations are listed below. They connect to different factors in the web. While only the last uses the word, ‘negotiation’ between mentee and mentor is implied with all four. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Look for common ground (universal). Investigate contextual factors (cultural, societal, educational). Explore individual differences (personal). Negotiate mentoring approaches, techniques, and tasks (all factors).

Settings, Topics, & Tasks While communication is ongoing throughout the mentoring relationship, the misunderstandings encountered in both our example and illustrative incidents could potentially have been forestalled with a series of conversations at the outset. Interactions about purposes, attitudes, expectations, roles and responsibilities, and goals all lay a good foundation for a harmonious mentoring relationship. Some tasks for these foundational conversations are summarised below (Smith & Lewis, 2018).

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discussing different ideas of what the term ‘mentor’ means negotiating a purpose statement negotiating goals negotiating a mentoring contract and plan interacting informally (over tea, for example) in order to get to know each other.

When crossing cultures, conversations specifically about potential cultural, societal, and educational differences are important. Two further tasks are summarised below (Smith & Lewis, 2018). • collaborating on a chart or diagram that illustrates differences between the two cultures of mentor and mentee • compiling and comparing a list of proverbs from the two societies that help to explain the educational context

Whole Person Needs The topics and tasks described above are primarily analytical in nature, an observation which brings to mind a comment in Teacher G’s reflection: ‘I think our mentor understood the problem very well intellectually and logically. But she didn’t understand our feelings of anxiety and fear of conflicts and failure’. In seeking understandings and resolving issues, Teacher G’s words are a good reminder that these conversations are occurring between human beings. Harmonious mentoring relationships include conversations that give consideration to teachers’ whole person needs in the areas of knowledge and skills and also affect and values (Smith & Lewis, 2018).

Conclusion This chapter has aimed to address issues that arise out of misunderstandings between mentors and their mentees in a cross-cultural context. Using as our starting point one such example, we have concluded that cultural differences are only one possible cause of a failure to communicate. We are aware, though, of what we have not spelled out. One reason for this is that both of us are writing from the same cultural starting point. In a future study we would like to have as co-authors members of the other culture involved. Although we have quoted Chinese mentees, this is not the same as co-authoring. Alternatively, a future article could include an author from the mentees’ culture

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who is looking in from outside the context but with an insider view of the culture. In seeking to improve mentor–mentee communication particularly in cross-cultural situations, anything that offers fresh and informed perspectives would be helpful. Another area for further research is the universal desire to collaborate harmoniously, why it was present in our example and how to cultivate it in other settings where teachers may lack buy-in. More importantly, we found the idea of harmony refreshing and inspiring and, in the words of one of our participants, hope to build relationships of ‘mutual trust and understanding, mutual usefulness, and mutual dependence’ in mentoring and life.

Engagement Priorities Below are two tasks that are designed to help mentors and mentees untangle the web of factors at work in a misunderstanding and restore harmony. The first is a reflection task for mentors; the second is a collaboration between mentor and mentee(s). However, we also recommend these tasks to readers who are not yet mentoring but are interested in exploring what these roles mean.

Reflection Task In a mentoring journal, reflect on the following questions as you consider a misunderstanding between you and your mentee(s). Alternatively, you could consider a misunderstanding that has occurred between you and colleagues or other individuals who are from the same context as your potential mentees. 1. How would you describe the misunderstanding? 2. What personal factors, for both you and your mentee(s), may have played a role in the misunderstanding? 3. What educational, societal, or cultural factors may have come into play? 4. What common ground do you share with your mentee(s)? How could this common ground be used to restore harmony? 5. What other steps could you take toward restoring harmony?

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Collaborative Task In collaboration with your mentee(s) or other individuals from the same context as your potential mentee(s), follow steps similar to ones we followed in our research. 1. Negotiate reflection questions that get to the heart of the misunderstanding and why it occurred. 2. Respond in writing to the reflection questions by an agreed upon date. 3. View one another’s reflections. 4. Work together in order to analyse the reflections, understand the different factors coming into play, and rebuild harmony. Ideas from the reflections could be put into a chart like the one in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1

Reflection analysis

Factor

Teacher

Mentor

Personal Educational Societal Cultural Universal

References Bailey, K. (2006). Language teacher supervision: A case-based approach. Cambridge University Press. Bleak, K., & Batavia, L. (2019). Imposter syndrome in teaching future teachers: From doubting to assuming mentorship in the affinity space of practicum. In A. Markelz (Ed.), Unmask Your Potential. Proceedings of the TED 2019 Conference; 5–8 November, New Orleans, LA. Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, pp. 82–86. Bowe, H., Martin, K., & Manns, H. (2014). Communication across cultures: Mutual understanding in a global world . Cambridge University Press. Çomo˘glu, ˙I, & Dikilita¸s, K. (2020). Learning to become an English language teacher: Navigating the self through peer practicum. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 45 (8), 23–40. Han, J., & Han, Y. (2019). Cultural concepts as powerful theoretical tools: Chinese teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with students in a cross-cultural context. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 13(1): article 8 https://doi.org/10.20429/ijsotl.2019.130108

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Hofstede, G., Hofstede, G. J., & Minkov, M. (2010). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind . McGraw Hill. Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (2009). Teacher preparation and nonnative English-speaking educators. In A. Burns & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Cambridge guide to second language teacher education (pp. 91–101). Cambridge University Press. Monaghan, L., Goodman, J. E., & Meta Robinson, J. (Eds.). (2012). A cultural approach to interpersonal communication: Essential readings. Wiley-Blackwell. Nguyen, H. T. M. (2017). Models of mentoring in language teacher education. Springer International Publishing. Orland-Barak, L., & Yinon, H. (2005). Sometimes a novice and sometimes an expert: Mentors’ professional expertise as revealed through their stories of critical incidents. Oxford Review of Education, 31(4), 557–578. Randall, M., & Thornton, B. (2001). Advising and supporting teachers. Cambridge University Press. Smith, M. K., & Lewis, M. (2018). Supporting the professional development of English language teachers: Facilitative mentoring. Routledge. Storti, C. (2017). Understanding the world’s cultures. Intercultural Press. Yuan, R., & Lee, I. (2016). ‘I need to be strong and competent’: A narrative inquiry of a student-teacher’s emotions and identities in teaching practicum. Teachers and Teaching, 22(7), 819–841. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2016.1185819

11 Transformative Mentoring in a Pre-school Bilingual Context in Turkey Kenan Dikilita¸s and Simon Edward Mumford

Introduction and Context In developing countries like Turkey, there is an ever-increasing expansion of demand for competent early-childhood English language teachers (Erdo˘gan et al., 2021). Bilingual education is growing, and bilingual teachers play a crucial role in their capacity as role models of language users (Menken & Garcia, 2010). Thus, a key area for investigation is the mentoring of bilingual preschool teachers to ensure they have the appropriate skills, understand how children think and can identify children’s interests (Bialystok, 2018; Cameron, 2003). In this chapter, we reflect on mentoring in a bilingual context in Turkey. This mentoring involved supporting processes of transformative change experienced by English and homeroom teachers adapting to their new role of bilingual teachers co-teaching preschool children acquiring two languages, English and Turkish. K. Dikilita¸s (B) · S. E. Mumford University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected] S. E. Mumford e-mail: [email protected] S. E. Mumford ˙Izmir University of Economics, ˙Izmir, Turkey

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_11

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Before the intervention, both sets of teachers (in a progressively run private school) were accustomed to managing the classroom individually, in terms of syllabus, materials, and as the sole authority in their lessons. Homeroom teachers taught the preschool curriculum, and the English teachers taught English as a separate enterprise. However, the school decided to ask these homeroom and English teachers to co-teach to facilitate bilingual learning, although they were to use exclusively Turkish and English respectively. They would need transformative mentoring for this demanding transition to co-teaching and supporting bilingual acquisition, prioritising twenty-first century skills, including cooperation, problem-solving, empathy and adaptability (Murphy & Martin, 2015). Building on a previous study that explored the teachers’ journeys and their relationships with learners (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020), this chapter focuses on the mentoring that supported them, where Kenan not only provided training in bilingual education but also mentored teachers on a weekly basis, conducting inclass observations and post-observation feedback sessions. Through engaging enthusiastically in these pedagogical interactions that involved communicating feedback on teaching, addressing emerging questions and providing psycho-social support (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018), Kenan established trusting mentor rapport (Wyatt & Arnold, 2012). Such rapport would have made it easier for teachers to engage in the new ideas that needed to be reflected on. Kenan (the mentor) was initially invited to the school, a private kindergarten in western Turkey, to organise a professional development scheme to introduce early bilingualism. The kindergarten is nested in a wider school complex including primary and secondary (K-12) education. At the time of the research, there were 98 kindergarten students (60 male and 38 females), most from higher socioeconomic levels. Parents are highly involved with their children’s progress and are encouraged to provide extramural exposure to both languages in the media and via educational resources (see Sylvén & Sundqvist, 2017). The five kindergarten classes each have two teachers, who teach for equal amounts of time. The children, all native speakers of Turkish, are in the process of acquiring English. Despite not participating in the training, the second author, Simon Mumford was familiar with the context, having carried out and co-authored the original study (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020) as Kenan’s mentee: PhD student and co-researcher. In line with the school’s expectations, Kenan planned a two-stage professional development programme: three weeks of workshops that amounted to 27 h, followed by classroom observations over one academic year, as the teachers implemented a joint syllabus using Turkish and English. The workshop topics included the differences between learning and acquisition,

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bilingualism, interaction in the classroom, co-teaching, in-class feedback and translanguaging pedagogy. The workshops involved individual and group reflections, and hands-on experiences, with group work predominantly used to induce beliefs about teaching practices (see Borg, 2011). Teachers were encouraged to be cognitively, socially, and physically active, and to engage in self-questioning and reflecting on their teacher identities, to prepare them for the shift in role. These in-service teachers had experience ranging from one to more than 10 years; however, none had experience of bilingual co-teaching. In addition to ‘instrumental’ mentoring providing the specific skills needed, there was a need for ‘socioemotional’ mentoring, involving emotional support, such as instilling motivation (Robnett et al., 2018). During the sessions, English and homeroom teachers were paired to help them build an early emotional and professional bonding and develop a co-understanding process. Also, a secure space was provided where they could minimise potential conflict arising and discuss how they would cooperate in future. Indeed, multiple spaces were created during the training and feedback sessions, allowing the teachers to develop dialogues to promote their collaboration as they deepened their knowledge of bilingual teaching and translanguaging. Bilingualism has long been interpreted as individuals being competent in two separate languages at monolingual capacity (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2005). However, here there was a specific encouragement of translanguaging. Translanguaging refers to the flexible use of both languages, which are treated as equals as part of a single linguistic system (García & Li, 2014). The teachers appeared to understand the concepts and approaches but needed to practise them cooperatively. The paired teachers practised sharing time and syllabus activities without transgressing on each other’s space, taking on supportive roles. The new roles included passing the lesson from one teacher to the other with minimum disruption. This adaptive co-existence was supported by observation and corresponding feedback sessions. We now discuss the transformative mentoring required.

Transformative Mentoring Before describing transformative mentoring, we first define transformative learning. Transformative learning implies perspectival or conceptual shifts in how one sees oneself and one’s own purposes in the world, applied both to general education (Ada & Campoy, 2004) and to English language education (Jeyaraj & Harland, 2014). In the current context, transformation required the teachers to reflectively adapt to a bilingual mode of teaching, by redefining their respective roles as English and homeroom teachers.

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Dooley (2008) notes that when perspectives on teaching change, conceptions change correspondingly. Transformation is seen as a three-dimensional change, involving getting to know oneself, then others, and then redefining the relationship between self and other (Schmidt & Mosenthal, 2001). Transformative mentoring requires tact and sensitivity on the part of the mentor, avoiding being judgemental, and so respecting teachers’ emotional well-being (Hobson & Malderez, 2013). While all mentoring is transformative to some extent, the term is adopted here since transformative learning involves influencing and being influenced by others, gaining multiple perspectives while caring for others (Southern, 2007). In the current context, homeroom and language teachers may have different priorities, with the former focused more on general ability, skills and qualities, such as creativity, and the latter more narrowly on language (Butler, 2005). This suggests a need for transformative mentoring to help them assimilate these two defined roles. While homeroom teachers can experience identity conflicts between didactic and caring roles (Popper-Giveon & Shayshon, 2017), here the potential conflict was between teachers, rather than within individuals. Such a problem is highlighted by Hiratsuka (2016) in a Japanese context, who describes an exploratory practice project which was only partially successful in strengthening communication between native and non-native speaker co-teachers. Such a reconciliation might require deep changes in behaviour and beliefs, via building a true learning community (Southern, 2007) consisting of mentor, mentees, and their learners, and involving the school management, thus transcending the mentor–mentee relationship. In the current context, the teachers were encouraged to reflect on their past and present roles and practices to discover themselves as teachers, and were then assigned a co-teacher to support transformation through continued co-reflection and collaboration before, during, and after the lesson, to nurture their understanding of co-teaching. The temporal and spatial elements described above supported their knowledge of co-teaching and bilingual teaching, i.e. transformative learning. They were encouraged to challenge their existing conceptions of teaching, thereby allowing micro-transformations, and such alterations in thinking led to opportunities for a wider restructuring of knowledge (Alexander, 1998). Such microtransformations in conceptualisations provided a knowledge base, which could then be operationalised in practice (Dooley, 2008; see also Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018; Mumford, 2018). The aim of the programme was to support an understanding of bilingual teaching through helping mentees to identify their own conceptions of teaching, thus removing potential obstacles to

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change (Hobson et al., 2009). The new practices involved the co-teaching of one joint syllabus and sharing of in-class responsibilities in dynamic collaborative professional work, moving away from sole teacher authority figures. For the shift to occur, teachers needed to conceive bilingual education as a dimension closely linked to, but essentially different from their existing understandings, knowledge, and practices. This could be achieved by creating a community of teachers, who not only talked about, but ‘lived out’ such changes (Hobson et al., 2008), with the mentor both discussing and modelling bilingual behaviour. The role of a mentor during transformative development, also highlighted by De Costa et al. (Chapter 4), includes providing expert support, which often plays a pivotal role in a new programme. A radically different approach to teaching, in terms of content, process, and style of working, needs to be carefully presented, supported, and assessed. Continuity of support throughout the first year is essential in maintaining and deepening the teacher learning. The mentoring that might be provided should be designed to attain specific objectives, in this case, learning to teach together, and learning to teach two languages. However, this cooperation between teachers of the same language background is a relatively unexplored area of co-teaching, compared to the Japanese context of native speaker/non-native speaker co-teachers in public high schools (Hiratsuka, 2016; Tajino et al., 2016). It involves changeoriented supportive practices which build a culture of synergy for collective change (Mullen & Klimaitis, 2021). Though primarily involving English and homeroom teachers, the mentoring process in the current study would additionally involve different levels of school administration, classroom, and staffroom, ensuring vertical and horizontal impact aimed at change. Such multilevel mentoring (Mullen & Klimaitis, 2021) could potentially transformatively change students’, teachers’, and administrators’ mindsets regarding bilingual education, and its implementational and evaluative procedures. Evidence of interdependence between these levels could be seen in collective participation in our research site; administrators and programme leaders sometimes attended the observations and follow-up feedback sessions in the initial training, and thus were able to develop their knowledge and understandings of bilingualism and acquire new reflective discourse.

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Insights Introducing New Concepts To sustain the momentum over the course of a year, the initial training sessions were followed (as noted above) by classroom observations, leading to further pre-discussions and post-reflections. This second stage included weekly classroom observations, followed by feedback sessions with the coteachers immediately after the observations or at the end of the day, further building rapport between paired teachers as well as providing situational feedback on practices. Such a journey to becoming a bilingual teacher involved ‘transforming beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and emotional reactions’ (Mezirow, 1990: 223). This transformation was facilitated by teachers self-questioning and critically reflecting upon their pre-bilingual education practices. Concerns included developing a joint syllabus involving language and content objectives, achieving equality in sharing class time, switching between major and minor teacher roles in co-teaching, and giving non-intrusive, non-judgmental feedback to children. During these sessions, teachers were encouraged to reflect on issues arising (Hall et al., 2008; Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018). Specific support was provided regarding interaction with students. This covered using English and Turkish, adopting adequate teacher wait time, using clear instructions, asking thought-provoking questions, encouraging children to pose personal and meaningful rather than display questions, correcting indirectly and implicitly, and asking questions to engender thinking, rather than merely for knowledge repetition. Thus, concepts presented in the initial training were reinforced by feedback on instances when these concepts were imperfectly applied. An example of their awareness of change is when one teacher who had given up forcing students to repeat corrected utterances noted that students had begun to repeat teachers’ utterances without prompting (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020: 7). Coaching was needed to help make teachers better able to improve preschool children’s social-emotional competencies (Giordano et al., 2020). Coaching here refers to the short-term improvement of practices, contrasting with the longer-term process of mentoring (Tee Ng, 2012). For example, when a teacher gave the instruction give the crayon to me but without waiting for the child to comprehend, this lack of wait time denied the opportunity to act on the instruction, and Kenan afterwards drew attention to this.

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Observations and feedback sessions after the intensive workshop series provided opportunities for critical, situated, and real-time feedback, reinforcing the teachers’ learning. During such sessions, although it was not symmetrical, the mentor–mentee relationship was reciprocal (Hanks et al., Chapter 12). Kenan’s mentor learning included familiarizing himself with the pre-school context, exploring co-teaching practices in depth, and revisiting co-teaching practices. Kenan gained new perspectives on the practices as to how students can be supported to acquire both English and their native language simultaneously. These insights contributed to his overall mentoring.

Mentoring for Change in Beliefs and Practices The mentoring created an atmosphere conducive to belief change by encouraging the teachers to talk about their existing beliefs during the initial training and reassess these during the post-teaching feedback sessions. Such fresh awareness may have contributed to changes in practice. For example, one teacher reflected on slowing her previously hurried approach to give learners more time to express themselves (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020: 6). Similarly, recalling how Kenan provided her with immediate feedback on her practice while her co-teacher was teaching, another teacher commented: From time to time, during our course observations, Kenan gives instant feedback for us to apply, and we are subjected to his interventions that change direction to our course by saying ‘ask this question now and observe how the children interact.’ This helped me understand the importance of asking deep questions more clearly while interacting with children.

The teachers began to revisit their prior conceptions of teaching and reconsider it as a joint act. This was evident in Dikilita¸s and Mumford (2020: 5), where a teacher emphasises the importance of joint planning of lessons using the pronoun ‘we’, implying the emergence of a self-supporting community (Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018; Hiratsuka, 2016). Such discourse might suggest a step towards peer-mentoring in their future cooperative work (Hall & Liva, 2021). After the training, the teachers had multiple opportunities to reflect on the acquisition of content and language within and through interactional language use in two languages. The transformation process was bolstered by the mentor’s frequent presence in class, providing immediate feedback on teaching, which allowed them to adjust as the lesson unfolded, and assess the consequences of their changed practices. Teachers were encouraged to try

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out these practices in unobserved lessons and share their self-evaluations at his next visit.

Mentoring’s Influence on Identity Traditional language teacher education in Turkey tends to focus on skills such as reading, grammar, and vocabulary (Öztürk & Aydın, 2019). Transformative change, however, can bring pedagogical and cognitive shifts that are continuously internalised, with consequences for identity. Kenan aimed to create participatory dialogues to facilitate deeper understanding of bilingual teaching and increase teachers’ agency through self-reflexive activities, leading them towards contextualised insights (Wong et al., 2020). Tu˘gçe, an English-speaking teacher of 4-year-old children, commented on such contextual learning in her written reflections: For example, I learnt how to create room for children in the class and give them more responsibility so that they could continue to interact.

Minimal resistance in their adoption of the title bilingual teacher to replace their former labels hinted that the mentoring had been successful in laying the foundations for this reconceptualisation. A teacher of 5-year-old children, Didem highlighted her identity development: I especially like the idea of one-teacher one-language which helped children to get used to learning the content in two languages, a very distinctive experience for me since I had never been exposed to such a model nor had been trained to do so.

Such a transformative shift, evident in their practices and reflections, highlighted the coordinated integration of two languages through their coteaching and sharing of in-class course delivery, as well as joint planning and improvement of practices. As discussed elsewhere, teachers assumed the roles of pedagogue, interactive communicator, and translanguaging facilitator (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020: 7), which involved assuming new identities. One teacher highlighted, for example, noticing frequent appearance of English expressions in the children’s L1 interactions, thereby gaining insights into how children were able to use newly acquired English words, sometimes those not explicitly taught, in Turkish sentences. Continuous self- and co-reflection led to deeper thinking and validation of the new ideas, providing vindication of their new practices. Working together

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created a ‘third space’ (García & Li, 2014), modelled by the mentor in his dealings with the teachers. There is a social change aspect here, namely, the promotion of transformative mentoring in a progressively-run school in an educationally conservative context, among teachers who were products of conservative educational methods, and in a country where preservice teacher mentoring may be lacking (Yangın-Ek¸si & Güngör, 2018).

Building and Maintaining Relations Mentoring has developmental, career (instrumental) and psychosocial (relational) functions (Kram, 1983). Robnett et al. (2018) underscore the socioemotional and instrumental aspects. Regarding the relational dimension, it is important that authority is balanced with caring, so that the mentor is granted authority on the understanding that it will benefit mentees, rather than authority being imposed on them (Southern, 2007). Regarding the developmental aspect, transformative mentoring aims at long term impact on individuals and environments (Ramos-Diaz & Kochan, 2020). Thus, the mentor has instrumental, developmental, and relational functions (Ambrosetti & Dekkers, 2010). While the focus here is primarily on the mentee-mentor relationship, there is also evidence that the personal relationships between teachers and students were positively impacted, both in the class and, to some extent, outside (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2020). For example, one teacher commented: Children do translanguaging and I don’t feel uncomfortable about it anymore. I used to force them to speak only in English with me and would say ‘I don’t know Turkish’ and told them to speak English by waiting for them to say it in English. If they wouldn’t, I would skip them. Now I respond to them in English but would not make them use English only. They are free to use both languages to communicate with me.

By encouraging teachers to question their behaviour, Kenan helped them reflect on their identities as multicompetent language users. As a model for translanguaging, Kenan himself spoke both languages to the teachers unless the (monolingual) homeroom teachers were present in the reflective sessions. Thus, he engaged in responsible, as opposed to random, code-switching (Palviainena et al., 2016), and acted as a model for mentees, in terms of openness about the use of both languages with children, showing how the two languages could be used for different functions.

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Sustaining Mentoring Presence The transition from homeroom or foreign language teacher to bilingual teacher took a long time since it was a change not only in practice, but also in cognition, so the reflective sessions during that year (2017) and the ensuing years until September 2021 played a key role in helping the teachers to selfassess existing understandings, justify new practices compared to previous ones, and notice patterns in bilingual teaching. Feedback took the form of short discussions with the teacher who was then in the supportive role, while the other teacher was leading the class, as well as a mini-feedback exchange session immediately after the lesson, which allowed a chance to contextualise the feedback. The immediacy and proximity of the feedback communicated during teaching was a key aspect of the transitional change. Observations of the practice of co-teaching created a multiplying effect on the depth and breadth of the post-lesson discussions, since each member of the pair raised different issues, and discussed their own practices in terms of pace, delivery, transition, flow, and content. They were also able to reflect immediately upon critical incidents, both with their partner and the mentor. The atmosphere was relaxed and positive, as shown, for example, by the teachers’ excited discussions immediately after the observations, sometimes even before the students had left the room, revealing their enthusiasm for their new understandings. This behaviour points to several benefits: achieving aspirational goals, increasing the pace of learning, gaining recognition as authorities, and improving quality of life (Hall & Liva, 2021; Hanks, 2017). The teachers variously described themselves as ‘lucky’, ‘comfortable’, and ‘feeling that I am doing something important’. Thus, the benefits seemed to extend from professional into their personal lives, creating a generally more positive attitude, which, as described in Dikilita¸s and Mumford (2020), was also witnessed by the children.

Sustaining Mentor Presence at a Distance The mentoring continued with online meetings, with the mentor providing two-day trainings the following year (2018). The programme coordinator, one of the original course participants, was able to continue the reflective discussions on questions raised by the teachers, and provide feedback, as well as arrange the programme, review the materials, and support the teachers’ continuing development. She was able to maintain the level of rapport among teachers, supported by a virtual mentor presence, as observer, discussant, expert, change agent and listener (see Dikilita¸s et al., Chapter 16).

