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Curriculum for mentor development: problems and promise in the work of new teacher induction leaders Steven Z. Athanases; Jennifer Abrams; Gordon Jack; Virginia Johnson; Susan Kwock; Judy McCurdy; Suzi Riley; Susan Totaro

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To cite this Article Athanases, Steven Z., Abrams, Jennifer, Jack, Gordon, Johnson, Virginia, Kwock, Susan, McCurdy, Judy, Riley,

Suzi and Totaro, Susan(2008)'Curriculum for mentor development: problems and promise in the work of new teacher induction leaders',Journal of Curriculum Studies,40:6,743 — 770 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00220270701784319 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220270701784319

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J. CURRICULUM STUDIES,

2008, VOL. 40, NO. 6, 743–770

Curriculum for mentor development: problems and promise in the work of new teacher induction leaders STEVEN Z. ATHANASES, JENNIFER ABRAMS, GORDON JACK, VIRGINIA JOHNSON, SUSAN KWOCK, JUDY MCCURDY, SUZI RILEY and SUSAN TOTARO This study examines four case studies of mentors of new teachers who assumed leadership of teacher induction programmes. Using cycles of action research conducted in a teacher induction leadership network, the case-study authors inquired into the features of the mentor curriculum. Cross-case analyses suggest the need for three elements of mentor curriculum. Tools, scripts, and routines can support the work, but generic scaffolds need to be adapted and tailored to local needs. In a time of standards reform and high-stakes assessment in the US, the needs of new teachers should be tied to students and their learning, the

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Journal 10.1080/00220270701784319 TCUS_A_278457.sgm 0022-0272 Original Taylor 02007 00 [email protected] StevenAthanases 000002007 and & ofArticle Francis Curriculum (print)/1366-5839 Francis Studies(online)

Steven Z. Athanases is an associate professor in the School of Education, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, US; e-mail: [email protected]. He studies diversity and equity in English teaching and teacher education. His publications include ‘Learning to advocate for educational equity in a teacher credential program’ (with K. J. Martin), Teaching and Teacher Education (2006), and (co-edited with B. Achinstein) Mentors in the Making: Developing New Leaders for New Teachers (Teachers College Press, 2006). Jennifer Abrams taught high school English for 9 years and coaches and trains teachers, supervisors, administrators, and coaches in Palo Alto Unified School District, California, US. As a consultant, she also helps educators have ‘hard conversations’ in and on their practice. Gordon Jack taught high-school English for 8 years in California, Spain, and Chile. He co-ordinated the New Teacher Induction Program, Mountain View-Los Altos High School District, CA, US, for 5 years before returning to the classroom. He is now the English teacher at Freestyle Academy of Communication Arts and Technology, a career academy (in the same district) emphasizing project-based learning, interdisciplinary studies, and community connections. Virginia Johnson taught over 20 years and worked as staff developer, reading specialist, language-arts leader, mentor, and New Teacher Support Liaison. She is a Program Director at the New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, US, and adjunct professor at Holy Names University, where she supervises and teaches interns. Susan Kwock is Dean, School of Education and Liberal Arts, John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, CA, US. In more than 20 years as teacher, curriculum specialist, and administrator in a large urban district in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has promoted social justice and educational equity with diverse students and communities. Judy McCurdy taught middle school for 13 years, mentored new teachers part- and fulltime, and is vice-principal in the Walnut Creek School District in California where, among other tasks, she monitors support for new teachers and their coaches. Suzi Riley has worked for many years in the San Mateo Foster City School District in California, as a teacher, full-time new-teacher coach, reading/writing staff developer, and teacher literacy coach. Susan Totaro has worked as a tutor, teacher, coach, and principal in the San Mateo Foster City School District, CA, for 20 years. She was Teacher of the Year, 1996, and has been advisor for new teacher projects and the New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, US. Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022–0272 print/ISSN 1366–5839 online ©2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/00220270701784319

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ultimate target of mentor development, particularly in many urban and other high-need districts. Finally, action research and inquiry skills can enable mentors and induction leaders to respond to data about how mentor curriculum must be tailored to the particular needs of mentors, new teachers, and students.


