Beginner teachers' experiences and perceptions of mentorship in two Free State province public secondary schools

Abstract

While researchers agree that transitioning from teacher training to enacting what the student teachers and BTs learned is one of the most critical phases of any teacher (Gravett & Ramsaroop, 2015; Jokikokko et al., 2017; Zuljan & Pozarnik, 2014), considering the 31 years of democracy, there is still not much research in South Africa that has explored the nature of mentorship for BTs in secondary schools generally, and specifically in the Free State Province. It is further unclear how mentorship support, if existing, helps BTs to adjust well in their new work environments. Thus, this qualitative study aimed to explore BTs’ experiences and perceptions of mentorship and examine existing mentorship programmes, if any, in the Free State province public secondary schools. To achieve this, the study asked the question: What are the secondary school BTs’ experiences of mentorship in the Free State Province? This question was supported by the following sub-questions: (i) How do BTs perceive mentorship in their secondary school? (ii) What are the existing mentorship programmes in the selected secondary schools? (iii) What are the factors that influence the BTs’ experiences and perceptions of mentorship (iv) How can the BTs be supported in their respective schools? Subsequently, by answering these questions, it is hoped that this will contribute knowledge to ongoing research debates on the best practices of mentoring BTs and the form and shape their mentorship programmes should take. Furthermore, it is hoped that this study will provide education authorities at provincial and national levels with more empirical data as they decide on the best way to support BTs in the formative phases of their teaching careers. Therefore, I argue that sharing these insights will contribute to the improvement of the schooling system in general. Positioning theory and Archer’s concepts of structure and agency were theoretical frameworks which helped to understand the shifting multiple relations the BTs needed to navigate in the schools as the communities of practice (Barnes, 2004). The paradigmatic orientation that informed this study was interpretivism, which enabled the foregrounding of participants’ voices and understanding the subjective world of human experience. Phenomenology was the research design because of the opportunities to reveal hidden meanings from BTs about their mentorship experiences and perceptions, because sometimes experiences are subconscious, and interaction foregrounds them (Neubauer et al., 2019). I used purposive sampling to choose five BTs from two public secondary schools, semi structured individual interviews, a semi-structured focus group interview, and reflective journals to collect data. To analyse these data, I used Fairclough’s CDA because of its ability to uncover any implicit meanings through which power is enacted (Fairclough, 1993), because the nature of mentorship includes power relations. The study found that, while BTs saw value in being mentored by their senior colleagues, they often felt stranded and unfavourably positioned due to sparsely available mentorship support. Secondly, BTs’ sporadic informal mentorship support involved subject content knowledge workshops by the district education officials. Their preferred form of a mentorship support was characterised by collaboration between themselves and their senior colleagues and amongst themselves as BTs. Their lack of support to deal with learners’ disruptive behaviour, learners’ socio-economic issues, inadequate access to instructional materials and the absence of a brainstorming platform influenced their experiences and perceptions of mentorship. While it will be ideal for principals to be directly involved in the BTs’ mentorship programmes, their multiple and competing commitments will compromise the quality of their involvements. As such, this study recommended that principals need to identify senior teachers among their staff who could be assigned a manageable number of beginners to mentor. The second recommendation that this study made was that instead of senior teachers perpetuating their condescending and exclusionary cultures towards BTs, they need to begin to acknowledge and value the unique contributions that they could bring to the schools. In addition, the study recommended a need for policymakers at national and provincial levels to find creative and efficient ways to deal with the delays of procuring instructional materials that hamper BTs’ curriculum delivery commitments. To help BTs to deal better with the emotional traumas that come with helping learners with their socio-economic challenges, schools and district education officials need to avail psychological services to them. Furthermore, the study recommended more regular content-based workshops for BTs, especially in the first few months after their appointment as full-time teachers. The study also recommended a need for HEIs and provincial education departments to collaborate with a private sector to absorb on ad-hoc basis retired teachers to serve as advisors to BTs by providing them with constructive regular feedback after lessons they had observed and any other professional challenge they may need assistance with. Keywords: Beginner teachers, positioning theory, structure and agency, mentorship experiences