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Over time in the trainings, more experienced teachers were paired up with new teachers for discussion and exchange of knowledge, and the less experienced were exposed to verbal narratives, inspiring stories of transformation about their bilingual practices and co-teaching shared by their more experienced colleagues. They also had the opportunity to sustain dialogue with experienced teachers and ask lingering questions that needed further explanation. Thus, the mentees became, to an extent, mentors themselves. One of the goals of mentoring bilingual teachers is to prepare them as leaders and advocates for bilingual education (Palmer, 2018) and this is particularly seen in the change of roles in the teachers, one of whom, as noted above, became programme coordinator. Some went on to give presentations or poster displays at conferences, under Kenan’s guidance. Simon, the second author, witnessed one such conference presentation, in which a teacher talked about her journey from language to bilingual teacher, and this led him to reflect on his own journey from language teacher to researcher and conference presenter, helped by Kenan. This shift in role from mentee to peer mentor and conference presenter suggests a transformative experience to gradually becoming mentors (Bunting & Williams, 2017), based on their experience of being mentored. Highlighting the close link between education and identity, Wenger (1999: 215) argues that learning is considered as ‘not just an accumulation of skills and information, but a process of becoming’. The influence of the mentoring can be summed up in a statement from one of the teachers, Öykü, in Dikilita¸s and Mumford (2020: 6), who reflected ‘I thought it was all about the languages then, but now I see if someone intends to carry out a bilingual programme, they need to acquire the understanding of twenty-first century skills.’ In other words, via transformative mentoring, the focus shifted from teaching language to engaging in collaboration, communication, and critical thinking in a bilingual community of teachers and students as well as administrators.

Implications The transformation of teachers’ beliefs is receiving increasing attention, involving, among other things, encouragement to reflect on beliefs through INSET (Borg, 2011). Transformative mentoring practices that were conducted in the preschool context introduced here carry several implications for mentors aiming to impact teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices, and support identity growth, e.g. from EFL or homeroom teacher to bilingual teacher. Transformative mentoring can help mentees:

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1. acquire relevant concepts through interactive use, and acquire the ability to explain, where necessary, through iteration and exposure, concepts such as co-teaching, in our case with reference to bilingual teachers and learners, and translanguaging (Garcia & Li, 2014) 2. unpack previous beliefs about teaching and learning, allowing pedagogical insights into new practices, such as bilingual teaching, and facilitating translanguaging as collaborative teachers 3. revisit their roles as teachers in consideration of the context, in this case a preschool facilitating bilingual acquisition of Turkish and English; they were encouraged to develop their teacher identities and consider how they present themselves to students as active interactors or knowledge transmitters. 4. engage in continuous dialogue by developing trust-based interaction and open communication, by allowing children’s use of two languages and by integrating two languages into their co-instruction 5. enhance their presence in dialogues, critical discussions, and collective thinking processes. In this case, the teachers were engaged in learning how to work together, how to facilitate children’s instruction in, and their use of, two languages. 6. create more democratic and open classrooms, by respecting children’s role in learning, in a context which is generally considered to be authoritarian, with teacher training often focused on transmission (Uysal, 2012).

Engagement Priorities 1. As a mentor, how would you implement the process of transformation in your own context? What mentor roles would you assume in your context? 2. What other key mentoring practices could you initiate to bring about identity change in teachers? 3. How could you provide feedback to facilitate transformation in teachers’ roles, knowledge, practices, and interaction? 4. What aspects of your current context would you highlight as having potential for bringing educational change through a shift in beliefs?

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12 Collaboration, Collegiality, Co-Production: Mentoring Exploratory Practitioners in International Contexts Judith Hanks, Ines K. Miller, and Maria I. A. Cunha

Introduction Mentoring is a relationship between human beings! One would expect there to be empathy, respect, encouragement, etc. There can be no good mentoring without these qualities. A human character! (Bruno Reis, Rio de Janeiro, 2021)

Mentoring is a crucial element of any pedagogic endeavour. It is complex, involving teacher educators, teachers (both novice and expert), practitioner researchers, as well as learners-as-mentors (collegially mentoring other learners) and teachers-as-learners (being mentored by their students and peers). Mentoring is fundamental to the development of any pedagogic practice, and, in this chapter, we propose to extend the ideas of Exploratory J. Hanks (B) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] I. K. Miller Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil M. I. A. Cunha University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_12

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Practice to the context of mentoring, so as to characterize a modality of mentoring based on collaboration, collegiality, and co-production. Being a principled framework of fully Inclusive Practitioner Research (see https:// www.fullyinclusivepr.com/), Exploratory Practice views teachers as life-long learners, engaged in a collaborative, sustainable search for deeper understandings of quality of life (Gieve & Miller, 2006). Within the scope of this volume, we base our discussion on our experience with teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a number of international contexts and over several decades. Understandings of mentoring are changing across the field, moving away from linear knowledge-transfer, where one is the ‘knower’ the other is the ‘knowledge-seeker’, towards facilitation and humanistic, holistic approaches (Nguyen, 2017), where mentoring is reciprocal. As many have argued (e.g. Tajino et al., 2016; Wedell & Malderez, 2013), teachers, lecturers, and teacher educators, are also life-long learners. Teachers explore and reflect upon their practices as well as encourage others to do the same. In our view, the mentoring relationship is, then, not top-down, but multidirectional and mutually beneficial. Nevertheless, although recent literature (e.g. Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Orland-Barak & Hasin, 2010) largely agrees that top-down conceptions of mentoring are outmoded, we still see many institutions, and individuals within those institutions, presenting mentoring as time-limited, goaloriented, top-down and transactional. As a consequence, in many contexts we see mentors randomly assigned, with little knowledge or training in what makes for good mentoring. Moreover, even if well-intentioned, mentors’ efforts remain unacknowledged in institutional structures such as workloads, reviews, and promotions, as Hobson et al. (2009) note. In this light, we wish to explore the following puzzle: • How does mentoring as collegial activity work within Exploratory Practice? Exploratory Practice is ‘an organic framework’ which is ‘flexible and open to further development’ (Hanks, 2017: 82), based on a number of key principles, which we reprise here: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Focus on understanding quality of life as the fundamental issue Involve everybody as practitioners developing their own understandings Work to bring people together in a common enterprise Work co-operatively for mutual development Make it [the work for understanding] a continuous enterprise

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6. Minimise the burden by integrating work for understanding into normal pedagogic practice 7. Ensure the work is relevant to the practitioners themselves. (Adapted from Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Hanks, 2017). Thus, Exploratory Practice provides an orientation for inclusive and community-based relationships which, while respecting individualities and local idiosyncrasies, foster collectively constructed inquiry and practitioner knowledge. The principles provide a framework for mentors who are willing to explore their puzzles as they inquire into their normal pedagogic practice. Indeed, mentors and mentees can be seen as learners who are engaged in mentoring relationships, i.e. ‘learners [who] are both unique individuals and social beings, who are capable of taking learning seriously, of taking independent decisions, and of developing as practitioners of learning’ (Allwright & Hanks, 2009: 15). To elucidate these points we draw on vignettes, conversations and accounts of teacher/ learner/ practitioner-researcher mentoring based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Izmir, Turkey; and Leeds, UK. These mentorship processes yield rich insights for the theory-practice nexus as indicated by Hanks (2018, 2019a, 2019b) and for practitioner research (see Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Miller et al., 2020). It is worth noting that in this chapter, we do not report on a single study or project, but instead we provide examples of how Exploratory Practice Mentoring is integrated into our normal pedagogic practice, in a range of contexts, and how we ensure that the work for understanding is relevant to the practitioners themselves. We begin by contextualizing our work as mentors, reflecting on the various ways in which our lives are interconnected through Exploratory Practice, and then, drawing upon our experiences, share our insights. We deliberately take a dialogic approach, with clear shifts in tone and style indicating different authorial responsibilities as we co-wrote our chapter. Collaborating between Brazil and the UK, we have attempted to encapsulate our different contexts, not only in the descriptions but also in the very language we use.

Context We, the co-authors of this text, are connected through the Exploratory Practice community that owes much to the inspirational work of Dick Allwright. Dick formally mentored two of us (Maria Isabel and Inés) during his visits to Rio de Janeiro and at Lancaster University, and became an informal

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mentor for Judith over time. Indeed, while co-authoring a book together, Dick and Judith developed a fruitful two-way mentoring relationship, which has continued, blossoming into a warm and productive friendship over the years, as is true of many of Dick’s collaborative professional/personal relationships. For all of us, these mutually beneficial interactions have expanded across oceans as we worked together to disseminate Exploratory Practice at international conferences, workshops, and events. It is this ‘doing-being’, which characterises Exploratory Practice Mentoring: our quality of life is enhanced by the mesh of friendship, pedagogical discussions, theory-building and intellectual stimulation involved in exploring our practice together. The relationship between Maria Isabel and Inés started 30 years ago, when they discovered their common interests in learners, teachers, and classroom life. As they developed seminars, courses, workshops, and research projects, they found in each other’s collaboration the support they needed for engaging in innovative learner and teacher development practices. With hindsight, ‘mutual mentoring’ (a term not then used) was being nurtured. This has continued as they have worked together as teacher educators and researchers, co-coordinating the Rio Exploratory Practice Group and linking internationally with practitioner-researchers like Judith. Meanwhile, since the mid1990s, Judith has been a (formal) mentor in a variety of international contexts for colleagues in Higher Education (HE), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), EFL, and Teaching English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL). While these relationships often started as institutionally-bound, Judith has, true to her lived experience of the Exploratory Practice principles, frequently re-balanced the relationship. For example, in setting up a project to introduce Exploratory Practice to teachers, teacher trainers, and curriculum developers in Turkey, she was initially the mentor for Kenan (one of the editors of this book). However, she maintained that his experience was as valid as hers, and that although he knew less about Exploratory Practice per se, there were many other areas in which he was more knowledgeable (e.g. the context of HE in Turkey). Likewise, with other collaborators locally in the UK (such as Jane and Jess, introduced below), she began as a motivator, encouraging others to follow their desires to try out Exploratory Practice, and, in each case, the relationship was deliberately made more equal, with manifestations of mutual respect for one another’s knowledge and experience as well as learning not only to do Exploratory Practice but also mentor others. Reflecting on our experiences, we focus now on how mentoring works as a collegial activity within Exploratory Practice.

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Insights Our first task is to address the complexity of connecting Exploratory Practice Mentoring to the characteristics of practitioner research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009), specifically Exploratory Practice. As a branch of the practitioner research family, Exploratory Practice shares characteristics with Action Research and Reflective Practice, whilst retaining its own distinctive identity, based on the principles of working collegially for understanding, integrating research and pedagogy, and prioritising quality of life (Hanks, 2017). These principles have inspired learners, teachers, and teacher educators in different parts of the world to begin investigating their own pedagogy. For instance, Dikilita¸s and Hanks (2018) and Slimani-Rolls and Kiely (2019) emphasize the importance of confidence-building in the mentoring relationship. While the contributors to both these volumes were experienced teachers, most were trying Exploratory Practice for the first time. They, naturally, expressed a desire for support, guidance and reassurance. Based on our mentoring experiences (see Miller & Cunha, 2017), we believe that a practitioner research stance allows us to see mentor-mentee relationships as environments where enriched processes of agentivity, collegiality, mutual development, criticality, and collaborative theory-building can unfold. We encourage those engaged in Exploratory Practice Mentoring to adopt an investigative and critical posture towards mentoring, questioning ‘the brokers of knowledge and power not only in schools but also in universities’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009: 86). Exploratory Practice Mentoring offers potential opportunities for mentors and mentees to reflect upon researcher-researched relationships as well as reflexively investigate their local issues in the mentor–mentee relationship. In the next sections we relate the Exploratory Practice principles, introduced earlier, to our mentoring experiences.

Mentoring Experiences of Maria Isabel and Inés Our long-time experience with Exploratory Practice in the context of preservice and in-service mentoring has shown us that our mentees are puzzled by ‘quality of life’ issues in the various educational contexts in which they do their research. Aligned with Miller et al., (2020: 8–9), we have come to understand that ‘students and teachers most wish to discuss [these issues] in classes or workshops in which they feel safe and sense a collegial working atmosphere’. This is why we conceive of our Exploratory Practice

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mentoring sessions as conversations in which mutual trust and respect can be co-constructed.

Understanding the Idiosyncratic Quality of Mentoring Life Collegiality is, thus, nurtured in our quest for understanding the quality of our mentoring lives and relationships, which permeates exploratory mentoring conversations, an integral part of the principled Exploratory Practice framework. Consequently, while planning this chapter, we invited five former mentees to engage in collegially constructed online reflective conversations to openly exchange ideas about their mentoring experiences. These mentees, who developed their practitioner research within Exploratory Practice, were: Ruan Nunes Silva, Patricia Infante Antunes de Moura, Nina Maria Faccioli Ribeiro Vilariño, Bruno de Matos Reis and Maria Aline Martins (real names used with their permission). As an illustration of some characteristics of Exploratory Practice mentoring, we will now reflect upon issues that arose during mentor-mentee sessions. When Maria Isabel’s mentee, Nina, recollected trying to understand why her students raised the need for democracy in their classroom, a parallel issue arose about expected mentoring rights and obligations. Nina argued mentors need to show trust, and Maria Aline emphasized: ‘Much of what the mentor does is to encourage and believe in our potential. She needs to make us feel at ease for the mentorship to flow naturally’ . As mentors, we welcome such thoughts, as they help us learn about mentors’ and mentees’ attitudes. Another learning moment during the conversation we are referring to here occurred when Ruan, who had previously experienced top-down mentoring, reflected, ‘when I started exchanging ideas with my research mentor, I was very resistant towards the ideas of Exploratory Practice. I was trained and programmed by the mentorship at work. However, I suddenly understood that I could be more open, not so categorical ’. In our mentoring we take the opportunity to engage in the work for understanding the tensions in interpersonal relationships. We notice that mentees’ commitment or their initial resistance may be due to the fact that we explicitly convey our qualitative, critical, practitioner research standpoint, and encourage non-traditional investigative concepts or procedures (e.g. puzzlement, pedagogic activities adapted for reflexivity, exploratory conversations focused on local understandings).

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Understanding Mentors and Mentees as Knowledge-Makers Our conversations, both during regular mentoring sessions and on the specific reflective conversation we are discussing, create an especially trustworthy locus for an exchange of feelings and thoughts. We, mentors and mentees, feel liberated to express ourselves as experience-based knowledgemakers, and wish to highlight some emerging issues that indicate the importance of developing knowledge about mentoring and its complexity. For example, we could hear Ruan sharing, on the one hand, his emotive negative memories about a prior relationship with his doctoral mentor and, on the other, his challenges in since assuming a mentoring role himself. He recollects that, as a mentee, he was ‘undermined ’; as a mentor, he verbalizes dilemmas between focusing on the technical aspects expected in a traditional mentoring conversation and his perceived need to respect the inextricable emotional tensions in mentoring. Patrícia joins the reflective conversation by pointing out another level of complexity involved in working with ‘the other’. In her own words, ‘It has a lot to do with the way the other is’ in life, not only in the mentoring experience. Having been a school mentor to her assistant teacher, while also welcoming her mentee’s issues and puzzles, Patrícia understands the intricacies of the mentor-mentee relationship. She explains that she ‘grew a lot ’ in learning from and with her mentee. Although she had been assigned to work towards an established target, she soon become aware that if life and mentoring issues are not understood as integrated, this ‘blocks the growing process’. These narratives are quite telling of knowledgemaking processes arising from personal professional experiences. Having been mentees and mentors, Ruan and Patrícia are aware of the knowledge they have built and trust themselves as knowledge-makers.

Understanding the Situatedness in Exploratory Practice Mentoring Another participant in our exploratory conversation about mentoring (Bruno) recollected his eagerness to come to the mentoring sessions after having worked out for himself concepts and issues that he considered basic for his doctoral research. So, he was playing an agentic role as a mentee. Initially, Inés was intrigued by this independent attitude and deep thinking, and was asking herself ‘Why do I feel that my mentoring is not contributing to Bruno’s learning process? ’ Since he saw ‘mentoring as a long conversation and mentoring sessions as “conversations” ’, Bruno was convinced that it was his responsibility to contribute to these encounters with his own insights. He

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framed Inés as ‘someone who listens…’ and ‘someone who clarified his ideas by listening ’. After addressing this delicate issue with Bruno, Inés affirmed her belief in the situatedness of each mentoring case and in the impossibility of generalizing practices. It is crucial to work towards understanding apparently idiosyncratic behaviour, since such understanding can contribute to the growth of collegiality and mutual development. As Exploratory Practice mentors and practitioner researchers, we consider developing local understandings critical for the quality of life within mentoring. The resulting enhanced practitioner understandings are central to reflectivity, reflexivity, awareness-raising, noticing, monitoring, sensitisation and conscientisation. In the same vein, we align ourselves with Lather’s (1986: 272) unorthodox notion of ‘catalytic validity’, which ‘represents the degree to which the research process reorients, focuses and energizes research participants toward knowing reality in order to transform it’. This interpretive approach contributes to our practitioner researcher reflection upon mentormentees’ ethical relations, considering empathy, trust, rapport, confidence, intimacy, reciprocity, resistance, and confrontation.

Mentoring Experiences of Judith We turn now to consider the blurring of boundaries between mentor and mentee roles that Exploratory Practice engenders, focusing on Judith’s experiences in the UK and in Turkey. We look at the mentoring relationship as a multidirectional force, which promotes agency, autonomy, and positive emotions, in language education. To illustrate this multi-directionality, we consider the ways in which a mentor can blur boundaries between institutionally assigned roles.

Blurring the Boundaries Between Mentor and Mentee Roles Much earlier in her career, Judith was assigned the role of Teacher Development Co-ordinator in her workplace. She ran workshops, invited guest speakers, and set up peer-observation programmes. The latter were distinctive because rather than being ‘quality control’ observations, in which an observer watched a class and then evaluated the teaching and learning they had seen, the purpose here was to encourage observers to reflect on what they had learned from the observation as much as observees. They were, therefore, ‘developmental’ rather than ‘evaluative’ observations, and were guided by the principles of working collegially for understanding, integrating the

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work for understanding into normal pedagogic activities, and prioritizing quality of life. This continued with workshops in which Judith invited teachers to share their puzzles about teaching. Their puzzles enabled her, as a mentor, to encourage the teachers to inquire into their own practices, beginning scholarship and research journeys. Through group discussion they could validate the questions asked (no puzzles were rejected, as all puzzles, even apparently humorous ones, led to reflection – see Hanks, 2017: 235– 236). Since Exploratory Practice focuses on developing understanding (not problem-solving), these were springboards for reflection, not triggers for solutions. Naturally, this process of puzzling led to some colleagues becoming interested in Exploratory Practice. In 2002, this had not been tried in the UK in EAP, and although Judith was knowledgeable about Exploratory Practice through reading, and discussions with key figures, she had little experience of putting it into practice. Judith invited her students in in-sessional classes to try it (Allwright & Hanks, 2009), and their enjoyment piqued the interest of another colleague, Jane (name selected by her). Jane decided to try it in her own EAP classes and was delighted by the results (see Hanks, 2012, 2017, 2020 for accounts of different classes). Although Judith was ‘senior’ to Jane in terms of knowing more about Exploratory Practice, and at one point was also her manager, Jane had no hesitation in challenging Judith to reflect. Both questioned one another’s assumptions and helped each other to refine practice. For example, Jane was keen to involve all the students in the class over four weeks, while Judith hesitated. Concurrently, Jane was uncertain about what would happen if students said they just wanted traditional grammar lessons and rejected the opportunity to explore their puzzles. It was important to note this anxiety and spend time discussing it. In this way, both worked collegially to support one another through peaks and troughs of engagement with Exploratory Practice. Jane and Judith were engaging in ‘mutual mentoring’ through Exploratory Practice. This camaraderie has continued for many years; very close while working on the same programmes, then a little more distant (but still warm) when Judith moved to a different department. This mentoring relationship, as they introduced Exploratory Practice to colleagues on different courses, and continued to explore our/their puzzles, has sometimes meant that one person had more information, energy, or experience than the other(s). However, it has also meant taking turns to be listener, or encourager, or tentative explorer. The subtle interweaving of roles may be difficult for someone outside the

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Exploratory Practice framework of principles to understand, but it is an egalitarian relationship in which collaboration has led to mutual development and thus enhanced quality of life. In this way, practitioners have allowed themselves to run the gamut of human emotions, including hesitancy, fear, curiosity, attraction, interest, excitement, and fulfilment at different times for each. Exploratory Practice Mentoring has meant acknowledging our complex human responses over time, and this, too, has contributed to understanding quality of life.

Mentoring in Professional Contexts In 2009 Judith ran a series of teacher development workshops in her workplace discussing Exploratory Practice in EAP. Many teachers expressed an interest and a group of colleagues volunteered to try it out. Others were curious to begin with, but then moved on to other interests. It is important to reiterate Hanks’ (2019a) point that Exploratory Practice should not be imposed on practitioners and that it should instead come from their inner motivation. One of these colleagues, Jess Poole (real name used with her permission), has continued, through the ebbs and flows of life, to puzzle about her practice and inspire others, both locally and globally over a decade. Jess and another colleague decided to try Exploratory Practice in their teaching. Since Judith was now in a more traditionally hierarchical role, she felt it extremely important to emphasise the voluntariness of the enterprise. Jess articulates the collegial nature of Exploratory Practice Mentoring, explaining: ‘knowing there is someone who I could ask about something beyond my knowledge-base is hugely reassuring ’, adding: ‘even if I don’t necessarily need to make use of it ’. More practically, perhaps, Jess notes the usefulness of having an ‘ally and a connection to another department ’. What becomes clear is the importance of reassurance from the mentor to the mentee that the work (in this case Exploratory Practice) that she was doing was valuable. It was not ‘research-lite’ (a common put-down in academia), but was instead a serious, scholarly, and intellectually stimulating endeavour, and this recognition from a respected other was appreciated. At times, this was achieved simply by listening intently, and responding to questions, needs and worries. Again, though, it should be emphasised that this was mutual: the ‘mentor’ suffered just as much from self-doubt as the ‘mentee’ (though usually at different times), and both individuals provided much needed emotional sustenance. Judith has continued to develop her praxis, working alongside Jess, albeit at a distance. Their last close collaboration in a more traditional mentoring relationship was in 2010, but since then, they have talked together, travelled

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together, and presented at national, then international, conferences. Judith vividly remembers Jess’s contributions to her development. For example, during conversations at a conference, Jess recommended Sousanis’ (2015) profound work involving comics to present alternative visions of education. Judith was inspired to buy it for herself, and it deeply affected her, resonating as it did with the epistemological underpinnings of Exploratory Practice. So, just as Judith shared publications and principles of Exploratory Practice, so Jess shared works on creativity and philosophy. The mentoring relationship, then, involves sharing subject knowledge and pedagogic knowledge. It embraces emotional support (e.g. practising presentations together, listening sympathetically, and providing useful feedback) and positive emotions as we explore our work at home and abroad. However, Judith has also encouraged autonomy. Arguably, the most effective mentoring is to provide support when needed, but also to be able to step away, confident that the ‘mentees’ can manage on their own.