Keywords: case-study research; equity education; mentor development; mentoring; new teachers; teacher induction

Programmes to support new teachers have flourished worldwide. In 2003, 30 US states had formal induction programmes to support teachers for 1– 3 years (Quality Counts 2003). Programmes have been documented and analysed in, for example, Australia (Ballantyne et al. 1995), Israel (Orland 2001), China (Wang 2001), France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Japan (Britton et al. 2003), and the UK. These programmes aim, in part, to reduce teacher attrition. In the US, ∼ 30% of new teachers leave within 3 years, and up to 50% in 5 years (Darling-Hammond 1997, Ingersoll 2002, Ingersoll and Smith 2003). Because job dissatisfaction and unsupportive school conditions are reasons new teachers in the US leave (Ingersoll 2001, Johnson et al. 2004), induction programmes typically pair a new teacher with a mentor or support-provider to help with instruction, adjustment to school norms, and survival of the first years. Support is even more critical for teachers hired without teacher education or adequate preparation. Developing mentors to do this work is very important as mentoring can affect all elements of schooling, teaching, and learning, retaining teachers and guiding them to improve teaching and learning. The latter goal is key, as teacher quality affects student achievement (Sanders and Rivers 1996, Rivkin et al. 2005). With recent standards-based reforms in the US and elsewhere, the bar of effective performance is raised as new teachers need to meet standards for effective teaching and help students meet learning standards. The reform goals include greater knowledge on the part of teachers of learners and learning, curriculum and teaching, and social contexts of education; diverse pedagogical skills; and the tailored use of these skills for subject-matter demands, diverse students, and diverse contexts (Darling-Hammond et al. 1999). Mentoring has the potential to help new teachers meet these goals and to improve student achievement, particularly salient in a time of high-stakes assessment in the US. Despite these lofty goals and enthusiasm about teacher induction programmes, mentoring frequently falls short of its potential, at least in the US. Many of the induction and mentoring programmes do not rest on robust ideas about teacher knowledge, students, or change (FeimanNemser et al. 1999). Mentoring tends to focus on situational adjustment, technical advice, emotional support, and local guidance (Little 1990, Feiman-Nemser 2001, Wang and Odell 2002). In the US, the most common form of new teacher support is still workshops, typically focused on school policies and classroom management (Shields et al. 2001). Also, programmes vary dramatically in their degree of support, time, and financial resources—from comprehensive systems with release-time for mentors and novices to meet, aided by compensation and on-going professional development, to more informal arrangements that pair a new teacher with a ‘buddy’


CURRICULUM FOR MENTOR DEVELOPMENT

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at the school site with no release time, no common planning time, no compensation, and no professional development (Porter et al. 2001, Gless 2006). Aside from resources, frequently missing from such programmes is a coherent structure to enable mentors to guide new teachers in reformminded, standards-based, and critically reflective practice to meet needs of all learners. In these ways, mentoring falls far short of some grand goals of induction. Besides problems of focus, structure, and resources, programmes often lack well-conceptualized curricula to develop new mentors to guide new teachers. This is due, in part, to an assumption that teaching younger students translates well into mentoring new teachers effectively. Veteran teachers may need development in ‘educative mentoring’ that encourages new teachers to question their practice and to develop strategies to improve or refine it (Feiman-Nemser 2001). How might such mentoring be developed? What curricula can support such work? In many instances, mentors take on this work and these questions by default, finding themselves now mentors of mentors, who must locate and/or develop mentor curriculum resources and determine ways to shape mentor development. In the US little research has examined this area of practice. These are issues we consider in this paper, drawing on a study of four action-research cases of new induction leaders attempting to develop curriculum for new mentors of new teachers. Cross-case analyses reveal three themes that can inform mentor development: the need to adapt generic mentoring scaffolds to local contexts; the merits of grounding mentor curriculum in student learning; and the values of equipping mentors with inquiry skills to study ways to adapt mentor curriculum as needed. Framework Mentor knowledge, skills, and learning Although mentoring offers promise in reducing teacher attrition and helping new teachers achieve educational goals, induction programmes in the US often rest on impoverished models. In addition, many induction programmes select mentors simply because they are lead-teachers, veteran teachers of some distinction, or teachers of greatest seniority (Porter et al. 2001). Following such selection with well-conceptualized mentor development is less common. However, without such development, a mentoring goal of focusing on student learning can get lost in actual practices that unfold in mentor/new teacher conferences, as Wang (2001) found in a cross-national study of induction in China, the UK, and the US. In Orland’s (2001) study of mentoring new teachers in Israel, a new mentor learned that, despite her knowledge and goals, she had to read the mentoring situation to gauge new teacher readiness. Orland noted that ‘learning to become a mentor is apparently a conscious process of induction into a different teaching context and does not emerge naturally from being a good teacher of children’ (p. 86).


