TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

Mentoring in Education: Best Practices for Supporting Teacher Growth

27 May 2025/ By Zineb DJOUB

What is mentoring in education?

Perhaps you’re trying to help a new teacher find their footing without overwhelming them. You’re unsure how to do it effectively, or your mentoring programme feels more like a formality than a lifeline.

Alternatively, you might be the new teacher, questioning whether mentorship is merely a buzzword that schools use during PD days.

Whichever the case, it’s essential to grasp what makes mentoring a genuine learning opportunity—one that fosters confidence and encourages growth.

This post explores what mentoring in education should resemble—clear strategies, honest discussions, and programmes that genuinely support teachers. Are you ready to cut through the noise and discover what truly works?

Let’s begin.

What is mentoring in education?

Mentoring is a one-to-one relationship between an experienced and less experienced person to learn or develop specific competencies (Murray, 2001). It’s, thus, a partnership.

Mentoring in education is a relationship between a mentor, usually an experienced teacher, and a mentee, such as a preservice teacher or a newly qualified teacher (NQT).

The mentor offers guidance, support, and encouragement. The mentee brings questions, energy, and a desire to grow. Together, they learn from each other.

This relationship is often part of a structured programme, with clear goals, deliberate planning, thoughtful mentor-mentee pairings, and purposeful use of tools and resources to make the mentoring experience meaningful and effective for both parties.

Forms of mentoring in education

Mentoring can take many shapes depending on the needs of the school or programme:

• One-on-one mentoring between a mentor and a single teacher
• Team mentoring, where several mentors support a group of mentees
• Peer mentoring among teachers of similar experience levels
• Novice-to-novice mentoring
• E-mentoring using email, video calls, or online platforms

The mentor-mentee relationship

Mentors don’t need to have all the answers or do the whole job. Instead, they should be more like a “guide on the side” than a “sage on the stage.”

They help mentees learn how to reflect, prioritise, and become more self-directed. Even if the mentee isn’t quite ready to take the lead yet, the mentor needs to boost their confidence and guide them toward self-directed learning.

But mentoring isn’t just about helping with lesson plans, managing a classroom or accomplishing any teaching task. It’s also about investing in someone’s potential — helping them develop the values, attitudes, mindset, and skills that make effective teaching.

What makes a good mentor?

Mentors needn’t have just teaching experience. They also need to show concern about the mentee’s goals, needs, and growth.

A strong mentor:

• Is genuinely curious about who the mentee is and what they need
• Takes time to listen and understand — not just instruct
• Is willing to be observed and talk through why they make the choices they do in the classroom
• Shows both their successes and their learning moments — because we all have them!

 

Mentoring is about being real, not perfect.

Helpful mentoring skills

Here are a few tools that help mentors support their mentees more effectively:

• Asking thoughtful questions that invite reflection.
• Working together to set goals and make decisions.
• Rephrasing or clarifying to check understanding and open up thinking.
• Summarising key takeaways from conversations.
• Modelling reflection-in-action — saying out loud what they’re thinking in the moment.
• Listening deeply, not just waiting to talk.
• Offering honest, kind, and constructive feedback.

 

Why mentoring matters for teachers

Mentoring is a powerful professional development tool that benefits both the mentor and the mentee.

According to the principles of adult learning (andragogy), adults learn best when they can draw on their own experiences, interact with others, and take charge of their learning.

That’s exactly what mentoring allows. It creates a space where teachers, no matter how experienced, can reflect, grow, and connect in meaningful ways.

Research has shown that mentorship:

• Helps teachers in their professional growth since it provides them with practical support that helps them gain self-confidence, solve problems, and apply critical thinking skills to situations affecting student learning (Wang & Odell, 2007).
• Bolsters leadership (Deal & Yarborough, 2020),
• Encourages mentees to become critically reflective and to continue to learn throughout their careers (Dymoke & Harrison, 2006).

 

However, mentoring isn’t just about supporting the mentee— it’s about growing together.

Effective mentoring strategies for teachers

Here are 3 essential strategies you need for an effective mentoring experience:

#Keep communication flowing

Effective monitoring in education depends on effective communication with the person you’re working with. As a mentor, you need to listen actively to the mentee to identify the kind of support you should provide.

To achieve this goal, your communication must also involve the 4Cs:

– Clarify : Use clarifying questions such as “What makes you say that?”, “Could you please explain more?”, “Which of these ideas you’ve suggested are more important for you?”.

–Consult : Respond to the mentee’s questions or concerns by providing ideas, possibilities, and solutions based on your knowledge and experience. To promote agency, offer more choices or alternatives addressing the same teaching goal or challenge, and encourage her to reflect and make decisions.

–Collaborate : Engage in a joint effort of analysis, problem-solving, decision-making, and reflection. Ask questions such as: Is this something we could work on together?, to prompt collaboration.

–Coach : This is the stage where you guide your mentee through asking analytical questions and probing to set their goals and develop their own criteria for success.

#Carefully design your classroom observation

Classroom observations are meant for growth, not judgment—whether the mentor observes the mentee, or the mentee observes the mentor or another experienced teacher.

They’re more effective when they’re purposeful and structured. Design them in three phases:

1. Pre-observation: Be sure to clarify the purpose of observations, roles, and the kind of evidence to be collected and negotiate possible ways to reflect on and document the experience beforehand.
2. Observing: The mentee (or mentor) collects data or evidence, which she will analyse and discuss afterwards. This can include video of the new teacher teaching, student work samples, student interviews, lesson plans, classroom running sheets and data captured when a mentor or teacher takes up the role of ‘student for a day.
3. Post-observation reflection: Hold a follow-up after the session, involving analysing the evidence together to reveal specific professional challenges and offer insights, and actionable next steps.

#Build trust

Trust is the cornerstone for any mentoring relationship.

If you position yourself as the ‘expert’ and the new teacher as ‘trainee’, you are more likely to behave in ways that demonstrate that you know best, while the new teacher has no voice or choice.

So, you will be dictating solutions and ideas instead of negotiating, questioning, and offering avenues for agency.

But when your mentee’s ideas and choices are valued, and your tone is supportive and curious rather than critical or condescending, trust is cultivated.

For an effective professional conversation, make your language clear and accessible to your mentee, focus on progress rather than their faults and failures and encourage and reassure them, especially in the early stages of the relationship.

Mentoring programmes for teachers

Here are some reputable mentoring programmes for teachers:

New Teacher Center (NTC) – Comprehensive Induction and Mentoring

offers structured mentoring programmes aimed at supporting new teachers through comprehensive induction processes, including trained mentors, regular observations, and feedback cycles.

Jim Knight’s Instructional Coaching Model

Jim Knight’s model focuses on instructional coaching through the “Impact Cycle,” which involves identifying goals, learning strategies, and improving teaching practices.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)

Provides professional learning communities and mentoring resources for educators.

California Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA)

State-funded two-year induction programme with trained mentors.

Teaching Channel Platform

A video library plus an array of tools to enable video-based self-reflection and peer feedback via professional learning communities (PLCs) and teacher cohorts.

References

Deal, S. T., & Yarborough, P. (2020). Higher education student leadership development:
5 keys to success [White paper]. Center for Creative Leadership.

Dymoke, S. and Harrison, J. (2006), “Professional development and the beginning teacher: issues of teacher autonomy and institutional conformity in the performance review process”, Journal of Education for Teaching, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 71-92.

Murray, M. (2001), Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring: How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Process, Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco, CA.

Wang, J. and Odell, S.J. (2007), “An alternative conception of mentor-novice relationships: learning to teach in reform-minded ways as a context”, Teaching & Teacher Education, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 473-489.