Mentoring as a Way of Building a Collaborative Community Looking beyond these experiences, we turn now to briefly consider mentoring in Northern Cyprus and Turkey as part of the creation of an international practitioner research network. Here, Judith worked with Kenan Dikilita¸s to introduce Exploratory Practice to colleagues in a range of settings. As is congruent with Exploratory Practice, they took pains to emphasise that each person brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. Here, too, regular workshops were offered, and teachers were invited to share their puzzles about practice. However, a difference from the fullyintegrated Exploratory Practice work discussed above was that these workshops were extra, taking place after the working day had finished. In other words, they were not an integral part of the participants’ practice but were in fact additional to it. It was crucial therefore to stick to the principles of relevance, and mutual development, not adding to practitioners’ workload burden. People were free to come or absent themselves as they wished, with no questions asked. This was doubly important for those who were participating at the end of a full day of teaching/marking/meetings. This set the tone for the project, respecting their needs as professionals and as people. In fact, one participant was somewhat resistant at times (he has described this in Trotman, 2018 and provided a vignette in Hanks, 2017: 253–255). He needed to be critical, before he could begin to address Exploratory Practice. Interestingly, once he had worked through these issues for himself, he became

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an advocate, and even began using Exploratory Practice as part of his teacher education programme in his institution. We, Kenan and Judith, learned as much from the participants as they learned from us: mutual development writ large. Kenan, for example, learned to go beyond the standard problem-solution mode, and instead began puzzling about his practice. Like Trotman (2018) above, he needed to work through certain assumptions about what research and pedagogy might look like before he could accept an Exploratory Practice way of approaching the world. Judith, a seasoned puzzler, learned much more about the contexts in Turkey and Northern Cyprus. She drew on older teacher-training reflexes to elicit dissent, and work through resistance, and was surprised at their efficacy. She also learned of the importance of making connections: serendipity was crucial in the move from a locally-situated project in Izmir to reach Northern Cyprus. Questions are often asked about Exploratory Practice ‘inspiring’ others. One example of doing so was to create threads of contact with others who had done Exploratory Practice in different parts of the world. In addition to sharing readings (e.g. Chapter 13 from Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Hanks, 2015a, 2015b), Judith also asked Jess Poole (UK-based) and Carolina Apolinário (Brazil-based) to each write a short letter to the group, talking about their experiences with Exploratory Practice. These brief and informal messages from other parts of the world opened doors and windows for the participants. They responded to the principles ‘bring people together’ and ‘involve everybody as practitioners developing their own understandings’ outlined above. In seeing/hearing other practitioners talking about their puzzles, their ‘potentially exploitable pedagogic activities’ integrating research and pedagogy, the participants in Izmir developed in confidence to share their own. Some individuals were keen to continue beyond the funding for the project, and not only presented at conferences in Turkey and abroad, but also began writing up their work. These eventually formed the chapters to be found in Dikilita¸s and Hanks (2018). Others have continued to work with Exploratory Practice in different parts of the world (e.g. Webb & Seratne, 2020). In each situation outlined above, we (Judith, Maria Isabel, and Inés) established our stance that it was a co-produced approach: we were not there to tell others how to do things in their local contexts (this would have been unforgivably patronising). Instead, we aimed to establish a welcoming space for practitioners to reflect, question, problematise and investigate their practice: By taking a more practitioner-led approach to mentoring research by language teaching professionals, we turned the ‘cascade training model’ upside down. In

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doing so, we encountered a wellspring of curiosity, enthusiasm and motivation that bodes well for the field as a whole. (Hanks & Dikilita¸s, 2018: 33)

Implications Mentoring involves learning from one another; it ebbs and flows with life changes over the years, and in healthy relationships it can turn into lifelong friendships. It is/can be a central plank in developing scholarship and retaining interest in the human processes of learning and teaching. It involves an awareness of interculturality and leads to the blurring and breaking down of boundaries, as in Exploratory Practice (Hanks, 2019b). Implications for Exploratory Practice Mentoring include a need to examine the affordances of collaboration (i.e. teachers and learners as co-researchers), the intricacies of identities, roles and responsibilities, and the delicate webs of intercultural, interpersonal relations. Mentoring affords opportunities for personal professional dialogues, which enable practitioners to co-construct collegially agentive learning. The examples discussed in this chapter suggest that the principles of Exploratory Practice may aid mentoring processes in a variety of subtle ways. This means that mentors and mentees are able to explore their mentoring processes together, as equals. Each person both benefits from and sustains the other. This might mean engaging in research, collaborating in the coproduction and co-analysis of data, or inquiring deeply into praxis. As they do so, mentors and mentees contextualise their relationships and inquire into unique aspects of their practice. They produce new knowledge about themselves and others during this multi-directional mentoring process. Although there is clearly an element of conveying energising commitment, taking participants on a journey of discovery, we argue that the journey starts within the individual. For some (mentors and mentees alike), this might require some recalibration of ontological and epistemological assumptions. As this chapter has outlined, qualities that mentors and mentees activate in these relationships include: • sympathetic (but not uncritical) listening • space for colleagues to identify, examine, and share their puzzles in a stressfree way • trust • empathy • egalitarian stance

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• mutual development • reassurance and confidence building. Through Exploratory Practice mentoring, teachers-as-learners puzzle, investigate, and disseminate together. While this form of mentorship can be challenging, involving a productive vulnerability, opening up uncertainty, sharing doubts, it is worthwhile. We work for the development of understandings rather than on developing technical abilities; we encourage integration among the people involved as well as between pedagogic and investigative practices; we aim at creating sustainable opportunities for teachers, students, and teacher educators as key developing learners and as practitioners of teaching and learning. We have encountered many mentors in our personal/professional lives, notably Dick Allwright. In Rio, these mentorship ties have been maintained not only with Inés and Maria Isabel, but especially with older and newer members of the Rio de Janeiro Exploratory Practice Group. Living in this group has enabled us to build a community of mentorship. Judith adds her mentors, Simon Borg, Caroline Campbell, Adrienne Harrison, James Simpson, and Martin Wedell (inter alia) to Jane, Jess, and Kenan in this local and international community of practice. In each case, we have all learned from one another, over many years, as both mentees ourselves and from those positioned as our mentees. In the most fruitful of these settings, the mentor/mentee relationship has been multidirectional and has lasted for years; much longer than the official timespan set by the institution. This is because such relationships are open-ended and transformative in visible and invisible ways.

Conclusions Returning to the question we posed at the beginning of this chapter, we suggest that it is crucial for mentors to enhance understandings of collegial mentoring to go beyond the transactional and mechanical and delve instead into the ontological and epistemological elements of mentoring we have discussed. We have outlined some of the ways in which mentoring as collegial activity ‘works’ within Exploratory Practice. This is as a rounded, holistic approach, whereby colleagues work together to identify what puzzles them about praxis (theory and pedagogy both), investigate together, listen to one another, learn from each other as they explore.

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Writing this co-authored chapter meant that our own relationships underwent changes too. We each learned from the other, as we shared our different viewpoints about what to write about, what to include and what to leave out. Underpinning it all was a sense of mutual respect, a non-hierarchical mutual mentoring approach, and a willingness to trust one another to represent all views fairly and accurately. Through illustrating how mentoring works within Exploratory Practice, we have sought to demonstrate that traditional top-down, time-limited, transactional mentoring processes are outmoded. Instead, we see mentoring as involving • collegiality (an egalitarian, horizontal relationship, not vertical), • collaboration (all participants working together with common aims of mutual development), and • co-production (participants: teachers, teacher educators, and learners, setting their own questions/puzzles about practice, exploring their pedagogy, and theorizing their practice). We welcome others to join our Exploratory Practice community (note that you do no have to identify as an Exploratory Practice person to be able to acknowledge, celebrate, cite, and/or reference the principles and authors discussed here) and we look forward to hearing about your multidirectional, mutual mentoring experiences.

Engagement Priorities • If you are now inspired to bring Exploratory Practice into your own school/university community, how will you make mentoring (as mentee/mentor) central to the process? • If you are currently mentoring, you might consider: to what extent do the principles of Exploratory Practice Mentoring inform your work?

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13 Empowering Teachers Through Mentoring Within Language Teacher Associations: Examples from Africa Kuchah Kuchah and Amira Salama

Introduction Quality education continues to be at the centre of national and international policies because of its perceived role in breaking the cycle of poverty and reducing inequalities (United Nations, 2018). In Africa, like elsewhere in the Global South, discussions of quality education have centred around the need for quality teacher education and development (e.g. Akyeampong et al., 2007; UNESCO, 2015), particularly in response to the demographic rise in school enrolments in recent years and the acute lack of educational resources (Kuchah et al., 2019). In fact, studies that have examined the challenges to education on the continent (e.g. Focho, 2018; Tembe, 2006) suggest that the implementation of the Education for All (EFA) policy, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, led to a sharp increase in school enrolments without a concomitant increase in infrastructural and resource provision. As a result, over-crowded classrooms, lack of textbooks, low and inadequate resources K. Kuchah (B) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. Salama Nile University, Sheikh Zayed City, Egypt e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_13

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and a general lack of formal in-service education programmes are common themes in education and pedagogy in Africa (Shamim & Kuchah, 2016). While these challenges affect all students and teachers in the school system, there is sufficient evidence of even more complex school and social barriers to female education on the continent. Roudi-Fahimi and Moghadam (2006) for example, provide evidence from North Africa that the percentage of females over age 15 who are illiterate is more than double that of males. Findings from a recent study in Rwanda (Uworwabayeho et al., 2021) indicate significant gender differences in secondary school, with boys outperforming girls in English examinations nationwide. Low school completion rates for girls have also been recorded in 21 African countries (Male & Wodon, 2018). This is further exacerbated by the near lack of female leadership in formal and non-formal educational organisations (Mulkeen, 2010; Suen, 2013) despite research evidence (e.g. from 10 Francophone African countries) that female teachers have a positive influence on girls’ school achievements without affecting boys (Lee et al., 2019). Within this dynamic, Africa has witnessed a rising demand for, and inclusion of, English in the school curriculum, especially in the traditional non-anglophone countries (Coleman, 2013), despite existing challenges in teacher recruitment and retention which sometimes make it difficult for governments to focus on the professional development of state schoolteachers (Mtika & Gates, 2011; UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2016). Where institutional support for teacher development has been provided, this is often top-down in nature with no systematic assessment of the training needs of teachers; Ministries of Education have tended to rely on external support from organisations that are detached from the realities of the context within which teachers live and work and, as such, offer models of teacher education that sometimes lack adjustment and adaptation to the needs of local teachers (Areaya, 2016). Our own experience of working with African teachers in various projects suggests that to better address the challenges outlined above, language education in Africa requires approaches to teacher education that are embedded in the sociocultural realities within which teachers work. This, we argue, can be achieved through mentoring that empowers teachers to investigate their classroom practices as well as supports more engagement of female teachers in language education leadership within the continent. In this respect, a significant number of national language teacher associations (LTAs) have emerged in the continent in recent years and are partnering with each other (see Kuchah et al., 2019, for an overview) to identify shared needs and seek solutions to common challenges. This is particularly the case within Africa ELTA, founded in 2014 with 22 member associations (see

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https://www.africaelta.org). These LTAs are increasingly taking over some of the responsibilities of teacher education from Ministries of Education and are offering professional development opportunities that are less demanding and more accessible for teachers. At the heart of their initiatives is their potential to provide platforms for informal mentoring and contextually relevant teacher development initiatives that empower teachers beyond the confines of formal teacher education and the restrictions that some educational stakeholders may place to wield influence and impede individual teacher development efforts (Elsheikh et al., 2018). In this chapter, we focus on two teacher mentoring programmes we have both initiated and developed within Africa ELTA—a teacher research mentoring project and a female leadership mentoring scheme—to address the needs and challenges highlighted above. This is with the view of showing how localizing mentoring practices and contextualizing teacher education efforts through LTAs can enhance the potential of teachers and result in the development of thought leadership, which is essential for sustainable teacher development in less favourable contexts in Africa. To do this, we examine the processes, challenges, and opportunities for teacher mentoring in this context, showing the extent to which such initiatives are essential both for the professional development of teachers and for the generation and dissemination of contextually embedded pedagogic and professional ideas and practices. Drawing from these two teacher mentoring initiatives, we argue for the need for a participant-centred approach to professional development through localized mentoring.

Teacher Mentoring in the African Context: Between Global Trends and Local Realities The two mentoring programmes discussed in this chapter were informed by recent trends in thinking and research on mentoring which have been framed around a socio-cultural view of teacher development. This view promotes mentor–mentee collaboration as the localised co-construction of professional identity (Asención Delaney, 2012), with the potential to build capital and habitus in the context of mentees’ work (Park et al., 2016). Ideally, as Gakonga (2019) explains, the mentee-mentor relationship is reciprocal. We felt the need to encourage reciprocity in the mentoring programmes, since reciprocity is often hampered, in some African contexts, by educational cultures where power differentials permeate mentor–mentee interactions and

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relationships (Kuchah, 2008; Tenjoh-Okwen, 1996). For example, traditionally, teacher education and mentoring in Africa has been based on a transmission model of teacher development. Underlying transmission-based approaches to mentoring in language education is the craft model (Wallace, 1991) of teacher education which sees the ‘expert’ teacher as a model to be copied by the ‘novice’ teacher or trainee. Tenjoh-Okwen (1996) describes an example of how this model works in a Cameroonian context where trainee teachers are guided through demonstration lessons, often given by the mentor, and expected to replicate the same elaborate, step by step, rigid lesson plans in their own teaching. This model of mentoring, he argues, results in ritual teaching behaviour which trainees usually abandon as useless and time consuming once they graduate. However, there is a growing shift towards a more reciprocal approach to mentoring which provides space for reflexivity between mentor and mentee and potentially plays a transformative role in teacher development. Examples of such an approach are illustrated in studies in South Africa. For example, Frick et al. (2010) examine a school-based mentoring programme, which is framed around reflective practice, and highlight the potential of mentoring to be a catalyst to enhance the reflection essential for bridging the gap between theory and practice. Msila’s (2016) study of a school leadership mentorship programme in South Africa found that effective mentoring of school leaders led to leadership practices that enhanced a culture of achievement, inspired a desire for ongoing professional development and enabled school leaders to forge healthy links with other stakeholders within the school community. Central to the models of mentoring discussed above is the importance of aligning the mentoring focus to mentees’ needs and expectations through an explicit philosophical orientation, a clear plan and set goals (Gagen & Bowie, 2005). As Whitaker et al. (2007) have suggested, teachers find professional development more effective when it is personally and professionally useful to their unique needs and challenges. In mentoring in-service teachers, however, an additional requirement for shaping a mentoring programme should be to build a collegial relationship between mentors and mentees to dissipate potential ‘power asymmetry’ between them (van Louw & Waghid, 2008). The two mentoring projects described in this chapter illustrate how participants’ expressed needs and the construction of mutual understandings of goals and support systems were built into design and implementation processes. This enabled teachers to develop their understandings and expertise around their areas of professional interests and provided space for mentors to learn about mentees’ contexts, thus ensuring that there were mutual gains.

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Insights Teacher Mentoring Within African LTAs Besides school-based mentoring projects, alternative mentoring spaces can have a huge impact on teachers’ professional lives and work. These alternative mentoring spaces include those provided by language teacher associations (LTAs), which are increasingly recognised as agents of change (Adoniou, 2017). Mentoring has been shown to be one form of teacher education within LTAs, mainly because LTA networking activities give teachers opportunities to challenge themselves in specific ways based on their specific context (Collet, 2016; Niyibigira & Kwitonda, 2021). However, the approach and process of mentoring teachers within LTAs require some adaptation to, and sometimes re-structuring of, existing models. This is even more the case in Africa where governmental institutions with global reach based in Western countries and other representatives from the ‘centre’, including universities and major publishing houses, commit considerable resources and foreign expertise to support teacher development initiatives across the continent. This might mean that ideas and resources informing teacher development are generated primarily from other contexts, particularly the West (Banegas et al., 2021; Shamim & Kuchah, 2016), neglecting the lived and professional experiences of local teachers and their learners. However, collaborative teacher development initiatives, where teachers support each other in developing ideas and best practices, are emerging. Such collaborative initiatives often involve experienced and knowledgeable colleagues supporting each other and their novice colleagues in collegial networks. Examples include communities of practice in Rwanda (Niyibigira & Kwitonda, 2021), pedagogic cells in Senegal (Kuchah et al., 2019), teacher research groups in Cameroon (Ekembe & Fonjong, 2018), and national and regional LTAs such as Africa ELTA (Elsheikh & Effiong, 2018). These support systems provide both systematic and informal mentoring opportunities that have been under-researched. In what follows, we share two examples of mentoring programmes that we initiated and implemented within Africa ELTA—the teacher research and the female leadership mentoring programmes—and reflect on the processes and outcomes.

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The Africa ELTA Teacher Research Mentoring Project Beginnings, Processes and Experiences Since May 2017, the first author has been involved in forging relationships between Africa ELTA and existing international organisations in the field of TESOL, initially as Strategic Development Officer of the Association and later as Africa ELTA Adviser, and President of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL). Since then, Africa ELTA has partnered with three of IATEFL’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs) in running two Pre-conference events (PCEs) at Africa ELTA annual conferences in Senegal and Nigeria in 2018 and 2019 respectively (see Kuchah et al., 2022 for details). The teacher research project discussed in this section is the outcome of collaboration with the IATEFL Research SIG (ReSIG) during the 2019 Africa ELTA PCE in Abuja, Nigeria. The theme was Teachers in Action: Exploring Global Issues through classroom research. This collaboration was particularly sought because of IATEFL ReSIG’s previous experience in supporting an LTA research project in Cameroon (Smith & Kuchah, 2016) and the involvement of some of its members in similar projects elsewhere in the Global South (e.g. Rebolledo et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2017; this volume Chapters 14–16). To ensure that the PCE reflected African classroom experiences, six of the seven speakers at the PCE were African teachers with experience of classroom research within the continent. The event consisted of a plenary presentation and six hands-on workshops, each addressing different aspects of classroom research and showcasing examples from the work of facilitators (see Kuchah et al., 2022). These examples served as input for a subsequent task requiring participants to identify specific challenges or puzzles in their own teaching as a basis for developing their own research plans. Building on previous local initiatives (Ekembe & Fonjong, 2018; Smith & Kuchah, 2016), we took an enhancement approach to teacher development (Kuchah, 2013), which encouraged teachers to see themselves as experts of their context capable of developing inquiry-led understandings of contextually appropriate pedagogic practices. This approach informed the design of a programme to provide mentoring for teachers to conduct classroom research in order to generate practical solutions to context-specific challenges. Teachers from 12 African countries signed up to the teacher research mentoring group and because the mentoring project was going to be mainly

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virtual, we1 insisted on participants subscribing to an email and WhatsApp group and checking their emails at regular intervals. The email group served as the main channel of communication in order to preempt eventual challenges with communicating with mentors; the WhatsApp group, which was more familiar to participants, served as a platform for socialization, setting expectations and reminders. A separate WhatsApp group was also created for both Africa ELTA and ReSIG volunteers to share experiences, discuss progress and challenges and share useful mentoring tips throughout the project. To encourage participants to identify research ideas from their own classroom experiences, we invited them to write a 200–300-word piece, within a month, based on the following prompts: a. What is/are the major problem(s) you face in your teaching - what is problematic about this and why? b. If you wanted to investigate this or other issues in your teaching, what would be your top three research questions? List them in order of importance. Examples of classroom research projects (e.g. Smith et al., 2017) were also shared with participants to give them an idea of what teachers in similar challenging contexts were doing. A total of 22 participants responded to the prompts and their responses were collated and shared with the group of mentors with the aim of helping the mentoring team identify patterns in research focus and facilitate the mentor–mentee matching process. Once the matching had been completed, mentors were included in the participants’ WhatsApp group to ‘socialise’ with mentees and co-construct expectations, since the programme allowed mentors the freedom to choose their work focus based on their mentee’s needs, following Kennedy’s (2005) approach to mentoring. Overall, as in an online professional learning community discussed in Chapter 16, mentors supported their mentees through the process of identifying and understanding issues in their classrooms, formulating their research questions, designing data collection tools, collecting and interpreting data, reflecting on practice and modifying it where necessary, and reporting on experience. The programme was also supported by four interactive webinars, presented by ReSIG speakers, and attended by both mentors and mentees. These webinars addressed different stages in an exploratory action research process (Smith & Rebolledo, 2018), including identifying and understanding a problem or 1

The two authors of this chapter coordinated the entire mentoring project and also mentored teacher researchers.

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puzzle, developing a research focus and questions, as well as different ways of collecting, analysing and interpreting data (see Kuchah et al., 2022 for details).

Reporting and Reflecting on the Mentorship Programme As highlighted earlier, the goal of mentoring within Africa ELTA is to nurture local expertise and enhance teachers’ ability to generate and share contextually appropriate pedagogic practices. This goal was partly achieved during the Africa ELTA Online Symposium in 2020, with three teachers from the research group agreeing to be further mentored to present their research to an international audience. The goal of this additional mentoring was two-fold: first, to disseminate the work of mentees to inspire other African teachers to consider classroom research as part of their professional growth and hopefully join the next cycle of the research programme and second, to support and showcase mentees’ presentation skills and build their self-confidence as conference speakers. This was important, since some mentees who had completed their research projects indicated they were still not confident in their public speaking skills. This realisation shaped our thinking, and led us to explore further opportunities for mentoring, discussed in our second project below. A final phase of the research programme was to mentor participants through writing up their reports for publication. This was done in three steps: first each mentor acted as an external audience and critical friend, providing feedback on their mentees’ draft reports; next, mentors swapped mentee reports and provided independent feedback which each mentor and their mentee(s) then had to consider and finally, the editorial team (see Kuchah et al., 2022) engaged directly with the mentees to edit their final reports. These steps provided mentees with opportunities to interact with different mentors with international experience and learn about writing for an international audience. Looking back at the programme now, it seems that the collaborative nature of the design and process played an important role in motivating participants. Our adoption of an enhancement approach (Kuchah, 2013) to mentoring, which foregrounded teachers’ own expertise and agency, empowered mentees to take greater control of their research projects; mentors served as facilitators of reflection, encouraging and enriching mentees’ reflective practice (Gakonga, 2019). Furthermore, designing the mentorship around teachers’ own expressed needs and interests and personalising mentoring arrangements meant that teachers experienced some degree of control over their learning

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and were free to experiment in their classrooms as part of their research. This seems to have influenced their views of their own teaching practices, as reported by a mentee whose research focus was on teaching large underresourced classes: ‘my research experience has made me realize that teaching in large classes with low resources could be viewed in a positive way in the sense that teachers have to bring more creativity and more strategies to make students involved in the learning process’. Another key theme emerging from mentee accounts was the realisation that students can play an important part in designing and teaching lessons. For example, a mentee reported that she had ‘learned from this research that my students need to participate in decisions about the types of topics and some of the resources we use in class; this will make them more engaged’. Another mentee captured this in the following words: My exploratory research project has been very profitable for me as it has acted as an eye opener, proving to me that when learners’ problems are identified with their help and solutions negotiated with them, the results are profound, beneficial to all and long lasting; the teaching, learning process is also very enjoyable to all.

The collaborative nature of this programme also facilitated reciprocity in mentor–mentee interactions, enabling both Africa ELTA and ReSIG mentors to learn. Mentors’ reflections on their experiences suggested that the mentoring process gave them insights into teachers’ experiences in contexts they were not familiar with and enriched their understanding of the world of TESOL. Indeed, mentors saw the programme as part of their own CPD, one reporting ‘it was a great, rewarding, and inspiring experience, which I would love to repeat’. The transformative nature of this programme, which resonated in the feedback from all mentors, is encapsulated in the following quote from a mentor: I learned a lot about the realities of teaching in African secondary schools and how resourceful and dedicated teachers are. I got a small view into a part of the world that I don’t know very well. I also learned more about exploratory action research and saw more of its impact in practice – and it is now something that I’d like to bring to CPD work with ESOL and EFL teachers in my part of the world through my chair role of a teacher development organisation in the North of England.

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Our data illustrate the centrality of collegiality and knowledge coconstruction within LTA-based mentoring involving reciprocal mentor– mentee relationships. As Gakonga (2019) highlights in reciprocal mentoring relationships, mentors can perform their role with the dual aim to contribute to the teaching profession, and to engage in their own reflective growth. We would argue that an LTA-based mentoring project has potential to be a space for formal and informal mentoring and professional development for both mentors and mentees, thus facilitating the goals of all involved. These goals include reducing the inequalities discussed above.

