Mentoring for newly recruited school teachers: Concept, features and models

The present paper is an attempt to conceptualize the concept teacher mentoring and its need and significance. Teacher mentoring is a complex and multi-dimensional process of guiding, teaching, influencing and supporting a newly recruited or beginning teacher. Teacher mentoring is a process which provides a bridge between pre-service teacher preparation and in-service practice trough helping newly recruited teachers to meet the specific educational and psychological and social needs in the beginning of their career. The paper discuses the distinctive features and characteristics of effective teacher mentoring as it should focus on supporting new teachers improve or modify teaching in accordance with required and desirable standards, it is quickly react to the evolving needs of newly recruited teachers and their students. Mentoring is viewed as a complex professional process that should be developed gradually and it includes careful selection and preparation of mentors as well as it prefers experienced teachers as mentors and involves them in the design and evaluation of mentoring programme. The paper also throws light on the criteria for selecting mentors for newly recruited teachers. The paper also mentions some different and important models of teacher mentoring; Informal Mentoring, Intentional Informal Mentoring, Formal Mentoring, Functional Mentoring, Group Mentoring, Mosaic Mentoring, Peer Mentoring, Peer Tutoring, Near-Peer Mentoring Model, E-Mentoring, Multiple mentoring, Reverse mentoring, Triad mentoring and Self-Directed Mentoring etc.