Africa ELTA Female Leadership Mentoring Programme (FLMP) Beginnings and Preparations In an effort to support female African classroom teachers to develop the necessary skills to demonstrate leadership through their active participation in local and international conferences, Africa ELTA launched a call for applications for a remote mentoring programme in collaboration with Equal Voices in ELT to mentor female classroom teachers in Africa to become conference presenters. More than 120 applications were received, which demonstrates the need for such a programme, and Africa ELTA rigorously blind-reviewed applications (see Salama & Leather [2021] for details of the programme design selection criteria). Eight female teachers were selected; they had to be classroom teachers in rural areas with limited access to resources because those are the teachers who lack the means to attend trainings that are usually organized in the city, far from their homes. They also had to show some evidence of leadership in their local community. First-time presenters were preferred, since the programme was meant to be an introduction to conference presentation skills. Their teaching experience ranged from 3 to 30 years. The mentors came mainly from the UK, US, Honduras, and Spain. The mentees came from Senegal, Tanzania, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and Burkina Faso. As in the research project presented above, explaining the goals to both mentees and mentors was crucial. This is because a key reason for the success of any mentorship programme is a commitment to programme goals (Gagen & Bowie, 2005; Kajs, 2002). The second author, as programme organizer and representative of Africa ELTA, held individual meetings with mentees at the beginning and during the programme to clarify the difference between a formal teacher education programme and this mentoring programme, where mentees would receive professional support to improve

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their presentation skills. Those one-on-one meetings were important to explore the individual needs of mentees and hear about their concerns and challenges. Challenges that mentees shared were mainly about poor Internet connectivity and busy schedules. Being aware of these issues helped us to adapt the programme to meet their needs. For example, meetings were not all held on Zoom in order to avoid consuming bandwidth. We created a WhatsApp group to promote a less formal low-tech context to facilitate group interaction, dissipate power barriers and clarify expectations. This was particularly important as all mentors were ELT experts from the Global North, a status that would likely be somewhat intimidating for female teachers with very little previous experience in interacting with professionals outside Africa. Mentors adopted a reciprocal approach to teacher mentoring, aiming to make the process transformative (Kennedy, 2005). For example, through attending the programme orientation, asking questions and keeping communication open with the second author managing the programme, mentors were open to learning about and understanding the mentees’ realities and to reshaping their mentoring approach; mentees in turn developed new perceptions of what mentoring invoves. In this way, both mentors and mentees were able to adapt a collaborative working relationship which helped them better achieve the programme goals. With these developing understandings and given the flexibility and freedom to provide input on the programme outline, content, and process, mentors created and shared a resource bank for mentoring sessions which was mainly informed by mentees’ continuous feedback and reflections on their developing knowledge of the programme goals (see Salama & Leather, 2021, for details).

Building Opportunities into the Mentorship Programme for Practice and Supportive Feedback A key feature of the programme was that mentees were invited to make a practice presentation after six weeks. Beforehand, teachers were mentored on choosing a topic, selecting a focus, delivering the presentation, and were offered technical support. This practice session had three main goals, firstly to provide an opportunity for the mentees to receive feedback on their performance, and secondly to foster a sense of community and strengthen respect and trust; mentees had to present in front of all mentors and other mentees and receive formative feedback from both their peers and mentors during the session. Creating this sense of community was essential for the mentoring process because, as Asención Delaney (2012: s187) points out, ‘an evaluative orientation to mentoring can interfere in the development of trust and open

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communication between mentor and mentee’. We advocated for supportive rather than judgemental mentoring, aiming for a safe place for mentees to develop their skills. The last goal was to test the mentees’ ability to use the presentation online platform. The feedback mentees received aimed to help them identify areas and skills that needed more practice in the next 3–4 weeks.

Mentees’ Reflections: The Influence of the Multicultural Dimension of the Programme Reflecting afterwards, mentees praised the multicultural dimension of the programme, as it gave them the chance to learn about other mentees’ teaching contexts and challenges. One reported: The programme has exposed me to different diversities from my fellow mentees and mentors which add flavour to my multicultural understanding. This understanding is very important to me as a public speaker since my task is addressing an audience with different cultural backgrounds.

Mentees shared their satisfaction with the programme for offering them cultural exchange and networking opportunities through the multi-national community created by the participation of mentors and mentees.

Mentees’ Reflections: Developing Presentation and Digital Skills Reflecting on developing her presentation skills, one teacher reported: I have learnt the art of public speaking as I had never given a presentation before, whether physically or virtually. I was given different materials, samples and guidance to help me on this and now I am able to present to a diverse audience.

A benefit another teacher highlighted was learning to prepare her presentation using ‘attractive slides’. The opportunity to improve their language and digital skills were other benefits that were mentioned. One teacher reflected: As a teacher I have been using English to teach, but I always communicate in Kiswahili (my native language) because the people around me use Kiswahili a lot. Sometimes we do forget how to even respond in daily conversations in English. In this programme, I had to communicate in English with my mentor

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and others in writing and during conversations, so I have improved my English a lot with this practice.

Another mentee noted: I learnt a new tool of communication, Zoom. If I wasn’t in this programme, I wouldn’t have known how to operate it, and I’m sure I’ll get to know others.

The Reciprocal Approach and Relationship-Building During the Mentoring Programme Mentors valued the learning experience, one citing, for example: ‘the opportunity to develop a friendship with another teacher, watching her develop through her hard work and dedication, and the opportunity to find out about so many different contexts’. Another mentor expressed how the programme had helped her develop her mentoring skills from limited prior experience. Mentees also felt they benefitted from the relationship, for example in developing multicultural understanding, as noted above. Overall, both mentors and mentees reported that the programme had expanded their horizons. This finding confirms the transformative value of reciprocal mentoring encounters (Gakonga, 2019) characterized by collegiality and mutual support, where mentors act as advisers while also learning about mentees’ work contexts.

Final Reflections and Implications How to respond to teachers’ needs in their unique local contexts should be a central consideration in the development of teacher mentoring programmes within LTAs in low-resource contexts, such as found in Africa. Given the symmetrical and collegial nature of the relationships within LTAs, such as Africa ELTA, these LTAs can best maximize the benefits offered to their members through building on international and local collaborations that seek meaningful and contextually appropriate programmes and initiatives. However, given that the outcomes of mentoring can be affected by the different cultural backgrounds of both mentees and mentors (Johnson, 2003; Vásquez, 2004), and given that conceptions of mentoring as reciprocal activity (Gakonga, 2019) are still developing in Africa, the expectations and roles of the mentor and mentees need to be communicated clearly from the beginning.

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It is therefore necessary to have programme organizers who are very aware of the context-bound challenges and the needs of the local teachers involved, as here. In the two programmes outlined in this chapter, some mentees arrived at the programme with the expectations that mentoring would involve spoon-feeding, with their mentors writing their research reports or creating their presentation slides for them. Socialization as to each other’s cultural orientations is therefore crucial. For example, it was puzzling and disappointing for some mentors who had no knowledge of the mentees’ cultural background at the beginning to find out that a mentee was asking them to create their slides or proofread their text. This gap in knowledge can result in a failure to meet the mentees’ and programme’s expectations. A training session, one-on-one meetings or a brief orientation on how to become a mentee and what to expect when mentoring teachers from a different context was required to provide the participating teachers and mentors with the opportunity to fully benefit from the experience. Although this orientation and constant support was provided for mentees in the female leadership programme, some mentors in the programme reported that a more guided orientation was also needed for those mentors who were new to mentoring. Moral and professional support for mentors and mentees beyond communicating the programme goals proved to be important in such initiatives. This is something to consider in future planning. However, the challenges of mentoring teachers in low-resource contexts are amplified by the challenging circumstances they work in. Developing a mentoring plan that has the programme’s general objectives, but that also leaves room for change and re-design based on emerging needs is important when working with classroom teachers in low-resource contexts. For mentoring to be effective and skills learned to be useful, both mentors and mentees need to be familiar with the challenges that may undermine their efforts so they can work together to find solutions that meet the programme goals. This understanding of the socio-cultural background of both mentors and mentees is essential in creating programmes in Africa, or any local context, that involves collaboration among LTAs locally and internationally. The two mentoring programmes reported on here were framed around the premise that for any teacher education programme to be effective, it has to be localized, participant-centred and relevant to the needs and aspirations of the teachers involved. As we have reported, the design and implementation of these two mentoring initiatives allowed for the content of each mentee’s project to be determined by the mentee themselves; the mentors’ role was to support mentees through their personal journeys to discover their potential to resolve their own professional development needs, fostering a

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collegial relationship (van Louw & Waghid, 2008). For the teacher research project, mentees’ needs were specifically related to challenges in classroom practice whereas for the female leadership programme, mentees’ needs were around developing the skills needed to be able to make their voices heard in professional circles, so that their contribution to language education on the continent could be better recognised and celebrated. Both initiatives have ultimately been beneficial to Africa ELTA more broadly, given that there is now a larger pool of confident professionals sharing their knowledge with other colleagues, both within their countries but also through the Africa ELTA webinar series and, as a result, inspiring hitherto shy colleagues to want to join future mentoring projects.

Engagement Priorities • Thinking of your own LTA context, what mentoring opportunities present themselves? • What kinds of teacher needs are not yet met in existing teacher education programmes in your context and what local initiatives do you think might be developed to start addressing these? • What is the nature of the power relationships between mentors and mentees in your context? How could a participant-centred approach to mentoring be fostered? • How are mentoring programmes assessed in your institution/ LTA? How could such assessment be more systematic and holistic?

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14 Mentoring Teacher-Research: From Situated Practice to ‘Global’ Guidance Richard Smith

Introduction How to mentor teacher-research (that is, research carried out by teachers into issues arising in their work) is a relatively unexplored area in education generally (though see Fletcher, 2012; Ponte, 2002). Moreover, within ELT, while teacher-research has been shown to be a powerful means of professional development which can have a profound impact on teachers and learners (see, for example, Borg [2010] and Edwards [2021]), there is a lack of research and resources on how to support teacher-research as a mentor. A pioneering attempt was made to shed light on the development of teacherresearch mentors in Turkey by Dikilita¸s and Wyatt (2018), while Smith et al. (2014) discussed aspects of mentoring in a large-scale teacher-research programme for secondary school teachers in Chile (the Champion Teachers programme). Bustos Moraga (2017) explored difficulties mentors were subsequently facing in the same scheme and, in the context of another British Council programme, the Action Research Mentoring Scheme (ARMS) in Nepal, Smith (2020a) has researched Nepali mentors’ perspectives on the challenges and benefits of teacher-research mentoring.

R. Smith (B) University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_14

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Outside these and a few other studies, the facilitation of teacher-research has remained a relatively unexplored area. Providing appropriate structure and guidance for mentors has, however, emerged as a pressing practical need in recent years, in relation to actual and potential further expansion of teacher-research within English teacher development programmes, specifically in several Global South contexts. In the past, official in-service teacherresearch schemes tended to be relatively small-scale, involving mentoring by external experts (e.g. programmes supported by Cambridge Assessment in Australia and the UK). These schemes have also involved only a small number of teachers in each cohort, mainly in language school or smallclass ESOL teaching situations in English-speaking countries. Since 2013, however, various sustained teacher-research initiatives have engaged primary and secondary school teachers in developing countries, including: • the Champion Teachers programme in Latin America (2013–present; see Chapter 15); • the TESOL International Association Electronic Village Online (EVO) on Classroom-based Research for Professional Development (2016–present; as described in Chapter 16); • ARMS in South Asia (2017–2020) (focused on in the present chapter); • the teacher-research strand of the Leh Wi Lan Secondary Education Improvement Programme (SSEIP) in Sierra Leone (2019–2021) (see MBSSE, 2021); • some Teacher Association based initiatives, including the recent Africa ELTA–IATEFL Research SIG project described in Chapter 13 (see also Banegas et al., 2022). One thing all these initiatives have shared is the adoption of a particular kind of teacher-research—exploratory action research (EAR), as conceived initially in the context of the Champion Teachers project in Chile (Smith & Rebolledo, 2018). This approach was developed specifically to be feasible and useful for schoolteachers working in difficult circumstances (Smith, 2011; West, 1960). Indeed, in explicit opposition to the idea that action research should be merely another Global North imposition on already burdened teachers, EAR has been presented and, in practice, experienced by many teachers as a way for them to explore and address the problems they face,

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as ‘experts of their context capable of developing inquiry-led understandings of contextually appropriate pedagogic practices’ (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13).1 An additional common feature, particularly in the Champion Teachers, ARMS and SSEIP schemes, is that, rather than mentoring being done by outside experts, there has been a deliberate attempt to enhance local mentoring expertise in the service of upscaling and sustainability, that is, to achieve a ‘participant-centred approach to professional development through localised mentoring’ (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13). Local mentors in the above schemes have learnt to facilitate teacher-research largely ‘on the job’ rather than via any extensive training, although overall guidance (‘mentor mentoring’) has increasingly been provided by scheme coordinators. Thus, attention has become more focused than in the past on how to train and enhance the development of teacher-research mentors.2 Expansion of mentoring via these schemes has enabled the benefits of teacher-research to be spread more widely, and, in turn, lessons from facilitating and mentoring teacher-research within these programmes can also now be disseminated.

Context: The ARMS-India and ARMS-Nepal Programmes This chapter recounts how mentors’ experiences, along with insights from my own experience as academic coordinator of Champion Teachers (2013– 2015), ARMS-India (jointly with Amol Padwad, 2017–2018) and ARMSNepal (2017–2020), have informed the development of a framework of guidance to teacher-research mentors which is of wider potential use. Areas of challenge which have arisen and which seem specific to teacher-research mentoring underpin this framework and will be the main focus of this chapter, along with corresponding practical ideas for meeting these challenges. My main source of practical insights in this area was ARMS in India and Nepal.3 Rather than reaching teachers directly, this programme has been explicitly focused on supporting mentors, who are responsible for facilitating

1

See Smith et al. (2014) and Smith (2015) for more on the origins and early development of the exploratory action research approach in the context of Champion Teachers Chile. 2 Indeed, Barkhuizen (2021: 11) identifies ‘mentor of teacher research’ as one of 14 different ‘types’ or identities that language teacher educators may nowadays aspire to. 3 See https://www.britishcouncil.in/programmes/english/research-publications/arms (accessed 14 September 2021).

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the teacher-research of small groups of teachers whom they themselves select. During 2017–2020, 48 mentors were supported to mentor 235 teacherresearch projects to completion across India, and during the same period 26 mentors were supported to mentor 180 projects in Nepal (see Negi [2019] for reports of some of these projects). ARMS mentors’ experiences (see Smith, 2020a) revealed some major challenges in facilitating teacherresearch in difficult-to-access, low-resource contexts, whilst at the same time demonstrating how these can be, at least partially, overcome. The insights shared below have formed the backbone of three relatively ‘global’ recent initiatives, which will be discussed in the ‘Implications’ section: an open-access handbook for mentoring teacher-research (Smith, 2020b; henceforth, ‘the handbook’), a new EVO ‘course’ on ‘Mentoring Teacherresearch’ in January–February 2020 (henceforth, ‘the EVO’) and monthly online meetings of an international mentor support group from May to November 2021 (‘the support group’).

Insights: An Emerging Framework for Teacher-Research Mentor Development Areas which have presented particular difficulty for novice teacher-research mentors or been particularly new in their professional experience are addressed below. In relation to each area, I first show how it emerged as salient in the experience of ARMS mentors and then provide rationales for and descriptions of some of the advice and tasks which I incorporated into my practice, and, later, into the handbook, EVO and support group.

Generic Mentoring Skills To begin with, there are many aspects of mentoring teacher-research which are common to mentoring in general, including: building rapport, trust and mutual respect; eliciting; listening attentively; questioning; paraphrasing; suggesting alternative options; and structuring action (see, for example, Gakonga, 2019). These generic mentoring skills will not be a main focus of this chapter, which highlights relatively unique and previously littleconsidered aspects of teacher-research mentoring. However, the nature of ‘mentoring’ itself does need to be clarified at the outset of a course of mentor development (see Smith, 2000a, Chapter 2), since views as to what this might entail tend to differ so widely. In India and many other contexts, a mentor is often conceived of as someone who ‘tells’ or ‘advises’ a novice teacher how to

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teach, and who judges their teaching. Accordingly, an alternative formulation such as the following may need to be shared and discussed with new mentors: Mentoring can be defined simply as sharing knowledge, skills and experience in order to encourage and empower another person. In contexts of teacher development, this process involves enhancing teachers’ autonomy to develop for themselves, increasing their ability and willingness to take control of their own learning rather than judging or directly advising them or telling them all the answers. (Smith, 2020b: 14)

There will, though, be times during most mentors’ facilitation of teacherresearch when, rather than mentoring (as in the above definition), ‘directly advising’ or ‘telling’ (informing, or instructing) may be quite common, indeed, necessary.4 Directly advising for example, might occur when a mentor, from their own prior experience, can see that a teacher’s intended research questions or methods will lead down a fruitless path and an alternative route is needed; informing or instructing may occur when a mentor provides an overall structure and timeline or raises participants’ awareness of different types and stages of teacher-research. While ‘mentoring’ teacherresearch is a useful overall designation, and generic skills in mentoring are undoubtedly crucial, teacher-research mentors also need to do more than ‘just’ mentoring, as the following sections illustrate.

Introducing Teacher-Research Teacher-research is a process with recognisable, even if sometimes overlapping stages, as illustrated in the spiral or steps diagrams which are usually used to represent action research or exploratory action research (see, for example, Smith, 2020b: 10–11). Thus, whereas mentoring may generically be conceived of as a relatively open-ended and participant-centred process, with goals and contents of reflection to be determined largely by the person being mentored, teacher-research mentoring inevitably also involves induction into a particular kind of process with relatively pre-determined stages. Therefore, depending partly on how much time is available for the overall project, teacher-research mentoring tends to require more guidance, indeed instruction, along the way than might be expected generally of a mentor. This guidance might need to start with an introduction to different kinds 4

Cf. Ponte’s (2002: 420) insight that mentors might need to be ‘forceful’ sometimes: ‘Forceful, by continually talking to teachers about the actual performance of concrete activities and about discussing them with colleagues in a systematic and purposeful way’.

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of teacher-research and to the stages that are expected in the particular model adopted, and an attempt to show teachers why engaging in research might be of value to them (see Smith, 2020b, Chapter 1). An orientation session to generate initial interest and enthusiasm can usefully involve sharing examples of teachers who have previously completed and can vouch for the process, ideally teachers from a comparable context. For example, a major positive development occurred in the second year of the Champion Teachers programme when Andrea Robles López, a previous participant, was invited to join the orientation workshop team and share her experiences. A further breakthrough occurred when the first book of Champion Teachers stories was published (Rebolledo et al., 2016) and could be shared with new participants. Since then, further books have been published in Latin America (Rebolledo & Bullock, 2019; Rebolledo et al., 2018), and similar books of stories have been brought out in South Asia (Gnawali et al., 2021; Negi, 2019; Sarkar et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2017) and West Africa (MBSSE, 2021), motivating schoolteachers in particular to engage in teacher-research. This kind of instruction will help teachers move beyond the image they may have of research being for academics, not for them. However, it should be phrased in language that they can understand, ‘consciously [normal language], not the academic language, so that the teachers can actually feel connected to [research]’, as one ARMS-India mentor put it. As in any mentoring relationship, building initial trust, rapport and confidence is important, and if a group is being mentored it might be important also to try to develop a good group spirit, so that participants can help one another and the mentor. Finally, it is also important at the outset, as in all mentoring relationships, to establish appropriate expectations about the mentor’s role— what they will and will not ‘provide’ and to what extent and when they will be available—alongside expectations of the teacher’s own responsibilities. An initial orientation session can help in this (see Smith, 2020b, Chapter 4).

Planning a Research Timeline and Communications Teacher-research mentors in India and Nepal have consistently identified time management (their own and that of the teachers they were working with) and establishing/maintaining communication as their two biggest challenges. Attempting to pre-empt likely difficulties in these areas can help ensure greater success for teacher-research mentoring. Although not usually considered as part of a mentor’s repertoire of skills, predicting, planning and

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other organisational abilities are therefore important for mentors of teacherresearch, including knowing how to plan an overall timeline for research and scheduling meetings accordingly. Providing a clear structure by means of an overall month-by-month plan depends first on deciding which form of teacher-research is to be conducted. If there is to be an exploratory phase, for example, as in exploratory action research, this can be predicted to last a certain number of weeks, while, for action research, a particular number of cycles might be predicted until the expected end-point of mentoring. Teachers may require different kinds of support at different stages (for example, some mentoring can occur via workshop-style meetings (assuming more than one teacher is being mentored), whereas at other points (for example, deciding on research questions) one-to-one mentoring might seem more desirable. Advance planning of a realistic overall schedule and deadlines can help to mitigate concerns about lack of time for research, although such concerns are never likely to disappear completely, and flexibility is required to cater for unexpected events like strikes and adverse weather conditions. A mentor needs to develop a kind of ethnographic awareness of family, work and community issues which can have an impact on the time available for teacherresearch and related meetings, in order to work around these.5 Among the issues that came up in India and Nepal, for example, were requirements for teachers to work as election officials, engage in household or agricultural work at weekends (thus hindering attendance at workshops) and participate in festivals, while sickness, change of school, and denial of leave were other factors which sometimes hindered progress. Planning in advance when and how to communicate can also be important: Establishing rapport and agreeing on the channels of communication should be the first thing which should be worked out between mentors and mentees. It’s about saying: we shall be doing most of the work by emails and by phone calls, and dividing the work: OK, let’s say fine tuning of research questions will take place in orientation workshop in face-to-face mode, identifying research questions, data collection tools will take place via emails, things like that. (ARMS-India mentor)

There are always likely to be communication issues and gaps in understanding, particularly when mentors and mentees are working in different 5

Cf. Fletcher’s (2012) perception: ‘If my (limited) experience can be taken as a model for others’ work with teachers as research mentors, it comes with a recommendation to be very sensitive to underlying cultural contexts, both national and particular to any school’.

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locations (as was often the case with ARMS-India and ARMS-Nepal), but making a communications plan in advance can help to lessen these problems. This was one of the earliest lessons learned from the Champion Teachers experience (see Smith et al. 2014: 118–119), where mentors faced great difficulty making contact with the teachers they were responsible for and the initially envisaged platform proved inconvenient for teachers (see Burns [2011: 5] for an account of similar issues). Mentors need to find out from the teachers they are responsible for what mode of synchronous or asynchronous communication the latter most favour (e.g. email, mobile phone, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger—see also Bustos Moraga & Mann, Chapter 15), and establish a plan of regular communication in advance which takes into account connectivity issues as well as teachers’ timetables and domestic circumstances.

Record-Keeping, Reflection, and Mentor-Research In order to provide timely, proactive and otherwise appropriate assistance, it is important for mentors to keep good records about the teachers being mentored, particularly when mentoring a group of teachers: I have learnt that keeping track of progress is very important, you know? I keep making notes of changes in my relationship with mentees, and growth of each mentee, whatever they’re learning, whatever their struggles, I can help them. (ARMS-India mentor)

Finding out as much as possible about what the teachers are going through involves the kind of ‘ethnographic’ role discussed above, in adjusting mentoring appropriately to the professional and life conditions of those being mentored. At the same time, if a mentor can keep track of their own perceptions, attitudes and actions as a mentor, this can help them improve their practice, forming a basis for reflection on experience and even ‘mentorresearch’. Thus, recording, reflection and research can be seen as integral parts of the mentoring process—for the mentor’s own development and that of the profession as a whole, not just for the benefit of their mentees. Fortunately, given limited prior research into teacher-research mentoring, the volume of reflective and data-based accounts of teacher-research mentoring practices has increased recently (e.g. Békés, 2020, 2021; Chawla & Chakrakodi, 2022). As such publications multiply, the knowledge base of teacher-research mentoring will continue to develop.

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Helping Teachers to Select a Topic and Develop Research Questions So far, I have been considering what might be termed ‘structural’, ‘external’ or even ‘logistical’ aspects of the teacher-research mentoring process, emphasising these here partly because they have been little considered in previous work. Turning to the teacher-research process per se, generally recognised mentoring skills involving listening, questioning and so on come more into play, but with particular emphases which relate to the different stages of teacher-research highlighted in this quote from an ARMS-Nepal mentor’s reflective account: What are the main challenges I faced in mentoring teachers to research their classrooms? Finding a topic; Data collection; Data analysis; Research methods; Poster presentation and sharing. (ARMS-Nepal mentor)

Firstly, as research needs to focus on a particular topic, how to guide teachers to find an issue from their classroom experience that they would most like to explore requires specific consideration. Teachers can be encouraged to recall particular successful, puzzling or problematic experiences, and then can be guided to narrow down to one topic, through reflection on what would be most manageable to research and questioning as to what would be most urgent, significant and engaging for the teacher concerned (see Smith, 2020b: 40; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018: 31). Here, clearly, generic mentoring skills like questioning, empathising and attentive listening need to be combined with an awareness on the mentor’s part of practicalities relating to the envisaged research process, since some interesting topics are likely to be difficult or impossible to research. When exploratory research is being undertaken, it is important for mentors to help teachers develop suitable and effective research questions, because these set the direction for subsequent work. However, the process can be difficult for teachers—as one ARMS-India mentor put it, ‘Most of the mentees found narrowing down of research questions as the most challenging work’. Another said: Creating research questions is indeed quite tricky for teachers who get into teacher-research for the first time. And you need to talk to teachers regularly to make them get through this entire process.

By means of supportive yet challenging one-to-one conversations involving listening carefully, asking for clarification, probing, and recapping, a mentor

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can help a teacher identify areas of uncertainty which can then be turned into exploratory research questions.6 Teachers can have quite strong assumptions which can be deconstructed through this kind of dialogue: The key […] point for me is how to lead teachers towards this reflective process, and [there were] only two things that seemed [to work] in the last six months; probing questions and challenging teachers’ assumptions. (ARMS-India mentor)

So, generic mentoring skills are certainly at play here but there needs to be a clear focus in the mentor’s mind on an outcome, which will be a set of questions for further exploration, and this focus may therefore distinguish teacher-research mentoring from more open-ended mentoring in relation to teaching (see Smith [2020b: 43–45] for sample dialogues and associated practice activities). Finally, it is useful to consider, with mentees, whether research questions are ‘good enough’, referring to criteria such as whether the questions are answerable by the teacher, use information (data) which is easy to obtain and lead them to understand the area of concern more deeply than before (Smith, 2020b: 46).

Guiding Teachers to Generate, Analyse and Interpret Data It is important to introduce teachers to a variety of types of data, and to show how these can be well matched to different kinds of question, as well as showing how they can be appropriately analysed (see Wyatt, 2018: 42–43, as well as Smith, 2020b, Chapters 9–10 for advice to mentors in these areas). A common preconception about research is that it must involve questionnaires, but these are not always useful. There are different types of data which can provide answers to the questions teachers may have in their minds—for example, reflective notes if the question relates to a teacher’s own perceptions, focus group interviews or ‘chats’ (as an alternative to questionnaire) if students’ perceptions are to be investigated, and/or observation by a colleague if an area of uncertainty and associated research question relate to the students’ or the teacher’s behaviour or performance. To prevent 6

Cf. Ponte (2002: 418): ‘Teachers did not always manage to engage in critical reflection on their own; they had to be challenged to do so by the facilitators. The facilitators were the “critics”, as it were, in their action research, and one of the ways they fulfilled that role was by constantly asking questions’. See also Wyatt (2018: 41).

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future problems, a mentor can usefully assess in advance whether the data the teacher is intending to gather looks likely to answer their research questions and can guide them to more appropriate alternatives when necessary. Teachers may also need advice during the actual process of data generation, for example via comments on a set of interview questions or framework for observation that has been prepared, and guidance when data collection does not go according to plan: Using [the research] tool effectively [was] a very challenging thing – for that, our involvement was a major concern because we couldn’t have face to face interaction […]. But thank[fully] the telephone came to our rescue and we had constant interaction on mobiles and telephone. (ARMS-India mentor)

Once they have generated data, mentees may be at a loss as to what to do with it. Again, a combination of instruction and ‘genuine’ mentoring comes into play: My teachers found analysing data as a very tough task. So, in order to make them understand what data analysis was all about, I took a session with them elucidating what qualitative data is, what quantitative data is. And then after the session was over, individually I called the teachers to my office with their data and then we analysed it step-by-step. (ARMS-India mentor)

Finally, mentors need to encourage teachers to discuss their interpretations, in other words to make sense of their findings in relation to their research questions, by asking questions like ‘What do you learn from the findings overall?’, ‘Have any findings particularly surprised you?’, and ‘What’s next?’.

Supporting Teachers to Plan and Evaluate Change Having explored a problematic or puzzling situation, many—though not all—teachers wish to engage in a phase of action research proper, by planning change and evaluating the consequences. Teacher-research mentors can help to ensure that the action proposed relates to what has already been understood via exploration of the existing situation, and can help the teacher to specify practical actions for change, while guarding against the kind of situation described by one ARMS-Nepal mentor: ‘In many cases, my mentees sought ready-made answers/solutions […] from the mentor’. Planning for evaluation of change and not just planning change itself is something that teachers can fail to take seriously but is at the heart of what it means to do action research. Sometimes teachers may be keen to prove the success of a

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particular initiative, but mentors can help them see that they can learn from any findings, positive or negative, which can in turn begin a new phase of exploration or action.

Helping Teachers to Share and Reflect on Their Research There can be many benefits for teachers themselves—as well as for the wider professional community (cf. Edwards & Burns, 2016: 14)—if they share with other teachers what they have done and what they have found. Doing so can consolidate what they have learned, provide useful feedback, and offer experience that empowers them to continue or even mentor others. However, teachers may lack confidence (see Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13), so a mentor’s role can be crucial in developing safe spaces for public sharing, and in preparing teachers for this opportunity. As was discovered early in the Champion Teachers programme (see Smith et al. 2014: 120), it can be very productive to provide teachers with alternatives to writing an academic-style report. Instead, teachers can present orally with a poster, and recording this can form the basis for wider sharing, including via social media (see Smith, 2020b, Chapter 12; Smith et al., 2016), As one ARMS-India mentor put it, Mentor has a good role to play in supporting the teacher to share his or her findings because teachers are not always aware of the […] platforms that are there. So, the mentor’s first role is to acquaint them with the different platforms […] where they can go and share their research.

Apart from organising such opportunities, a mentor can discuss with teachers the ingredients for a written or oral research report and provide feedback prior to dissemination (see Dikilita¸s & Mumford, 2016). Both in final reports and discussions, it seems to be particularly useful if teachers can look back and reflect on the overall experience, as this can help to consolidate benefits and provide a springboard for further teacher-research activity. Mentors can help in this by posing questions which specifically focus on achievements, lessons learned and plans for the future (see Smith, 2020b: 65 for specific suggestions).

Maintaining Teacher-Researchers’ Motivation If I have tended to emphasise relatively specific as well as technical and organisational aspects of teacher-research mentoring in this chapter, this is because such aspects have not tended to be written about previously but have

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been particularly difficult for the mentors I have worked with. In general, I have found that prospective mentors tend to possess the overall attitudes and capabilities relating to having empathy and being participant-centred which are essential to teacher-research mentoring, but are more challenged by aspects relating specifically to teacher-research. Nevertheless, I return finally to an important affective role mentors can play—that of attempting to help teachers maintain motivation in the face of vicissitudes in the research process. One ARMS-India mentor, indeed, singled this out as the most salient challenge they had faced: Lack of motivation at times, or the troubles the teachers, mentees are facing. I think this is one issue which I found in common – almost all of them they have told me about this thing. Like, motivating teachers and making them do what they’re supposed to do, and making them think about what they are doing.… They told me they are finding it quite challenging. (ARMS-India mentor)

Inevitably, some teachers will drop out—in the absence of encouragement or understanding from school leaders. In particular, it can be difficult for teachers to work on something that is not locally valued. Thus, as one ARMSIndia mentor put it, ‘Motivating and handholding at regular intervals was a major challenge for me’. This can be achieved via regular meetings and ongoing encouragement and praise, perhaps particularly at the moments of transition highlighted in the sections above. Teachers need to know that the mentor will be ‘there for them’ long-term during the sometimes difficult but ultimately rewarding teacher-research project journey.

Implications: Sharing Insights—And Elaborating Further As we have seen, the following areas emerged as particularly salient for teacher-research mentor development in the case of the Indian and Nepali mentors I worked with (extending my earlier work with mentors in Chile): • • • • • • •

Generic mentoring skills Introducing teacher-research Planning a research timeline and communications Record-keeping, reflection, and mentor-research Helping teachers to select a topic and develop research questions Guiding teachers to generate, analyse and interpret data Supporting teachers to plan and evaluate change

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• Helping teachers to share and reflect on their research • Maintaining teacher-researchers’ motivation This list of areas of focus—or ‘framework’, as I have been terming it— was derived from and has fed back into mentor development experience over a number of years in particular contexts, notably Chile, India and Nepal. However, beyond these contexts also, it has been informing some more ‘global’ interventions which I will now briefly discuss. Firstly, on the basis particularly of ARMS mentors’ experience, I have written a freely downloadable guide to mentoring teacher-research (Smith, 2020b) for British Council India. Feedback to date (see, for example, Banegas & Serra, 2021; Banister, 2021) and the number of downloads achieved (18,000 in its first year of publication according to April 2021 British Council statistics) seem to indicate that the book responds to a need in various worldwide contexts for carefully structured support for both novice and practising teacher-research mentors. Indeed, it seems clear that mentors can themselves benefit from mentoring and, more than this, can thrive within a structured programme which acknowledges the main difficulties they are likely to face, on the basis of other mentors’ prior experience. After all, just as a shift from teacher to teacher-researcher does not necessarily come naturally but benefits from structured support, so does becoming a teacher-research mentor, which itself involves taking on a new identity (Barkhuizen, 2021: 11) as well as acquiring new knowledge and skills. Insecurity within this transition can be mitigated by mentor-mentoring, for which the framework and handbook can serve as a basis, but also by collegial sharing of experiences and by individual or collaborative mentor-research (research by mentors into their own practices). Thus, apart from forming the backbone of the handbook, another use of the framework has been to provide the basic syllabus for a five-week online ‘course’ of teacher-research mentor development, involving much collaborative activity, which I offered in January–February 2020 with Seden Tuyan as co-presenter/facilitator, as part of EVO2020 (see http://mentoring-tr.weebly.com/evo2020.html). The course was completed by around 20 existing and prospective mentors worldwide (mostly, in Latin America, Africa and South Asia), and participants and others interested have been enabled to keep in touch via a website (http:// mentoring-tr.weebly.com/) and Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/ groups/mentoringTR/). Subsequently, the framework has found another use, informing the contents of monthly (May–November 2021) discussions of teacher-research mentoring in an online (Zoom-based) support group, participated in by around 50 EVO, Champion Teachers and ARMS mentors.

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Most of these participants prepared groups of teachers to give teacherresearch poster presentations at an IATEFL Research SIG Teachers Research! Online 2021 conference in December 2021 (http://resig.weebly.com/tea chers-research-online-2021.html), while many of them also prepared databased presentations of their own on aspects of their mentoring experience (http://mentoring-tr.weebly.com/2021-interactive-event.html). The way in which the framework, in these different uses, has been welcomed and referred to by mentors and prospective mentors in a wide range of Global South contexts (from Peru to Nigeria to Bangladesh and beyond) indicates that it can serve as a good starting-point for mentor development quite generally, and, indeed, for research-based comparisons to be drawn between different approaches and experiences in varied contexts. Research mentors and mentor-mentors interested in the ideas presented in this chapter could, accordingly, do any or all of the following: • use the framework as a basis for courses of mentor development which they design themselves (as in the EVO) • use the handbook to self-mentor or provide a support for mentor development • use the framework or handbook as a basis for reflection on issues in mentoring (as in the support group) • focus on parts of the framework as a basis for further research into teacherresearch mentoring • add to, amend and otherwise critically adapt the framework in the light of local experience

Conclusion So far, ideas on how to mentor teacher-research which have been derived from recent situated practice, particularly in India and Nepal, have been proving to be useful and relevant to mentors and prospective mentors in other contexts, as mediated by the handbook, the EVO and the support group. These initiatives have shown that insights derived originally from mentoring practice within the usually neglected difficult circumstances of teacher development in low- and medium-income countries can be relevant more generally, just as the EAR approach has itself been taken up beyond its original context of production, Chile (see Introduction). Being based inductively on the lived experiences and situated practice of local mentors in Chile, India and Nepal,

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the framework I have proposed is not yet another Global North imposition on the Global South, even though its development was facilitated with (local) British Council support. Instead, just as with EAR for teachers, the framework relates strongly to—indeed, was designed to meet—the needs and priorities of mentors working in Global South contexts Arguably, it is more ‘genuinely global’, in fact, than if it had been developed primarily in and for the kind of well-resourced and privileged tertiary or language school settings in western countries which are at the origin of so much ELT discourse but which are far from the norm worldwide. In the past, a more typical direction of travel of ideas in ELT was from English-dominant countries like the UK and the USA outwards to ‘developing’ countries. What we might be seeing here, on the other hand, is a new kind of process, pioneered within the EVO but since furthered during the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g. within the International Festival of TeacherResearch 2021: https://trfestival.wordpress.com/2021-events; see also Smith et al., 2022), whereby teacher-research and mentoring experiences from Global South settings get shared with teachers and mentors in comparable contexts more than previously, via the new affordances of international online networking. Nevertheless, the wider relevance or otherwise of the ideas presented here—derived, as they are, mainly from practice in particular project contexts—needs to continue to be confronted with other realities and perceptions, with a view to guarding against the dogmatism which has characterised ELT claims to universality in the past. At the time of writing, this is being achieved via active discussions among mentors in the international support group mentioned above, with possible implications for eventual modification and critical adaptation of the framework I have presented. Whether or not it can be called ‘genuinely global’ (in distinction with falsely global products presented as universally relevant but in fact best matching Global North conditions), the guidance for teacher-research mentoring which has been reported on here, precisely because it is based on situated experience in Chile, India and Nepal, has been well-received, appears adaptable to various situations, and, for now at least, seems to be serving a useful role in helping to facilitate the voluntary take-up of teacher-research in other Global South primary and secondary school contexts.

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Engagement Priorities • If you mentor teacher-research, how closely does your work align with the framework proposed in this chapter? • Which parts of the framework are most important to you as a mentor (or prospective mentor) of teacher-research? • Is there anything you would add to the framework in your own context?

Acknowledgements I acknowledge the support of the University of Warwick and the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/T502054/1) and am grateful to Abdullah Al-Rawahi for his help with data management. I also thank the ARMS mentors, whose experiences and insights are at the heart of my account.

References Banegas, D. L., Bullock, D., Kiely, R., Kuchah, K., Padwad, A., Smith, R., & Wedell, M. (2022). Decentring ELT: Teacher associations as agents of change. ELT Journal, 76 (1), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccab090be Banegas, D., & Serra, M. (2021). Review of Smith (2020b). System, 96, February 2021, 102412. Banister, C. (2021). Review of Smith (2020b). ELT Journal, 75 (1), 119–121. Barkhuizen, G. (2021). Language teacher educator identity. Cambridge University Press. Békés, E. A. (2020). Supporting Ecuadorian teachers in their classroom research: Reflections on becoming a research mentor. ELTAR-J, 2(1), 27–45. Békés, E. A. (2021). Mentoring Ecuadorian university teachers and students in the collaborative write-up phase of their Exploratory Action Research. ELT Research, 36 , 97–102. Borg, S. (2010). Language teacher research engagement. Language Teaching, 43(4), 391–429. Burns, A. (2011). Embedding teacher research into a national language programme. Research Notes, 44, 3–6. Bustos M, C. (2017). Mentoring in-service teachers doing classroom-based research projects in Chile: The Mentors’ perspective. MA Dissertation, University of Leeds. Chawla, G., & Chakrakodi, R. (Eds.). (2022). Special issue on mentoring. FORTELL 44. Dikilita¸s, K., & Mumford, S. E. (2016). Supporting the writing up of teacher research: Peer and mentor roles. ELT Journal, 70 (4), 371–381. Dikilita¸s, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, 22(4), 537–553.

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Edwards, E. (2021). The ecological impact of action research on language teacher development: A review of the literature. Educational Action Research, 29 (3), 396– 413. Edwards, E., & Burns, A. (2016). Language teacher action research: Achieving sustainability’. ELT Journal, 70 (1), 6–15. Fletcher, S. (2012). Research mentoring teachers in intercultural education contexts: Self-study. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 1(1), 66–79. Gakonga, J. (2019). Mentoring and mentor development. In S. Walsh & S. Mann (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of English language teacher education (pp. 432– 445). Routledge. Gnawali, L., Laudari, S., & Shrestha, S. (Eds.). (2021). Exploratory action research: Stories of Nepalese EFL Teachers. NELTA. MBSSE (Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education Sierra Leone). (2021). Teachers as change agents: Classroom research in Sierra Leone secondary schools. MBSSE. Online: https://mbsse.gov.sl/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Web_Tea cher-Research-Book.pdf?fbclid=IwAR29NMznjx8KYOxTgVRokjDIpYlmCbS em4cZcv8Mxxon487MlxEg5fb5P7M Negi, J. S. (Ed.). (2019) Exploring for action, acting for change: Stories of exploratory action research in Nepal. Support Society Nepal. Ponte, P. (2002). How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators become their facilitators. Educational Action Research, 10 (3), 399–422. Rebolledo, P., & Bullock, D. (Eds.). (2019). Champion teachers Mexico: Stories of exploratory action research. British Council. Rebolledo, P., Bullock, D. & Smith, R. (Eds.). (2018). Champion teachers Peru: Stories of exploratory action research. British Council. Rebolledo, P., Smith, R., & Bullock, D. (Eds.). (2016). Champion teachers: Stories of exploratory action research. British Council. Sarkar, B. C., Hedges, C., Griffiths, M., Mathew, R. & Biswas, S. K. (Eds.). (2017). Teachers’ voices: Capturing the dynamics of change. English in Action. Smith, R. (2011). Teaching English in difficult circumstances: A new research agenda. In T. Pattison (Ed.), IATEFL 2010 conference selections (pp. 78–80). IATEFL. Smith, R. (2015). Exploratory action research: Why, what, and where from? In K. Dikilita¸s, R. Smith, & W. Trotman (Eds.), Teacher-researchers in action (pp. 37– 45). IATEFL. Smith, R. (2020a). Mentoring teachers: Challenges and benefits according to Nepali mentors. British Council Community of Practice for Teacher Educators Research Report. British Council. Online: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/men toring-teacher-research-challenges-benefits-according-nepali-mentors Smith, R. (2020b). Mentoring teachers to research their classrooms: A practical handbook. British Council.

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Smith, R., Bullock, D., Rebolledo, P., & Robles López, A. (2016). By teachers for teachers: Innovative, teacher-friendly publishing of practitioner research. ELTED Journal, 20, 116–125. Smith, R., Connelly, T., & Rebolledo, P. (2014). Teacherresearch as continuing professional development: A project with Chilean secondary school teachers. In Hayes, D. (Ed.), Innovations in the continuing professional development of english language teachers (pp. 111–128). British Council. Smith, R., Eraldemir Tuyan, S., Békés, E. A., & Serra, M. (2022). Enhancement mentoring for teacher-research: A positive approach in a crisis. ELTED Journal, 24, 43–61. Smith, R., Padwad, A., & Bullock, D. (Eds.). (2017). Teaching in low-resource classrooms: Voices of experience. British Council. Smith, R., & Rebolledo, P. (2018). A handbook for exploratory action research. British Council. West, M. (1960). Teaching English in difficult circumstances. Longmans, Green. Wyatt, M. (2018). Helping language teachers to produce ‘quality’ research. In D. Xerri, & C. Pioqinto (Eds.), Becoming research literate: Supporting teacher research in English language teaching (pp. 40–45). English Teachers Association Switzerland.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

15 Mentoring Teacher Research Online Claudia Bustos-Moraga and Steve Mann

Introduction Mentoring teachers who are undertaking research is a relatively unexplored area of language teacher education (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018), despite the increasing prevalence of teachers engaging in teacher research (TR) over the last 20 years. Such TR has mostly taken the form of action research (Burns, 2019), exploratory practice (Allwright & Hanks, 2009), and exploratory action research (EAR) (Smith et al., 2014). While teachers’ EAR experiences in Latin America have been documented (Rebolledo & Bullock, 2019; Rebolledo et al., 2016, 2018), their mentors’ experiences remain underresearched, with only an exploratory study (Bustos-Moraga, 2017) in this context to date. Dikilita¸s and Wyatt (2018) offer an insightful account of three research mentors mentoring TR in Turkey, and the current volume opens the door for further studies in this emerging area in teacher education elsewhere (see also Chapters 13, 14 and 16). This chapter explores how mentors use the online space to support teachers doing EAR, examining C. Bustos-Moraga (B) · S. Mann University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Mann e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_15

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mentors’ flexibility in using limited resources, combining synchronous and asynchronous work, to support their mentees, teacher-researchers, in carrying out their projects. ‘Train the trainer’ is a common term in capacity-building organisations (UNICEF, the British Council, UN), but what about ‘mentoring the mentor’? In the context of online mentoring TR, it seems worth exploring: ‘How do mentors co-construct an online space for supporting teacher researchers’ reflections, using synchronous and asynchronous tools?’ We consider practicalities, investigating how mentors set-up the online mentoring space. We then examine the impact of the online setting on mentor–mentee interaction and analyse the mentors’ supportive work in relation to social and cognitive presence (Garrison, 1997; Gunawardena, 1995), elements which help us to understand mentoring in an online environment (see also Dikilita¸s et al., 2022, Chapter 16). Through this, we hope to gain a better understanding of the multimodal dynamics of online mentoring. By multimodal, we mean the visual (i.e. what mentees/mentors are looking at/sharing) and auditory (i.e. what they are talking about) channels, partly to understand their relationship and possible complementarity. The chapter further aims to consider how strategies for mentoring TR online might be relevant for other online teacher development initiatives (where there is perhaps less familiarity with the affordances and constraints of this online endeavour). The chapter stems from Ph.D. research focused on training mentors of TR. The analysis draws on interviews and audio/video-recorded mentor– mentee meetings collected during 2019 and 2020, with the ethical approval from the University of Warwick. The study adopts an inductive approach, in that the analysis has established key themes arising from the interviews, e-mails, text messages, programme documents, and various recordings. The insider nature of the study (the first author has been a mentor on the Champion Teachers (CT) programme—see Chapter 14 and below—since 2014) allowed for ‘acquaintance interviews’ (Garton & Copland, 2010: 535) with 19 mentors, whose names have been anonymised. Mentors and mentees are all native Spanish speakers with various levels of English proficiency. Where extracts are in English, language inaccuracies are left unchanged. In extracts in Spanish, translations are provided when appropriate. Conversation analysis conventions are standard (from Richards, 2003) with the addition of smiley voice (£), emphasis, italics for codeswitching, and < slow > or > speed-up < talk. Our mutual interest in researching mentoring TR connects with the opportunity to see how systematic data-led reflective practice (Mann &

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Walsh, 2017) is operationalised in an in-service setting, i.e. with TR as a tool for reflection. First, we include a definition of mentoring TR. Second, we offer a brief description of the context: the Champion Teachers programme (CTP) from the British Council (BC) in Latin America. Then, we provide a data-led discussion of different ways in which mentors include synchronous and asynchronous tools for online communication to support menteeteachers doing research and explore how these relate to social and cognitive presence. We finally propose some engagement priorities for further debate and research.

A Definition of Mentoring Teacher-Research Mentoring, the process whereby a more experienced or capable teacher provides support to a fellow teacher in a non-supervisory way (Nguyen, 2017), has been largely studied in relation to pre-service and beginning teachers (Ellis et al., 2020). Areas of focus have included schoolbased settings (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999; Tomlinson, 1995) and peer mentoring (Gakonga, 2019; Nguyen, 2017). Mentoring ranges from formal to informal relationships in both pre-service and in-service settings, with mentors assuming roles of instructors, inquirers and co-thinkers amongst others (Orland-Barak, 2010). Hobson (2016) provides a valuable framework to define mentors’ roles, but the increasing attention on mentoring TR (Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018) requires a context-bound definition. In the CTP, the ‘mentor’ label has been assigned, and what mentors do has been constructed through shared practice over time. Consequently, in the context of this study, mentoring corresponds to the one-to-one relationship between two in-service teachers at any stage in their career, where ‘the mentor’, having already done research, guides ‘the mentee’ through the development of a research project in his/her/their classroom, providing emotional support and encouragement as well as technical support on how to do classroom research, fostering reflective practice via online communication. Mentors and mentees share contextual understanding and have a near-peer collaborative relationship (similar to Edge’s [1992] Cooperative Development). Therefore, in this study, mentors’ expertise comes from their experience of doing research in their classrooms, not so much from any more teaching experience than their mentees. Interviews and interactional data from mentors’ practices (helping teacher-researchers) offer a unique opportunity to understand the nature of research mentoring and how to support mentors of TR.

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Context The Champion Teachers programme is an online professional development (PD) programme which has been implemented in various parts of Latin America since 2013, supported by the British Council and local Ministries of Education (MoE). The current study is set in three countries where the CTP has regularly been implemented: Chile (since 2013), Peru (since 2017), and Mexico (since 2018). ‘Champion’ does not define a pre-set standard for best practice or entry requirement but aims at developing participating teachers. The Champion Teachers (CTs) are recruited in an online call for participation, via local MoE or BC, to develop Exploratory Action Research (EAR) projects in their classrooms (Smith et al., 2014). Examples of common issues CTs tend to research are: ‘Why are my students not speaking in English during the lesson?’ or ‘Why are my students not following the rules in class?’ (British Council, 2019: 10). The CTs are assigned mentors, who are more experienced in EAR, but who are not expected to be experts in each of the CTs’ research areas; mentors support their mentees to answer their questions by themselves through their research. Chile, Peru, and Mexico organise the project in a similar way: one mentor works entirely online with five to ten mentees over 18 to 25 weeks. Mentors (mostly former CTs) share a similar background and context with their mentees; having a near-peer status allows for an empathetic and affective mentoring approach (Mann & Tang, 2012; Nguyen, 2017). Moreover, online communication enables collaboration between mentors and mentees from different geographical areas, often remote or underprivileged, where access to PD is often limited or non-existent. Mentors and mentees meet for approximately one hour fortnightly or weekly, depending on the mentees’ needs and availability, as they work on their projects while negotiating the challenge of teaching 40-h weeks. Mentees have two possible outcomes for their projects: a) Design of an action plan: CTs who need extra support or experience setbacks are encouraged to reach at least this stage. They may later implement changes autonomously. b) Implementing and evaluating action: This is when CTs can evaluate the impact of the changes arising from their action plan within the programme’s timeframe. Mentors work remotely on a one-to-one basis, both synchronously and asynchronously, where synchronous work draws extensively on the asynchronous elements. Synchronous videoconferences happen at dates and times

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mutually agreed, and the mentors lead the discussion focused on their mentee’s progress and concerns. Mentees also bring to the meeting questions and comments regarding their research and the work done between meetings. In between the synchronous meetings, mentors rely on e-mails and text messages to contact mentees to set up meetings, follow up on agreements, send reminders (Kiddle & Prince, 2019) as well as provide pastoral care (Mann, 2002). Mentors also use a shared Google Drive folder, where both parties can upload documents or convert them into Google docs, allowing mentors to provide feedback and mentees to move forward in between meetings. Mentors engage mentees in reflective discussions focused on particular teaching issues so that the mentee’s research becomes the catalyst for more systematic reflective practice (Mann & Walsh, 2017). In other words, there is a reflexive relationship between the mentor–mentee talk and the mentee’s research project that can be explained through a two-step cycle: Firstly, there are synchronous discussions via videoconference around tasks mentees have done or actions they will undertake. For example, after a comment from her mentor, Jacinta (mentee), whose project is about why her students do not speak English in class, says: “I’m thinking about that, when you mentioned you have classes in the morning and no! I have my classes in the afternoon so maybe that’s a reason too!”. Secondly, mentors’ asynchronous work guides mentees in their intrapersonal reflective process through e-mails, text messages, and comments in shared documents, as seen in Fig. 15.1 below: Figure 15.1 shows Daniel’s (mentor) comments to Jacinta’s (mentee) draft, so she can continue her work in her own time.

Fig. 15.1

Screengrab of a mentor’s comments on a mentee’s draft

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At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated new dimensions of online education, it is worth stressing that this programme has always been remote/online. However, the learning gains reported in the Insights section below can contribute to the limited research on technology-mediated Teacher Development (TD) initiatives (e.g. Motteram, 2019), particularly videoconferencing, which in Latin America has been predominantly associated with language learning programmes (e.g. Banegas & Brovetto, 2020; Charbonneau-Gowdy, 2016).

Insights In this section, we discuss some of the factors that help or hinder how mentors support TR in an online context. At an initial level, the data illustrate how online mentoring is realised, the challenges mentors face and how they overcome them. At a deeper level, the data show how mentors work towards co-constructing an online space for reflection using various forms of synchronous videoconferencing and asynchronous communication, revealing how mentor–mentee’s social presence is fundamental for the mentee’s cognitive presence (Garrison et al., 1999). These two dimensions help us to understand some factors underpinning interpersonal dialogic reflection in the mentor–mentee relationship. Mentors in all kinds of settings are often untrained (e.g. Mann & Tang, 2012), with sometimes unfortunate consequences. Our analysis ultimately carries training implications for mentors.

Videoconferencing: Practicalities and Challenges in Synchronous Communication During Online Mentoring The use of videoconference (VC), or audio-visual calls, is the main form of synchronous mentor–mentee communication. Screen-sharing and activated cameras, basic VC features, facilitate mentor–mentee communication during meetings, provided that both participants have a reliable connection. However, all mentors report issues with connectivity occasionally or continually with some mentees. When connections fail, mentors need to be flexible in using technology to provide the best possible workspace according to their mentees’ contexts. The data extracts included here illustrate how mentors set about their work.

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Mentors initially contact their mentees via e-mail to arrange their first videoconference. In that first individual encounter, they learn about their mentees’ specific context and their possible needs to familiarise themselves with the tools to be used throughout their work: “[name1] and [name2] were very keen at technology but [name3] I had to guide her step by step (Carolina-Mentor). Mentors chose from various readily available and free-version platforms (e.g. Zoom), depending on their expertise but mainly on the mentees’ contexts and preferences. In the extract below, a mentor (Alicia) describes how she preferred Skype but had to find alternatives when her mentees’ internet connection disrupted their contact: …During the first meeting I would use WhatsApp just because the majority of teachers didn’t have Skype. >Because I like using Skype< so for the following meetings I asked them to download Skype and create their account. And send me their users so we worked with those and I would share the documents and my screen. Some other times some teachers didn’t have Wi-Fi connexion in their schools, I had to call them I would send them the documents via e-mail or WhatsApp. So I would talk of them on the phone and I would say okay so ‘please open the document and let’s check it let’s read it and let’s discuss it…

WhatsApp for videoconferencing is chosen to make mentees’ work easier, as a widely available free-access platform, despite the data costs (Cansoy 2017; Moodley 2019; Motteram et al., 2020). However, WhatsApp’s limited features explain transitioning to Skype or using multiple devices to create a VC experience. If mentors tailor their work around the challenges of synchronous contact, this has a significant impact on mentees’ progression with their research. Even more important is the mentee’s trust created by the mentor’s efforts to collegially and inclusively accommodate the mentee’s needs (Hanks, 2017), establishing a positive relationship. As Carolina (mentor) says: The way we establish the relation with the teachers, and they start to do things and depends on you the energy they put in their research because they, when you say “you can do it”, “keep going”…()…and they keep going because of that, I think it’s very rewarding too.

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Mentoring TR creates an online partnership that turns doing research into a rewarding experience for mentees and mentors, outweighing the difficulties encountered. Mentors in the CTP provide technical support (e.g. feedback and guidelines for each stage of the research) as well as emotional support (e.g. encouragement, empathy) throughout the project. Mentors are aware that before starting a reflective dialogue around research, the online workspace and available tools need to be established and familiar, so mentees can discuss their progress (e.g. while sharing documents) and they themselves can ask questions or provide guidelines for future stages in the research. This mentoring is research specific, in that while supporting, guiding and organising research, mentors use word documents related to the stage of each mentee’s research (e.g. drafts of questionnaires, organisation charts). Mentors screen-share these documents enabling both parties to focus their attention, literally ‘working from the same script’. Communication is then multimodal, as their talk is often about what they see in the texts (enriched with paralinguistic cues when cameras are activated), making meetings more varied, appealing and dynamic. The images below show a meeting with activated cameras and screensharing. The mentor (Daniel) is screensharing a questionnaire that the mentee (Jacinta) has used with her students (Fig. 15.2). They analyse Jacinta’s data (about speaking activities in class), and Daniel takes notes from what Jacinta says.

Fig. 15.2 Daniel (the mentor) taking notes on his mentee’s questionnaire while screensharing

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Decisions about who will screenshare and what is shared are based on technical aspects (connectivity) and the mentee’s preferences. Mentors normally screenshare because the mentee’s connection is weaker or because the mentor has additional documents to show, like examples or slides. When using Google Docs, both can type. However, meetings without activated cameras are fairly common. Mentors report that not seeing their mentees adds to the challenge of bad connectivity, hence the use of multiple devices: to access documents and to make the audio/video call. Mentors try to achieve optimal social and cognitive presence (Garrison, 1997; Gunawardena, 1995) in their adaptations to the online mentoring environment.

Online Mentoring Teacher-Research to Support Social and Cognitive Presence Social presence, or the extent to which someone is perceived as real in online communication through verbal and non-verbal cues, determines the way people interact (Garrison, 1997; Gunawardena, 1995). Switched-on cameras in mentor–mentee meetings undoubtedly contribute to build a sense of physicality and familiarity that fosters engagement (Kiddle & Prince, 2019). Cognitive presence, defined here as how mentees are able to ‘construct and articulate meaning’ (Mann & Talandis, 2012: 119), is enhanced by screensharing and tools like Google Docs, which are used synchronously during mentor–mentee meetings. One example of the mentee’s perception of mentors’ social presence is in Pedro’s (mentor) meeting one of her mentees at a conference who said: “you are real! you are not a hologram!” and I was “yes, I’m real! I’m a human being!”. The hologram metaphor represents how mentors are perceived, a friendly example in this case, as cameras had been activated. On the contrary, in mentor–mentee meetings with switched-off cameras, participants lose the intimacy and immediacy of their social presence (Gunawardena, 1995). Intimacy refers to the level of personal topics and nonverbal cues involved in the interaction; immediacy is a ‘measure of the psychological distance’ a communicator conveys (Gunawardena, 1995: 151). Videoconferencing contributes to the mentor– mentee intimacy as it contributes to building rapport and trust in a space where the mentee feels safe to expose their vulnerabilities discussing their practice. As with teacher educators, for mentors creating trust and honesty is fundamental (Mann & Walsh, 2017). Not being able to see each other creates a gap in the mentor–mentee immediacy.

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In the extract below, a mentor (Rosario) explains the challenges of prioritising ‘audio-only VC’, especially when giving feedback, as she often had connectivity problems. Rosario reflects on the impact of switched-off cameras, illustrating the intersection between social and cognitive presence. Many times I prioritised them seeing the comments on the screen via Google docs and listen to my voice instead of watching me as a way to get to them. Because sometimes they or I didn’t have good connection. (lines missing) interacting through a screen is completely different. Or on the phone as opposed to in-person. Perhaps I can’t exactly pinpoint which are the key features of developing rapport while online because it’s so different(…)I feel that it’s hard to give feedback and for someone else to accept that feedback especially when you don’t know that person(…)I think about how am I giving feedback through a screen? by telephone? It is so hard to build rapport when you don’t know the person and you’ve never seen his/her. It’s like when you contact a call-centre because something failed and the ££agent is very nice with you. But you are very agitated. And you don’t listen££

This extract reveals the core element of the mentor–mentee relationship that mentors need to balance: ‘the delicate interaction between the rational (cognitive) and the non-rational (emotional) and, in particular, the powerful influencing role of the latter upon the former’ (Day & Leith, 2001: 414). Creating rapport and giving feedback face-to-face is hard. It is also hard in ideal online settings; bad connectivity makes it even harder. The choice of audio-only calls allows continuing the mentor–mentee’s work, but their reduced social presence affects the cognitive/emotional balance. In mentor–mentee meetings with switched-off cameras, participants lose the intimacy and immediacy of their social presence (Gunawardena, 1995). Intimacy refers to the level of personal topics and nonverbal cues involved in the interaction; immediacy is a ‘measure of the psychological distance’ a communicator conveys (Gunawardena, 1995: 151). Videoconferencing contributes to the mentor–mentee intimacy as it contributes to building rapport and trust in a space where the mentee feels safe to expose their vulnerabilities discussing their practice. As with teacher educators, for mentors creating trust and honesty is fundamental (Mann & Walsh, 2017). Not being able to see each other creates a gap in the mentor–mentee immediacy. Arguably, what Rosario (above) cannot pinpoint is that having switched-off

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cameras reduces immediacy and intimacy affecting empathy. Empathy helps to mitigate face-threatening feedback (Gakonga, 2019). Mentoring TR tends to involve providing a significant amount of feedback on mentees’ work, and this is easier to manage if empathy/social presence is well established. Rosario questions the quality of her feedback and reflects on the medium’s impact on communication. Her reference to a call-centre exchange, perhaps the interaction with the least immediacy and intimacy, shows the negative impact switched-off cameras had in her work. Moreover, saying ‘I feel’ instead of ‘I think’ may suggest a level of emotional engagement that becomes evident when recalling mentoring experiences. When comparing face-to-face interaction and chat-only contexts, albeit synchronous, Edge explains: The immediacy of human presence is missing, as are the paralinguistic communications systems of face, hands and body, the depth and detail of intonation, stress and tone of voice used to communicate, for example, empathy and professional solidarity. (2006: 209)

Nevertheless, mentors’ experience seems to help them to create human presence during online work with limited connectivity. In the extract above, Rosario managed to keep at least audio-only; thus, stress and tone of voice helped maintain the connection with her mentees, but she is critical of her experience, unlike her comments on the environment her own mentor created with her: “I couldn’t see my mentor. Yet somehow. Perhaps because of her experience she developed rapport with me. I felt it that way”. Therefore, the expertise that experiences of working in under-resourced contexts provide can contribute to creating rapport and trust in the mentor–mentee interaction, thus overcoming challenges like the lack of video. Creating rapport and trust are pre-requisites for reflection and collaboration. ‘Socio-emotional interaction and support are important and sometimes essential in realizing meaningful and worthwhile educational outcomes’ (Garrison et al., 1999: 95).

Manifestations of Social and Cognitive Presence in Research Mentoring Meetings The mentors’ use of the online space allows them to support their mentees, prompting them to move from description to reflection. The extract below is

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from a mentor–mentee meeting, where the mentee has his camera switchedoff because of connectivity issues. The mentor (Mariana) begins by making sure they have an organised setting, advising the mentee (Luis) of alternative actions should connection fail before moving on to the topic of the meeting (‘if you have any problems or we have any problems with the connectivity we can use the chat or also we can use our regular phone call’). They are discussing a questionnaire Luis designed to evaluate his lesson plan because he wanted to analyse activities he uses to teach vocabulary. Mariana is asking Luis about some of the questions included. Figure 15.3 shows what both see on their screen: Luis’ questionnaire (left) and the exploratory questions (right) that guide the first part of the project. They have gone through each question, and they are now discussing question six. Mentee: What hands-on minds-on vocabulary activities do students do? Mentor: What you mean with that one? Mentee: (0.4) to specify what activities are planned? Mentor: (0.2) but then is similar to n°2. Mentee: Yeah…well in n°2 says how many in n°6 is to describe. Mentor: Ok then how should it be or you could modify it? Mentee: (0.2) what…what vocabulary activities are included in the lesson plan?…or it could be describe the activities that are presented in the lesson plan.

Fig. 15.3 Mariana (the mentor) using her mentee’s questionnaire and exploratory questions to prompt reflection while screensharing

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Mentor: Then I’ll give you some time to reflect you are going to modify and (…) please try to send them on time so I can give you more feedback or a better feedback…I’m only giving you my perception from right now not having a deep analysis.

Mariana prompts Luis to reflect on his decisions, using screensharing to organise their discussion. The dynamism provided by screen-sharing (or Google Docs) contributes to the mentee’s cognitive presence, which involves reflecting, questioning, challenging beliefs, developing critical thinking, and ultimately improving teaching practices resulting from their research. Moreover, Mariana’s last turn refers to power and time constraints (Copland & Donaghue, 2019). She appears to be controlling the exchange, but she is aware of limitations in the feedback provided, hence the need for further reflections (on her side and Luis’s). This turn also indexes the synchronousasynchronous coordination in the mentor–mentee communication. Based on their experiences as mentees in the CTP, mentors know their mentees need to reach a high level of cognitive presence. They are also aware of their own role in supporting dialogic reflection, for teacher-researchers ‘need detailed understandings of their own local context, appropriate tools, data and dialogue with other or more experienced professionals’ (Mann & Walsh, 2017: 28). Mentors also know from experience that reflective practice can be supported by taking a structured approach facilitated by visual aids. The extract below shows how a mentor (Pedro) asks his mentee (Cala) to describe her context in order to get a fuller picture of the research context. Pedro prompts Cala´s answer, breaking down information requested on the screen (Fig. 15.4). He then stops sharing in an attempt to help Cala feel more comfortable while describing her context. Mentor: So we are going to discuss about (.) The community where you work at which is ((place)). Mentee: ((place)) yes. Mentor: You have told me some things about the energy ((electricity)) (.) £some issues£… difficult to deal with. Mentee: Haha yes. Mentor: You are going to tell me a bit about ((institution’s name)) (.) Your students (.) especially the ones you selected for this project. Mentee: Ok Mentor: And some characteristics of your class(.)Number of hours you teach (.) How is it organised (.) How you plan it amongst other details and (.) Finally… Mentee: Ok. Mentor: Why you’re interested in (.) doing research on students’ performance on exams (.) Ready for that?

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Fig. 15.4 Pedro (the mentor) screensharing notes to scaffold a subsequent description of the research context given by his mentee

Mentee: I believe so. Mentor: I’ll stop to share just for a while so you feel more comfortable and speak as much as you can (stops screenshare) (lines missing) Mentee: ((mentions topic)) well (.) It has to be with all the changes I implemented this semester (.) It called my attention that even when they are working a lot and revising and that they are happy with the activities (…) I noticed that in some cases even when they were working assignments and everything they didn’t have a good performance in exams. Mentor: Ok. Mentee: I was asking myself if the point was only about the exams? Mentor: Aha. Mentee: Or maybe they were not having like a good…ehh…grabbing the knowledge?

This extract illustrates how Pedro gives his mentee points he wishes her to cover and how Cala is beginning to question what she perceives as problematic in her classroom. Although providing guidelines may seem prescriptive, it allows the mentor to scaffold their reflective dialogue by providing a clear structure for the mentee to go over. This initial structure opens the door for the mentee to elaborate on what she wants to explore, and she responds by talking about what she ‘notices’ and ‘wonders’, engaging in a real-time articulation of her practice. By stopping sharing his screen the mentor shows awareness of the depth of this process and the need to create a level of intimacy in the meeting, displaying skills that are particular to online interaction (Murray, 2013).

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Successful experiences of mentoring TR involve both reflective and more directive styles of talk. More dialogic styles of synchronous talk are ideally used to jointly construct articulations and evaluations of mentoring practice. However, directive styles can also be helpful in promoting reflection; clear instructions and goals scaffold a more asynchronous reflective process as mentees work on aspects of their AR project. For example, in the LuisMariana meeting, Mariana asks her mentee: ‘What can you tell me about this question? What kind of feedback do you think you could get?’. Later in the meeting, Mariana says: ‘So Luis, this is what you need to do right now. Ok? On Saturday you need to send me the modification of these tools’, which shows Mariana’s mentoring moving from reflective to a more goaloriented trajectory. Therefore, the two processes should not be seen as an ‘either/or’ choice but rather different ways to foster a reflective process. As Edge (2011: 19) argues, good teacher education involves the interacting roles of ‘Copying, Applying, Theorising, Reflecting and Acting (CATRA)’. From this perspective, reflection and direction are not in opposition or sequenced but complementary in a rounded developmental process that is flexible to mentees’ needs.

Implications The data presented here help raise awareness of important factors involved in mentoring TR through videoconferencing. Although by no means comprehensive or generalisable, consideration of these insights can contribute to the training of future mentors of TR in online settings, particularly since such training, where it exists at present, is likely to be limited. First, the impact of the visual dimension of social presence is a central element in the mentor–mentee interaction and in how mentors are able to support their mentees. Consequently, mentors may need to be trained to become more aware of the connection between social and cognitive presence when supporting their reflective process. Second, mentors need to develop awareness of factors that affect developing trust and rapport in the online environment. Devoting time to ‘getting to know you online’ is twofold. It means investing time in learning about each mentee’s context (e.g. access, digital literacy), which can really help mentors personalise their support and make it context-appropriate (Kiddle & Prince, 2019). However, most importantly, it means that mentors use their knowledge of their mentees’ context to develop a trusting mentor–mentee

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relationship, where empathy and rapport are key to successful outcomes (Gakonga, 2019). Moreover, mentors may need to develop flexibility in using platforms and dealing with developments in and constraints of technology. This is essential to create appropriate conditions for online interaction for each mentee.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have described how mentors co-construct an online space to support the reflective process of teachers doing research. The data reveal that online communication affords mentors and mentees access to PD in a Latin American context that would not be possible otherwise. However, connectivity difficulties also make evident inequalities in access some CTs face. Mentors in this study display significant resourcefulness to adapt to each mentee’s context and provide appropriate support. These mentors are able to use technology to serve interaction by managing online tools (e.g. videoconference platforms, WhatsApp, Google Docs) and promoting reflective practice, providing personalised support and pastoral care. The use of online tools such as screensharing allows these mentors to support their mentees through real-time data-led reflection, fostering mentees’ cognitive presence. When available, activated cameras mitigate the more face-threatening aspects of interaction (e.g. providing feedback), thus enhancing social presence. Mentors in this study share similar contexts to their mentees, even face similar connectivity issues. The major difference is that mentors have done classroom-research (in the form of EAR or AR). This allows mentors to relate to their mentees both personally and professionally more easily, as near-peers using their experience to support teacher-researchers in their professional development. This study offers further evidence that near-peers can be especially effective (Nguyen, 2017; Smith et al., 2014). However, such near-peers may still need support in developing as mentors, so they can better help their mentees via online communication.

Engagement Priorities • What emotions are involved in mentoring TR in an online context? How do participants experience the emotional side of this work?

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• What does interactional data reveal about the different roles mentors adopt to prompt interpersonal dialogic reflection in an online environment?

Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the British Council for its contribution and CONICYT for its sponsorship.

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16 Mentoring Presence for Supporting International Teacher-Researchers ˘ Kenan Dikilita¸s, Aslı Lidice Göktürk Saglam, Mariana Serra, and Ruben Daniel Mazzei

Introduction Although the role of mentoring in teacher education is well documented, there is a scarcity of accounts of teacher research (TR) mentoring (see Dikilita¸s & Wyatt, 2018; Smith, 2020; Chapters 12–15, for exceptions). Engaging in research for professional development is a daunting task for most teachers, due partially to lack of research experience, knowledge, and uncertainty over how to integrate research findings into teaching. Therefore, while doing research, teachers may face internal challenges related both to their own expectations and their self-perceptions of possessing limited skills. They also face external challenges, including a sometimes indifferent environment, lack of support from educational institutions, and insufficient K. Dikilita¸s (B) University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected] A. L. Göktürk Sa˘glam University of South Eastern Norway, Vestfold, Norway M. Serra Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, Argentina R. D. Mazzei University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_16

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funding and time (Padwad, 2018). Thus, mentor support over a sufficient period seems crucial to teacher-researcher development in such circumstances. In this chapter, we discuss how teachers across the world were provided with an opportunity to gain support from research mentors in doing classroom-based research in an online professional learning community (PLC), which was established by Kenan Dikilita¸s & Asli Sa˘glam in 2016 and has been active ever since. The PLC is centred on the Electronic Village Online (EVO) programme (http://evosessions.pbworks.com/ w/page/10708567/Welcome_to_EVO), which is supported and sponsored by the Association of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) (https://www.tesol.org/). The PLC, organized in google + up to 2019 and then in CANVAS up to 2021, has hosted hundreds of teachers from around the world participating in online discussions. Our workshops take place every year from mid-January to mid-February. The PLC aims to help teachers engage in TR in their own classrooms in collaboration with research mentors, who provide not only research-related feedback by interacting with the teacher-researchers (a)synchronously but also provide ‘intellectual and affective support’ (Padwad, 2018: 49). Our PLC is Classroom-based Research for Professional Development (CR-EVO). It includes a five-week hands-on workshop supported by asynchronous written interaction. Resources are provided for teachers to use when they plan, conduct, and then disseminate their research in the ensuing months (for further details, see Göktürk Sa˘glam & Dikilita¸s, 2020). The series of workshops focuses on topics including how and why TR can be conducted, and how data can be collected, analysed, and interpreted. The form of TR that our PLC has encouraged is exploratory action research (EAR) (Smith & Rebolledo, 2018). EAR involves reflecting and acting on classroom practices as part of deeper contextualized pedagogical exploration. In EAR, teachers are first encouraged to reflect on classroom issues, particularly regarding their students, and critically inquire, sometimes together with their students, as to challenges, with a view to addressing these challenges, where possible (Smith, Chapter 14). This commitment to continuous inquiry in the community of CR-EVO through the practice of EAR can be conceptualized theoretically in relation to the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework (Garrison et al., 2000), which is ‘a dynamic model for both the development of community and the pursuit of inquiry, required for higher-order learning’ (Morueta et al., 2016: 123). COI, which emerged from computer conferencing in higher education, facilitates critical reflection and fosters knowledge construction for effective learning (Garrison et al., 2000). The COI framework provides three relevant presences that shape

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the online mentoring experience, i.e. social, cognitive, and teaching presence (Garrison et al., 2000). Success in online mentoring can be closely linked to enhancing all these presences. The COI served as a validated model to help us understand online TR mentoring. In COI, cognitive presence is conceptualized as efforts in seeking the most effective and efficient ways of solving a learning problem and applying solutions developed through continuous critical thinking and communication (Kozan & Richardson, 2014). Social presence, on the other hand, entails a continuous process of maintaining relationships, identifying with the community, and maintaining meaningful, trusting communication (Garrison, 2009), while teaching presence is described as sustaining cognitive and social presence through designing instruction and facilitating learning (Garrison et al., 2000). However, for EAR, we reconceptualized ‘teaching presence’ as ‘researching presence’. If present, these three key elements (social, cognitive, and researching) are likely to strengthen the mentoring presence and reinforce mentees’ engagement in learning to do research supported by online interactions with their mentors. These presences might thus support the fulfilment of mentor roles such as educator, supporter, and sponsor (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). This chapter analyses how the online research mentors facilitated and maintained the three COI presences through mentor– mentee interactions. By quoting verbatim some of the interactions during the workshop, we exemplify how the researching presence is integrated with the cognitive and the social in purposefully synergistic ways. We now introduce online research mentoring in our PLC.

Context Online Research Mentoring After inviting potential mentors to the CR-EVO in January 2021 (by name, on the basis of their experience in mentoring and availability, a practice we have followed since our first event in 2016), we met with them to describe the online teacher research mentoring scheme (OTRM) and inform them about our plans, purpose, and procedures. On our CR-EVO course website, we provided them with mentoring resources, such as videos and books on research methods and samples of published teacher research (e.g. Dikilita¸s et al., 2016; Rebolledo et al., 2016; Smith & Rebolledo, 2018). These resources can be found here: (http://classroombasedresearch.weebly. com). Prior to the course, these mentors were also provided with a 4-week

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e-mentor training programme by TESOL CALL-IS. We additionally invited the mentors to participate in synchronous meetings before and after our webinars within the 5-week workshop series to discuss emerging research-related issues, mentees’ engagement in webinar content, and to clarify key questions; we provided guidance for sustaining support in mentor–mentee interaction. With a view to helping mentees to learn how to conduct research in their classrooms, our mentoring strategies and our mentors’ roles included: • • • • • • • •

Connecting research mentees in the social online environment, Guiding them to formulate their research purposes and questions, Providing research mentees with relevant open-access input and materials, Enacting peer-mentoring in the PLC to support feedback exchange, Developing knowledge about research ethics and reliability, Helping with data analysis and interpretation of findings, Encouraging mentees to share their research findings, Prolonging engagement with research and maintaining interaction within the community.

To strengthen the sustainability of teacher learning, the mentors also discussed with the mentees specific ways of disseminating research findings in innovative, teacher-friendly formats (Göktürk Sa˘glam et al., 2018), such as online meetings organized within the PLC (see http://classroombasedrese arch.weebly.com/outcomes2.html), and as published research write-ups in an e-book (see http://classroombasedresearch.weebly.com/e-book.html). With the mentors’ support, we managed to introduce the mentees to various web tools to help disseminate research, including PBworks Wiki, Weebly blog, Canvas, and we met participants synchronously using Google Hangouts, Adobe, and Zoom.

Our Study The purpose of our study is to reflect on how research mentors mentored teachers in an online PLC to support their research engagement. The support which the mentors provided was mainly based on the asynchronously provided written feedback. So, we look into these asynchronous interactions to understand how mentors provided feedback and facilitated the teachers’ research engagement. We draw upon online interactive discourse data, which was available on our CANVAS page for the registered participants, where the interactions occurred. These data were generated authentically by our mentors to support the research engagement of their mentees in our PLC.

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Our fourteen mentors resided in various countries, including Argentina, Cyprus, India, Italy, Peru, Spain, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Regarding qualifications, six had PhDs, six had MAs and two had BAs. All were teacher educators, some in pre-service and some in in-service contexts, and seven had experience of online TR mentoring (for 2–6 years), including six who had earlier been online TR mentees. The other seven were inexperienced as online TR mentors, but three were previously online TR mentees. They each mentored 3–4 mentees. To summarize, they varied in terms of qualifications and experience, but many had previously shown a commitment to the online TR community, as mentors and/or mentees, and all were teacher educators. In the year when we collected data for this study, we hosted 45 teachers as our mentees. They were generally experienced teachers (averaging 10 or more years of teaching experience). However, they were relatively less experienced as teacher-researchers; few had researched their classrooms before and most rated their knowledge of doing research as limited. They resided in different countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Ecuador, India, Nepal, and Turkey. Most participants reported teaching in difficult circumstances with very few resources and in large classes (Smith, 2020) causing a high noise level; they were typically concerned about issues such as learners’ low levels of engagement and interaction (Kuchah, 2019). Drawing on the online interactions between our mentors and mentees described above, we decided to research mentor–mentee interactions retrospectively, according to the COI framework, using only publicly available naturally occurring data, but removing identifying markers to protect anonymity in line with standard ethical practices. All asynchronous interactive dialogues from the five-week course were copied into a single document (a total of 203 pages including 63,976 words) and read carefully by all the authors. Since we adapted predetermined categories from the COI framework (Garrison et al., 2000), we coded the data set against those categories and sought to identify how mentors enhanced the mentees’ cognitive, social, and researching presences to increase their engagement in learning to conduct classroom research. We ran subsequential deductive coding, where mentor feedback data were coded and categorized against these existing COI-inspired elements of presence, as also used by Bustos-Moraga and Mann (Chapter 15). Follow-up discussions and revisions addressed overlaps and inconsistencies. The findings are discussed below with reference to cognitive, social, and researching presence, i.e. the core features of mentoring presence.

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Insights into Mentoring Presence Social Presence It was highly evident in the data that social presence in the interactions between mentors and mentees was the key element that built and maintained trust, collaboration, and peer-learning. One mentor, for example, thanked mentees as follows: ‘Many thanks for sharing the challenge, and the way you’ll explore this topic; the results of your action research will give inspiration to others’. Another mentor provided emotional support to a teacher-researcher, to build self-confidence, noting in the feedback: ‘I understand your concern. Online interaction is a tough challenge but don’t give up! Your questions will help you find a solution’. Mentors were providing continuous supportive feedback that could deepen commitment to research, and connections to other teacher-researchers, as evident in this mentor comment: I found this short reflection of yours really telling! Reflecting upon all the issues involved in students’ failure and not just focusing on their weaknesses is great, gives everyone the chance to move forward, to explore, to succeed... Thanks for your contribution and let’s hope we can share tips, strategies and even find some possible solutions throughout this course.

In order to establish and reinforce a positive social presence, there was genuine interaction between mentors and mentees regarding input, comments, questions, challenges and outcomes, thus instilling a comfortable atmosphere for interaction. The following comment illustrates how a mentor accentuated social interaction by valuing the mentee’s shared work as a way of reinforcing social presence: Thanks a lot for sharing one of your success stories. I visited the Padlet you shared and there are good messages indeed. Congratulations to your students on their work and to you for engaging them in this activity. Well done!

Through encouraging mentees to persist in their inspiring and interesting work, online TR mentors provided a positive social presence. They sustained this positive social presence by congratulating, appreciating, and encouraging the mentees’ research plans. This was a strong aspect of the COI, with mentors making positive use of language.

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Cognitive Presence Cognitive presence is evident in the inquiry-embedded feedback, for example when mentors concluded their comments with a thought-provoking question. Such questions encouraged the teachers to continue to reflect on one aspect of their research, prolonging the asynchronous interaction and deepening engagement with the feedback. Mentors often used such prompts, encouraging mentees to screen their evaluations and ideas against observable data, as in the following comment: That’s what I’ve experienced in my teaching, as well; a learner-fronted approach works better than a teacher-fronted style, as long as students are clear about their role and responsibility. It seems your students have enjoyed taking responsibility and demonstrating that to their peers. Any feedback from your students on how they’ve felt about the experience?

Similarly, another mentor recommended consulting other teachers as a benchmark for evidence-based evaluations: ‘It’s great to hear that you’ve shared these tools and ideas with your colleagues. Any feedback from them about their use and experiences? ’ Also encouraging evidence-based reflections, another mentor affirmed the value of diary notes: Recording your observations in a reflective diary is also a very good idea to explore your students’ behaviour and reactions to the tasks given. What do your notes tell you in terms of what motivates them to speak and what does not? What tasks/topics do they find more interesting and motivating?

Another mentor enquired about getting student feedback on the authenticity of the task they were giving, with a view to awakening awareness of this strategy as an alternative approach to gain validation about their research practices: Did you get any feedback from your students about how they felt completing the task or did anyone express any thoughts about accomplishing a real-life task?

Similarly, another mentor encouraged a teacher-researcher to consult their students for evaluative feedback, asking ‘I’d like to know if you implemented what you learnt as regards technology during the pandemic. If so, how did your students feel? ’.

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Clearly, several mentors implied that the mentees could draw on their students as a key source of information and evidence, and attend to their feelings during the learning process. So, the mentees were supported by mentors’ cognitive presence, which helped the mentees to consider the key research issues. As these data extracts demonstrate, the feedback was not direct, but was provided in the form of questions, potentially intensifying its effect. Another characteristic of the cognitive presence demonstrated was the expression of empathy. One mentor, for example, encouraged a mentee to develop flexibility in their demands from their students, while fostering cognitive alignment: Same here, lots of my students express they’re overwhelmed by the heavy load of assignments and struggle with time management. What I do is I set more flexible deadlines for assignments and try to encourage peer feedback on discussion posts.

So, this mentor facilitated cognitive presence through referencing concepts such as struggle with time management, flexible deadlines, and peer feedback on discussion posts, while engaging the mentee in considering their own experiences, which could lead to learning. Similarly, another mentor described his own experiences, and then asked mentees to read about those of others: Pronunciation is a tough cookie indeed. My students have similar problems too. Have you read what other teachers do to improve their students’ pronunciation? You might find ideas that you might want to adapt.

The mentors, teachers and researchers themselves, used their experiences as a basis for facilitating cognitive presence. The discourse they developed was therefore more realistic and authentic, and was more engaging for the teacher-researchers. Finally, analysis of mentor feedback revealed a deliberate effort to motivate the mentees to cognitively engage with all subsequent stages of research. In the following example, the mentor poses a series of critical questions to encourage the mentee to reflect on the required steps in the progression of the research project: Before moving on to the action stage, as part of your exploration of the puzzle (the challenge of getting your students to engage in speaking), have you decided on the type of questions you will ask your students in the questionnaire/interviews? And what data would you collect from parents? What questions would you ask them? I guess after finding out the reasons limiting

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your students’ speaking, through your exploratory methods, it will be the time for action - deciding on what to change, revise, add in to maximize your students’ speaking. Any timeline for the exploration, action stages? Best of luck and looking forward to your reply.

The mentor’s final remark ‘looking forward to your reply’ reinforces the reciprocal (re)commenting dialogue and stresses the role of mentors in assisting mentees in proceeding with their research plan. In order to ensure sustained engagement and progression through the research process, mentors also revisited mentees’ comments and inquired about their follow up actions. The quotation below illustrates this kind of ongoing dialogue: Discussing with colleagues is always a good idea to help you reflect on your practices. I remember you were also planning to invite a colleague to your class and observe you/your students and give you feedback. That’s also a good plan to help you explore the puzzle you’ve decided to research; how to get your students to speak more fluently. Have you done that yet?

The above quotes regarding cognitive presence mainly challenged the mentees to explore further, for example by consulting their students to access further data or by seeking practical insights that could help them explore the issues they may not have noticed. This type of presence supplies a complementary relationship with the researching presence in that the questioning processes activated then helped increase the researching presence, which is presented below.

Researching Presence The third presence was researching presence. This can be regarded as teaching presence, with mentor-designed feedback as input for those learning to do research. Researching presence includes components of instructional design, facilitating discourse and (in)direct instruction in research skills, and in our context, digital competency. Several strategies enhancing such presence were manifest in the data. The feedback by mentors specifically highlighted key research issues, resembling a lesson in research, where input was communicated asynchronously, and encouraged deeper thinking and progress in research.

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Curating and Enhancing Engagement with Relevant Resources Researching presence of mentees can be enhanced and maintained by engaging them in further resources that could be useful for their learning. Such digital content curation can prolong their engagement in accessing knowledge in multiple ways. One mentor, for example, helped one teacherresearcher to use open access resources in the research process while also highlighting some research-specific issues. Regarding your first question, what makes you think your lessons are less engaging? Was it your perception of it? And how do you think your students perceive your lessons? Have you decided on the direction of your research process in exploring that, like exploring it from your own or from your students’ perspectives? I’d suggest the ‘Handbook of Action Research’, one of the sources shared this week (downloadable here), offering great tips on that.

In addition, mentors also attempted to facilitate deeper engagement with the course content by helping mentees to explore efficient ways of addressing research-related issues. There were references to course content in some mentor responses. To illustrate, the response below elaborated on the mentees’ research questions, and connected them with weekly course content: Thank you very much for posting your questions. Your research focus on teachers is very interesting and I’m sure your findings will be of great interest for all of us working in the present context. Do you think your questions are SMART, that is to say, specific, measurable (data based), achievable, realistic and time-bound, as mentioned in ‘A Handbook for Exploratory Action Research’?

In the same vein, the following mentor feedback suggested revisiting course content to explore ideas before the mentee applied new learning, and proceeded with the further stages of research. ‘On ways of exploring your situation, I’m sure you checked the book suggested on this platform, I’d also suggest the presentation on Practical Tools for Exploratory Data Generation - the last source given under Week 3 - How can I …? Section on our website ’.

Encouraging Critical Reflection on Research Aims and Process Guiding reflection on research is essential, particularly in an online environment, where the communication needs to consider delays in comprehension

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and response to the feedback due to the asynchronous nature of communication. In the following excerpt, the mentor asks a series of questions, each deepening the feedback and intriguing the mentee, which might support critical self-reflection: Nice topic! Yet, I have some questions and I think they may be of use to narrow your research a bit further. Will you focus on teaching practices in virtual and/or face-to-face environments? Will you focus on both university and high school teachers/practices in the same research? If so, do you think you could use the same instruments to collect data? And how about the analysis of data collected at each of the levels? How would you go about it? Looking forward to reading you!

Similarly, mentors tried to sustain motivation through appreciation and recognition in their written comments. Supportive discourse in the interaction was also very important in the following mentor’s feedback: I liked the way you brainstormed questions and then narrowed them into two exploratory action research questions. Undoubtedly, motivation is a central issue in both face-to-face and online teaching. Yet, as teachers we are still mostly learning how to engage students more effectively in online environments. Therefore, you may need to find appropriate strategies for motivating those non-active students you mention. Have you found out if they are very shy, or if they lack the English level knowledge to understand the activities? Do you think you have triggered their interests, so they can find learning English more ‘personal’ and get more involved in the lesson?

In this feedback excerpt, the questions again play a key role in indirectly raising curiosity rather than directly. Promoting reflection seems to be achieved by questions followed and supported by positive feedback, evident in the following mentor feedback: I find the problem of student demotivation a great issue to explore and, as you may have seen, it is a frequent concern among teachers from many places! Something I’d like to understand better is how you will gather data. If lessons are not face-to-face as classes start again and your students show they are somehow demotivated, how will you manage to ‘talk’ to them, to colleagues and to heads? Looking forward to your research.

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Facilitating Discourse/Exchange of Ideas Among Mentees By shifting to equal partner mode, the mentors took the role of motivator, influencer, and curious audience. We noted constant mentor effort to encourage mentees to read and respond to participants’ posts. A mentor identified mentees with common research interests and guided them to share ideas: Dear Simona, I feel that your topic and Lilia’s are related. You have formulated very good exploratory questions! Lilia, what do you think? I wonder if you have shared the problem you are describing in your contribution with your school colleague(s) - What do my colleague(s) think/feel about this? Tell me more ;)

In addition, one mentor inspired motivation and confidence, and encouraged sustained research engagement by promoting the sharing of research outcomes within the PLC. Very detailed report on your findings! As you wrote under conclusions, your exploratory research study is just the beginning and further research is required. This project has come to an end, but it is also a beginning, not just an end. Go ahead! That is what research is all about! Congrats!! We will all be looking forward to listening to you during our final live round up session

The mentor expressed strong admiration through motivating words. The use of ‘we’ as the interlocutor included other mentors’ voices in this congratulatory feedback. This encouraging final remark gives mentees a feeling of wider involvement, and expresses expectations, through support for the finalization of their research and its dissemination within the community of inquiry. Finally, through this researching presence, in this OTRM scheme, mentors provided guidance in the use of educational technology, raising awareness of web tools for research. ‘I like the activities you’ve found to engage your students. I also use Google Docs and Padlet for interactive writing tasks, and AnswerGarden for brainstorming ’.

Overall Mentoring Presence Although adopting a separated codification for each type of presence, we argue that they overlap and interact to provide a positive mentee experience. Mentors maintained longer interaction with some mentees, and facilitated

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their EAR engagement by employing indirect, facilitative strategies to bring together social and cognitive presence. This also served to elevate critical thinking, to achieve both deeper learning experience and higher levels of cognitive presence. If supported by mentors, these three key elements (social, cognitive, and researching presence) are likely to strengthen the mentoring presence and reinforce learning. One mentor, for example, inspired all three interlinked states of presence in feedback by implying social presence and showing researching presence through specific feedback on data creation and analysis: I’m pleased to read that the study you chose has been useful and inspiring for you. Remember that there are several techniques to increase student talking time (the ones you mention, plus asking students to read and explain instructions, answering questions by classmates during whole class discussions, etc). Moreover, listening to the recordings of your lessons for further analysis may be time consuming, and perhaps you’ll have to select some for your study, but all this depends on your class size and the time you have available. Then, these are just some aspects you may take into account to carry out your own research, which I’m sure will be highly rewarding.

Here, the mentor engaged the mentee cognitively through hedging devices such as perhaps, you may take into account, and remember there are several techniques. This language is neither prescriptive nor imperious, but rather, autonomy-granting; options are provided without any authoritative stance. The hedged language appears to support the mentee’s online presences. Engaging in interaction with research mentors regarding their research supported mentees’ efforts to integrate their practical inquiries into their research design. However, despite these mentor-facilitated presences, there were still drop-outs, with some who commenced the course enthusiastically still not completing it, which is an oft-cited issue for online environments (Tibingana-Ahimbisibwe et al., 2020). However, some managed not only to conduct but also to disseminate EAR studies in the follow-up online events, which created a very positive and enthusiastic atmosphere. Thus, it does appear that COI can successfully provide mentors with a practical framework to develop effective teacher research mentoring strategies. There are several practical implications for supporting online teacher research mentoring.

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Implications Findings from this practice-oriented online research mentoring in our PLC carry several implications for online mentors who mentor teacher-researchers. The first emerging implication is that Garrison’s community of inquiry model (2009) can be adapted to understand online TR mentoring and the experiences and interaction among mentors and mentees. The model could offer a framework which could support the online process of how mentors and mentees manage the exchange of feedback on TR since it identifies three interlinked modes of presences that could inform and strengthen how feedback is given. The second is that online mentoring is a complex task which might require developing online mentoring training (Burgos-Moraga & Mann, Chapter 15). Engaging research mentees in inquiry within a community requires a multilateral investment in social, cognitive, and researching engagement which operates concentrically in (a)synchronous mode during mentor–mentee interaction. The nature of the interaction, asynchronous or synchronous, might be significant. For example, directive and dialogical styles of mentor talk could lead to more reflection in synchronous interaction, as Burgos-Moraga and Mann (Chapter 15) argue. However, in our research, being asynchronous, the written communication was more indirect; mentors tried to sound constructive to minimize any judgmental comments. So, the asynchronous written mode of communication might have led mentors to use language relatively more sensitively. Particularly given this difference between asynchronous and synchronous online mentoring, mentors might need support in understanding the role of their overall presence, shaped by (a)synchronous mode, and how they can initiate and maintain different presences. We have more specific implications for research mentors themselves in online PLCs. A multilateral presence – can be facilitated by encouraging the mentees to interact and co-establish relationships to strengthen the sense of community, which is seen as the key to developing trust – can be secured if everyone participates and contributes to the understanding of the research concepts, issues, and practice – is evident when mentors and mentees pose problems, ask probing questions that engender thinking, and express doubts and uncertainties regarding the shared research plans – prolongs co-engagement with mentees, providing quality relevant input in a dialogic manner

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– increases chances of response rate and connects mentors and mentees while focusing on posing and unpacking research problems, leading to emerging understandings Online research mentors also need to be aware of the role of such social and cognitive engagement, which enhances the researching presence in the online platform. Implications highlighting the presence-supportive mentor strategies might include: Establishing co-presence in various ways, for example: – Social presence by socializing and being approachable and responsive during the asynchronous interaction – Cognitive presence by negotiating research issues, asking thought-provoking questions in a way that helps mentees revisit their research plans, and extending their thinking about research design and practice by using cognitive verbs such as consider, formulate, reflect, and explore – Researching presence by addressing research specific problems, and initiating and maintaining constructive dialogue that openly inspires trust Facilitating research mentees’ social and cognitive presence – By engaging in feedback exchanges to promote researching presence, as the research itself is improved as a collaborative work between the mentor and mentee Acknowledging mentees’ states of presences. – By employing strategies to maintain them through appreciating their efforts Sensing and following up mentees’ presences when they need assistance. – By maximizing their engagement in discussion and (peer)feedback

Conclusion Although TR is becoming increasingly commonly practised in online and face-to-face environments, there are still too few mentors who can provide research-specific support for teachers. It is often the teacher educators and/or

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teachers with extensive research experience that volunteer to be mentors in TR initiatives around the world. Hence, greater numbers of teachers with such a background and experience could be encouraged to engage in mentoring other teacher-researchers. However, being a relatively new area of mentoring practice, (online) research mentors’ experiences and mentoring practices are still underexplored. Our study therefore contributes, together with the work of others included in this volume, to this emerging line of inquiry. Gaining deeper understandings of research mentoring could be one stepping stone for making TR more accessible and practical for teachers.

Engagement Priorities • In what ways is your social presence visible in your online mentoring interactions to engage in successful feedback exchange on research? • How would you support the cognitive presence of your mentees in online research mentoring to encourage critical understanding and implementation of teacher-research? • What roles can you adopt as a mentor to increase your mentees’ researching presences once social and cognitive presences are developed?

References Dikilita¸s, K., & Wyatt, M. (2018). Learning teacher-research-mentoring: Stories from Turkey. Teacher Development, Teacher Development, 22(4), 537–553. Dikilita¸s, K., Wyatt, M., Hanks, J., & Bullock, D. (2016). Teachers engaging in research. IATEFL Research Special Interest Group. Garrison, D. R. (2009). Communities of inquiry in online learning. In P. L. Rogers, G. A. Berg, J. V. Boettcher, C. Howard, L. Justice & K. D. Schenk (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distance learning (pp. 352–355) (2nd ed.). IGI Global. Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a textbased environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2–3), 87–105. Göktürk Sa˘glam, A. L., & Dikilita¸s, K. (2020). Evaluating an online professional learning Community as a context for professional development in classroombased research. TESL-EJ, 24 (3). 1–7. Available at: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej95/int. pdf.

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Göktürk Sa˘glam, A. L., Evans, M., & Smith, R. (2018). Teacher research 2.0., in Pattison, T. (ed.). IATEFL 2017: Glasgow Conference Selections. Faversham: IATEFL, (pp. 236– 238). Kozan, K., & Richardson, J. C. (2014). Interrelationships between and among social, teaching, and cognitive presence. The Internet and Higher Education, 21, 68–73. Kuchah, H. (2019). Teaching English to young learners in difficult circumstances. The Routledge Handbook of Teaching English to Young Learners (pp. 73–92). Routledge. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for trainertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Morueta, R. T., Maraver Lópeza, P., Hernando Gómez, A, & Harris, V. W. (2016). Exploring social and cognitive presences in communities of inquiry to perform higher cognitive tasks. (PDF) Exploring social and cognitive presences in communities of inquiry to perform higher cognitive tasks. Available from: https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/305806431_Exploring_social_and_cognit ive_presences_in_communities_of_inquiry_to_perform_higher_cognitive_tasks. Accessed 24 August 2021. Padwad, A. (2018). Supporting teacher-researchers: Some issues. In D. Xerri, & C. Pioquinto (Eds.), Becoming research literate: Supporting teacher research in English language teaching (pp. 46–51). 1st edn. English Teachers Association Switzerland. Rebolledo, P., Smith, R., & Bullock, D. (2016). Champion teachers: Stories of exploratory action research. 1st edn. [pdf ] British Council. Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/pub_british_council_ champion_teachers_1.pdf. Accessed 25 January 2021. Smith, R. (2020). Mentoring teachers to research their classrooms: A practical handbook. British Council. Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.in/sites/default/ files/mentoring_teachers_to_research_their_classrooms_a_practical_handbook. pdf. Accessed 24 August 2021. Smith, R., & Rebolledo, P. (2018). A handbook for exploratory action research. 1st edn. [pdf ] British Council. Available at: https://englishagenda.britishcouncil.org/ sites/default/files/attachments/30510_bc_explore_actions_handbook_online_aw. pdf. Accessed 25 January 2021. Tibingana-Ahimbisibwe, B., Willis, S., Catherall, S., Butler, F., & Harrison, R. (2020). A systematic review of peer-assisted learning in fully online higher education distance learning programmes. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 1–22.

17 Mentoring in English Language Education: Using Current Transnational Practices to Inform the Future Mark Wyatt and Kenan Dikilita¸s

As highlighted in the introduction to this volume, mentoring has become increasingly prominent in English language education in recent decades as teachers and teacher educators in greater numbers have recognized the need for mentoring and have started to tap into its potential. This volume has shed light on current transnational mentoring practices and, in this conclusion, we recap these developments before pointing towards the future.

Current Transnational Mentoring Practices Evident in This Volume Earlier, as noted above (Chapter 1), mentoring was primarily conceived as a top-down, hierarchical relationship involving a linear transfer of knowledge. Such a view certainly persists in parts of the world, including in Confucian heritage cultures (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5; Hall & Copland, M. Wyatt (B) Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates e-mail: [email protected] K. Dikilita¸s University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3_17

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Chapter 7; Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10), where issues of relative age and status between individuals significantly impact social interaction. In such cultures, school-based mentors may not conceptualize their role as including the provision of emotional support, as Nguyen and Tran (Chapter 5) indicate is the situation in Vietnam. Rather, the expectation may be that their primary role is to tell their mentees how to teach, i.e. through providing directive supervision during post-observation feedback, as Hall and Copland (Chapter 7) describe the situation in Japan. Consequently, when a more egalitarian strategy, involving peer mentoring, is introduced, there can be some resistance, as Smith and Lewis (Chapter 10) found in China. There are also, of course, contexts around the world where mentoring is not offered in any tangible form, and where the teacher’s only option is self-mentoring, as Peter De Costa’s co-authors, Luqing Zang and Laxmi Ojha, report of their prior experiences in China and Nepal (Chapter 4). Nevertheless, as chapters in this volume indicate, mentoring in international contexts is evolving in different ways, as practitioners around the world are applying sociocultural and constructivist views of learning to their mentoring practices. Of the various forms of mentoring presented in this volume, peer mentoring is the specific focus of several chapters. These chapters concern supporting not only undergraduates (Eleftheriou et al., Chapter 2) and international doctoral students (Burns, Chapter 3), but also both pre-service (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5) and in-service teachers (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10), and practitioners exploring their own practices (Hanks et al., Chapter 12). The extent of this focus on peer mentoring may reflect growing understanding that, given the challenges that language educators face in all kinds of social and institutional contexts, providing emotional support is a key mentor responsibility (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999). However, the mentor also has a crucial educator role (Malderez & Bodóczky, 1999), which other chapters in this volume, where the mentor is in a more senior position rather than a peer, have highlighted. Indeed, these chapters illustrate that providing psychosocial support, through establishing and maintaining a positive rapport, appears to facilitate educating. So, Onˇcevska Ager (Chapter 6), concerned with avoiding ‘judgementoring’ practices (Hobson & Malderez, 2013) that inhibit knowledge and agency development, used a systematic informed reflective practice model (Malderez, 2015) to encourage reflection in her pre-service mentees in North Macedonia. Also using transcripts to understand post-observation feedback, Hall and Copland (Chapter 7) chart developments in Hall’s feedback to a novice Japanese mentee, which progressed over time from being monologic and

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authoritative to being dialogic and reciprocal (Bakhtin, 1986). Both Chapters 6 and 7 illustrate in different ways self-reflective and introspective attempts that educating mentors may need to make to enhance menteecentred mentoring practices. Mentoring in English language education is increasingly moving online, where it would seem to have considerable potential. This potential is being realized, for example, in online teacher-research mentoring (BustosMoraga & Mann, Chapter 15; Dikilita¸s et al., Chapter 16), where in-service teachers separated by time and space are nevertheless trying to conduct practitioner research for their own professional development, typically engaging in exploratory action research (Smith, Chapter 14). Such action-oriented research tends to involve teachers in reflectively exploring puzzles connected with their own school and classroom contexts and then identifying ways of acting on their developing understandings (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13). Experience suggests, however, that such research engagement, particularly when the teachers have limited background in research and limited time and resources, needs supportive mentoring (Smith, Chapter 14). Drawing on a community of inquiry framework originally developed to explore educational experience in computer conferencing (Garrison et al., 2010), both Bustos-Moraga and Mann (Chapter 15) and Dikilita¸s et al. (Chapter 16) explored the ‘presences’ involved, including ‘social presence’ (which relates to providing emotional support) and ‘cognitive presence’ (which relates to developing critical thinking within the mentor’s educator role). Dikilita¸s et al. (Chapter 16) also discussed ‘researching presence’, which they adapted from Garrison et al.’s (2010) ‘teaching presence’, to refer to the way in which knowledge about research is developed, connecting the other two presences, as part of an overall ‘mentoring presence’. Both Chapters 15 and 16 illustrate the kinds of mentoring practices needed in online teacher-research environments. Chapter 14 provides a framework that research mentors might follow. Various chapters highlight the need for mentor-mentoring. Nguyen and Tran (Chapter 5) explain for example that, in a Vietnamese context, schoolbased mentors are often ill-prepared and consequently tend to be unable to provide adequate feedback and support. In Hall and Copland’s Japanese context (Chapter 7), the only mentor-mentoring that Hall had received before he started mentoring had followed an apprenticeship model, i.e. shadowing colleagues without the opportunity to engage in discussion. The mentor investigated in Smith and Lewis (Chapter 10) had tried to convey to her Chinese mentees her western-oriented understanding of peer mentoring, without unfortunately, however, managing to get the concept across. It

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is possible that her own mentoring approach had more closely resembled knowledge transmission than knowledge transformation (Wyatt, Chapter 8). As Wyatt argues, mentor-mentoring is needed that is influenced by one or both of two broad approaches to supporting knowledge transformation, the theory-and-practice connection mentoring model and/or the collaborative inquiry model. The theory-and-practice connection mentoring model might be particularly appropriate in contexts where mentor-mentoring needs to be provided at scale through mentor courses (e.g. Borg, Chapter 9). Such a model may help the prospective mentor needing to develop in educator and supporter roles, therefore able to listen actively, empathize, see clearly, and support reflective practice, through activities including lesson observation and postobservation feedback. Any course based on this model would likely include awareness-raising activities and opportunities to practise requisite skills in a safe environment. An example of such a course, which additionally included a collaborative inquiry element, with in-service Omani teachers engaged in practitioner research, is provided by Wyatt (Chapter 8). Expectations for short mentor courses need to be realistic, as Borg (Chapter 9) highlights, with mentors’ continuing professional development needs within their local contexts (in his case, a state in India) supported. Addressing localized context-specific needs is also recognized as of paramount concern in mentor courses discussed in other chapters, for example in Kuchah and Salama’s (Chapter 13) focus on presentation skills in the context of an African female leadership mentoring scheme; in Dikilita¸s and Mumford’s (Chapter 11) account of helping homeroom and English teachers transition into bilingual teachers in a pre-school Turkish context; in Eleftheriou et al.’s (Chapter 2) reflections on a course for peer mentors in the UAE that had been developed and refined over many years. Not all the mentoring experiences reported on in this volume resulted in positive outcomes, for example due to cultural differences contributing to miscommunication (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10). However, benefits highlighted in other chapters include the building of relationships that have supported positive emotions, for example contributing to a growth of self-confidence in UAE-based learners mentoring peers (Eleftheriou et al., Chapter 2), in Vietnamese pre-service teachers (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5), and in African women developing leadership skills (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13). Another outcome has been a greater sense of self-worth in research mentors (Smith, Chapter 14). Collegial relationships through mentoring have developed among teacher-researchers (Kuchah & Salama,

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Chapter 13), exploratory practitioners (Hanks et al., Chapter 12), and inservice teachers (Borg, Chapter 9), leading to greater harmony. Cognitive dimensions of personal growth reported include greater flexibility and reflectivity, for example in online research mentoring (Bustos-Moraga & Mann, Chapter 15). Transformational learning is reported among doctoral students (Burns, Chapter 3) and by in-service teachers in a bilingual pre-school (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, Chapter 11). There is a focus on identity development in mentees (De Costa et al., Chapter 4), agency in pre-service teachers (Onˇcevska Ager, Chapter 6), and the emancipation of a mentee teacher (Hall & Copland, Chapter 7). We now turn to the future.

Future Needs for Mentoring Mentoring has the potential to widen access to learning and therefore address issues that relate to social injustice and inequality. So, it is heartening to see mentoring being employed by language teacher associations (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13), adopted as a strategy by education departments (Borg, Chapter 9) and encouraged by various international bodies (Smith, Chapter 14; Bustos-Moraga & Mann, Chapter 15; Dikilita¸s et al., Chapter 16). One would hope to see such inspiring initiatives spread. However, for appreciation of the value of some of the forms of mentoring discussed in this volume, e.g. reciprocal peer-mentoring (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5), facilitative mentoring (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10), transformative mentoring (Dikilita¸s & Mumford, Chapter 11), to become integral to practice more globally, mentor courses may be needed at various stages of education in a wider range of local contexts. Mentor courses discussed in this volume include those in undergraduate education in the UAE (Eleftheriou et al., Chapter 2), in-service teacher education in Oman (Wyatt, Chapter 8), CPD for in-service teachers in India (Borg, Chapter 9) and China (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10). It is also encouraging to see that teacher-research mentoring (Smith, Chapter 14) has been reaching communities in South Asia and Latin America in particular, but also through the online environment more globally. Providing open access materials and guidance can support such spread, particularly in low-resource contexts, where such help is vital. However, mentoring could also be incorporated more fully into formal (teacher) education courses in many contexts. For example, there are many MA in Applied Linguistics and/or TESOL-type programmes around the

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world that would be enriched by a mentoring module to the great benefit of the postgraduates taking them. Greater understandings of how to unlock the potential of mentoring are needed, particularly in places where it is still understood mostly as a linear process, e.g. in China (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10), Japan (Hall & Copland, Chapter 7), Nepal (De Costa et al., Chapter 4), Vietnam (Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5), and parts of Africa (Kuchah & Salama, Chapter 13). Mentor courses based on a knowledge transformation approach (Wyatt, Chapter 8) can address this situation, enriched by intercultural training where mentors are working transnationally (Smith & Lewis, Chapter 10). Input could include mentors’ reflective stories of inspiring journeys. In this vein, there are accounts in this volume of practitioners at different stages of their careers enhancing their practices through engaging deeply with mentoring in highly principled ways (e.g. Burns, Chapter 3; Onˇcevska Ager, Chapter 6; Hall & Copland, Chapter 7; Hanks et al., Chapter 12). Stories such as theirs could perhaps feed more fully into mentor courses in different contexts. There is clearly great potential, then, to extend mentoring into new contexts and in different ways, and we now propose a research agenda for such work.

Research Agenda Editing the contributions to our book from multiple contexts invited us to have a broader look at mentoring practices in English language education. One of the issues we noticed is that mentee voice needs to be more fully represented in mentoring research, either through first person voice, where mentees are authors, and/or duoethnography, where both mentee and mentor problematize the process of mentoring to generate a balanced understanding of roles, interaction, and other factors that influence the process of learning through mentoring. In different ways, mentee voice is apparent in various chapters in this volume (e.g. Eleftheriou et al., Chapter 2; Nguyen & Tran, Chapter 5; Hanks et al., Chapter 12). Building on such contributions, narratives constructed by mentees being mentored might shed further light on how emotion and conflict shape mentoring experiences and impact developing professional identities. Narrative research incorporating mentee voice could draw explicitly on sociocultural and constructivist philosophy (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Vygotsky, 1978). Therefore, it could examine mentees’ thoughts and feelings as they are supported on their journeys towards the centre of a community of practice by a mentor’s scaffolding. As highlighted above in Chapter 1, growing interest

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in mentoring from the 1980s onwards drew upon developing understandings of situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). Although referenced by contributors to this volume (Burns, Chapter 3; De Costa et al., Chapter 4), these constructs could additionally be employed by mentees in autoethnographic accounts of their learning journeys. Research exploring tensions and contradictions in mentoring relationships during learning journeys could also make further use of cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 2001), the framework used by Nguyen and Tran (Chapter 5). Tensions in mentoring situations may be acute in certain contexts, for example where reciprocal peer-mentoring is being introduced to pre-service teachers in the face of top-down Confucian heritage conceptions of mentoring. Through use of cultural-historical activity theory to access the perspectives of various stakeholders (mentors as well as mentees), tensions can be explored and articulated, potentially leading to dynamic change within and across activity systems. Mentors and mentees can also benefit from introspectively and reflexively researching their own practices, interacting with data generated from their own contexts. Conversation analysis, as employed for example in this volume by Onˇcevska Ager (Chapter 6) and Hall and Copland (Chapter 7), can provide mentors with insights into the extent to which their mentoring conversations minimalize monologic ‘judgementoring’ (Hobson & Malderez, 2013) to promote the co-construction of meaning through dialogism (Bakhtin, 1986). Mentees could also use the data to examine their own roles in such interactions. Conversation analysis has considerable potential, therefore, both for the reflective mentor seeking to develop their own practice and for the self-critical mentee learning to be reflective. As mentoring is increasingly moving online, bodies of naturally occurring data that the mentor may wish to consult for subsequent analysis are developing, stored conveniently through the technologies that facilitated the interaction. While ethical issues relating to the access and use of such data need to be carefully addressed, several chapters in this volume (Bustos-Moraga & Mann, Chapter 15; Dikilita¸s et al., Chapter 16) demonstrate the potential of utilizing asynchronous data (in the form of emails and text messages) and/or synchronous data, perhaps incorporating multimodal elements, to explore mentoring interactions and relationships in depth. Evidence suggests that the digital interaction that develops appears to facilitate critical constructive feedback in online communities in which insights are constantly being shaped by social influence. So, a range of evolving technological tools can be invaluable in such environments and are increasingly

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being deployed to positive effect where mentoring is conducted at distance, sometimes transnationally, as Kuchah and Salama (Chapter 13) and Smith (Chapter 14) demonstrate in relation to teacher-research mentoring. As the technology develops, bringing together previously isolated, unsupported communities of learners, teachers and teacher-researchers, the development of mentoring in these new (at least partially online) environments needs to be further investigated. Finally, as awareness as to the benefits of mentoring spreads into new contexts, there is an increasing need for mentor courses around the world, for learners (Eleftheriou et al., Chapter 2), teachers (Borg, Chapter 9) and teacher-researchers (Smith, Chapter 14). Such courses need to be evaluated using a range of methodologies, with the results shared. These courses can increasingly vary in terms of their mode of interaction (synchronous or asynchronous), mode of delivery (fully online, in-person, or hybrid) and process (short, long, based on workshops and/or self-paced). This growing variety in mentoring course practices can generate fresh research opportunities to explore what works, why and how, in different contexts.

References Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. University of Texas Press. Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14 (1), 133–156. https://doi. org/10.1080/13639080020028747 Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. Internet and Higher Education, 13, 5–9. Hobson, A. J., & Malderez, A. (2013). Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, 2(2), 89–108. Lave, J, & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Malderez, A. (2015). On mentoring in supporting (English) teacher learning: Where are we now? In D. Holló & K. Károly (Eds.), Inspirations in foreign language teaching: Studies in language pedagogy and applied linguistics in honour of Péter Medgyes (pp. 21–32). Pearson Education. Malderez, A., & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for teachertrainers. Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

Index

A

Action research 10, 11, 135, 136, 197, 230, 233, 235, 239, 249, 274, 279 Advising 1, 5, 23, 25, 50, 54, 55, 152, 216, 223, 232, 233, 260 Agency 5, 13, 24, 32, 55, 82, 87–90, 92, 95, 96, 98, 100–103, 184, 200, 218, 288, 291 Autonomy 3, 8, 11, 23, 38, 127, 153, 200, 203, 233, 281

C

Collaborative action research 3 Collaborative inquiry mentoring model 10, 124, 127, 133, 134, 136, 290 Collegiality 11, 14, 72, 109, 194, 196–198, 207, 220, 223 Community of practice 3, 6, 42, 49, 58, 62, 65, 66, 68, 75, 83, 89, 159, 206, 215, 292 Confucian heritage cultures 5, 9, 80, 81, 159, 165, 170, 287

Continuing professional development 11, 132, 140, 142, 220, 289, 290 Conversation analysis 5, 31, 250, 293 Cultural-historical activity theory 13, 73, 293

D

Dialogic mentoring 2, 12, 42, 47, 67, 83, 106–109, 114, 116–119, 140, 148, 195, 254, 261, 263, 265, 282, 289 Dialogism 106, 107, 114, 117, 293

E

Education doctoral 11, 26, 51, 55, 61, 63, 66, 118, 288, 291 postgraduate 13, 125, 292 undergraduate 21–36 Emotional support 4, 6, 7, 10, 24, 45, 75, 77, 78, 82, 131, 179,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Wyatt and K. Dikilita¸s (eds.), International Perspectives on Mentoring in English Language Education, International Perspectives on English Language Teaching, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99261-3

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Index

200, 251, 256, 258, 259, 264, 274, 288, 289 Empowerment 55, 57, 63, 212, 213, 218, 233, 240 Exploratory action research 3, 11, 217, 219, 230, 233, 235, 249, 252, 270, 278, 279, 289 Exploratory practice 3, 11, 12, 136, 180, 194–206, 249

F

Facilitative approaches to mentoring 159, 160, 164 Facilitative conditions for mentoring 143 Facilitative mentoring 2, 5, 7, 126, 127, 166, 291 Facilitative strategies 25, 281 Facilitative support 2

I

Identity 3, 4, 8, 10, 40, 47, 54, 55, 57, 62–64, 66–68, 179, 180, 184, 185, 187, 188, 197, 242, 291, 292 Inclusive practices 195, 255 Intercultural awareness 4, 7, 13, 205, 292

J

Judgementoring 2, 5, 8, 87, 88, 126, 135, 288

M

Mentee-centred mentoring 8, 88, 289 Mentoring. See Dialogic mentoring; Facilitative mentoring; Judgementoring; Mentee-centred mentoring; Mentor-mentoring; Monologic mentoring; Mutual mentoring; Online mentoring; Online teacher-research mentoring; Pedagogical mentoring; Peer mentoring; Reciprocal mentoring; Research mentoring; Teacher-research mentoring; Transformative mentoring; Transnational mentoring definitions of 1, 162, 233, 251 history of in English language education 3 mentor course 13, 124, 135, 136, 290–292, 294. See also Peer mentoring training course mentor roles 2, 4, 6, 92, 100, 102, 127, 132, 188, 271 Mentor-mentoring 2, 6, 7, 13, 242, 289, 290 Monologic mentoring 106–108, 110, 117, 119 Mutual mentoring 9, 13, 38, 45, 106, 173, 194, 196–198, 200–204, 206, 223, 232

N K

Knowing about 88, 89, 91, 92, 98, 100–102 Knowing how 88, 89 Knowing to 88, 89

Near-peer collaborative relationship 251, 252, 264

O

Online mentoring 6, 7, 14, 30, 67, 143, 152, 186

Index

Online teacher-research mentoring 217, 232, 242, 244, 249, 250, 252, 254, 256–259, 262, 270–272, 279, 281–284, 289, 291

P

Pedagogical content knowledge 88 Pedagogical mentoring 55, 68 Peer discussion 49 Peer feedback 78, 221, 276, 283 Peer learning 274 Peer mentoring 2, 7, 9, 10, 29, 38, 48–50, 61, 62, 65, 73, 75, 78, 89, 127, 140, 159, 160, 162, 164–166, 168, 187, 251, 288–290 Peer mentoring training course 124, 136 Peer modelling 101 Peer network 47 Peer observation 9, 78, 134–136, 152, 200 Peer scaffolding 42 Peer support group 45 Peer talk 159 Peer tutoring 7, 24, 31, 32 Personal practical knowledge 128 Post-lesson discussion 5, 11, 12, 75, 126, 132, 186 Post-lesson focus group interview 75 Post-observation feedback 13, 105, 178, 288, 290 Post-observation meeting 160 Post-teaching feedback session 183 Practical knowledge 3, 4, 22, 125, 134, 136 Pre-observation meeting 147, 150 Psychological needs and support 2, 4, 8, 13, 97, 257 Psychosocial needs and support 2, 4, 10, 23, 66, 185, 288

297

R

Reciprocal mentoring 9, 72, 74, 107, 119, 162, 183, 194, 213, 214, 220, 221, 223, 289, 291, 293 Reflection 5, 9, 22, 24–28, 31, 78, 90–92, 100, 102, 103, 115, 126, 131, 135, 141, 142, 146, 148, 161, 166, 170, 172–174, 179, 182, 184, 200, 201, 214, 218, 219, 221, 223, 233, 236, 237, 250, 251, 254, 259, 261, 263, 264, 270, 275, 278, 279, 288, 290 reflective accounts 100, 102, 236 reflective activities 25, 127, 131 reflective conversation 10, 147, 198, 199 reflective cycles 133 reflective dialogue 5, 256, 262 reflective diary 275 reflective discourse 181 reflective discussion 186, 253 reflective essay 27 reflective feedback 92, 130 reflective journal 60, 65 reflective narrative 24 reflective notes 100, 238 reflective practice 2–5, 10, 12, 25, 90, 108, 125, 131, 132, 155, 197, 217, 250, 253, 261, 264 reflective practitioner 3, 5, 135 reflective process 238, 253, 263, 264 reflective skills 140 reflective talk 263 reflective tools 135 Research mentor pedagogical content knowledge 6, 7, 13 Research mentoring 3, 6, 26, 55, 233, 249, 251, 259, 270, 272, 283, 284, 290, 291, 294 Research skills pedagogical content knowledge 6

298

Index

S

Scaffolding 2, 3, 5, 10, 38, 42, 91, 292 Self-efficacy 3, 125 Socioemotional support 179, 185 Supervision 39–43, 45, 50, 62, 78, 87, 108, 148, 288 Systematic informed reflective practice 5, 13, 88, 90, 126, 135, 288

T

Teacher education. See also Continuing professional development in-service teachers 3, 7, 11, 13, 29, 90, 105, 118, 123, 124, 134, 160, 179, 197, 212, 214, 230, 288, 289, 291

models (craft, applied science and reflective) 132 novice teachers 3, 7, 8, 10, 13, 72, 105, 108, 109, 119, 141, 159, 167, 193, 214, 215, 232, 242, 288 pre-service teachers 2, 7–10, 13, 61, 62, 71, 75, 87, 109, 169, 170, 290, 291, 293 Teacher-research mentoring 12, 229, 231–234, 236–238, 240–242, 244, 289, 291, 294 Theory-and-practice connection mentoring model 10, 124, 127, 131, 133, 134, 136, 290 Transformative mentoring 14, 135, 178–180, 185, 187, 291 Transnational mentoring 2, 11, 287 Trusting relationships 2, 4, 131, 178, 200, 205, 263, 271