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Aligned with this insight, other recent work on mentors’ knowledge builds on models of studying practitioner knowledge to articulate a professional knowledge-base (Shulman 1987, Hiebert et al. 2002). Several studies identify features of a knowledge-base for effective mentoring of new teachers. In a case study of an exemplary support-provider, FeimanNemser (2001) found the mentor used several strategies to focus a teacher on individual students; these included asking the teacher questions about individual students’ learning, sharing information gathered on students’ thinking through observation, and engaging students through co-teaching. Drawing on the wisdom of practice of induction leaders and cases of mentor/new teacher pairs in conferences, Athanases and Achinstein (2003) found that, with careful mentoring, new teachers could focus on individual and low-performing students early in their careers; central to such mentors’ strategies were knowledge of assessment of students, alignment of instruction with standards, and formative assessment of new teachers as adult learners. Such work moves far beyond a focus on self, a pattern predicted by dominant models of the new teacher (Fuller 1969, Fuller and Brown 1975, Kagan 1992). In helping new teachers focus on culturally and linguistically diverse youth and equitable learning opportunities, mentors also may need a bifocal perspective—on an individual teacher up-close (his or her knowledge, skills, readiness, resistance) and on the big picture of diverse students in classes (Achinstein and Athanases 2005). Effective mentoring may include knowledge of organizational contexts that shape new teachers’ work and of developing new teachers’ political literacy (Kelchtermans and Ballet 2002). The latter includes strategies to navigate, respond to, advocate, and proactively influence schools and to help new teachers learn to read and influence organizational contexts (Achinstein 2006). This work helps educators understand more about the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to mentor new teachers, and can inform models of mentor development. Shaping curriculum of mentor development There is little research in the US on mentor development to inform practice. Many programmes have yet to articulate a deliberate, conscious, proactive approach to developing mentors. Often the available literature has been dominated by technical manuals and guidelines that lack a coherent theoretical or research base (Achinstein and Athanases 2006). In addition, programmes often assume good teachers make good mentors and need little instruction to lead their new adult charge. Moving from such a place to carefully considering selection criteria for mentors and the design of programmes necessitates conceiving the work of mentor learning as curriculum. What might we mean by such a curriculum? How have some programmes defined such a thing? By mentor curriculum, we refer first to materials, resources, and artefacts of development. This includes practical tools such as manuals, handouts, and mentoring procedure guidelines. It can include a mentoring conversation



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protocol, collaborative assessment log, and guidelines for analysis of student work, features of materials developed and tested by the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) (Davis 2006). All such texts carry messages of ‘official knowledge’ (Apple 1993) about conceptions of students, teachers, and mentors—and about what schools are for—and therefore invite scrutiny. Such tools relate to curriculum-as-object—the texts, resources, and artefacts as they exist on paper, in print, on computer file or website, before they have been used, enacted, adapted by mentorleaders and new mentors. We refer next to activities in mentor development. These may include lectures from leaders and outside experts; practice with class observation, collaborative lesson planning and analysis of student work; or role-playing mentor/new teacher conversations. They may include inquiry practice, using action-research cycles to ask critical questions of one’s practice and to collect and analyse data that may impact on mentoring work. In the US state of Connecticut, the Beginning Educator Support and Training (BEST) programme has included mentor development activities that include exploring new teacher case studies with documents such as lesson plans and student work; enhancing skills to coach novices in reflecting on evidence of student learning and needed instructional modifications; and engaging in collegial conversations and problem-solving with other mentors (Connecticut State Department of Education 2006). While maps of year-long mentor development curricula are uncommon, Davis (2006) maps just such a curriculum from work at the New Teacher Center, with attention to both materials/tools and activities. Beyond such explicit curriculum is the implicit curriculum (Eisner 1994) of mentor development. This includes the environment, organizational structure, norms, and culture of the induction programme. Is collegiality fostered? How is it evidenced? Mentors may help shape curriculum, or a programme can replicate patriarchal leadership learned from administrators as models (Athanases et al. 2006). Also relevant to mentor curriculum is Shulman’s (1987) critique of highly generalized teaching principles stripped of considerations of subject matter, context, learners, and purposes beyond those easily tested. What roles do subject, context, and learners play in curriculum that programmes use to develop mentors? For example, while the BEST programme (in Connecticut) aligns mentors and new teachers by subject matter, the beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) programme (in California) does not, thereby limiting the abilities of many California mentors to work deeply with novices on content-knowledge concerns in their teaching (Porter et al. 2001). Mentor development without attention to deep subject matter means an implicit curriculum in which such issues are not central to mentoring work. We also consider theoretical underpinnings in curriculum of mentor development. This includes the social requirements of the curriculum (Jackson 1968), the underlying theories of adult learners, and the roles the curriculum asks a mentor to assume. A programme can be shaped by theories of reflective practice in which mentors learn to reflect on their own mentoring practice and to foster reflection in teachers (Gaston et al. 2001). A programme can be routinized or be adequately flexible to respond to local


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needs and interests. Are mentors technicians using imported materials in mentor-proof ways, or meaning-makers shaping approaches that tap their knowledge of teaching and learning? A critical-theory perspective on curriculum disparages prescription and imposition, favouring ideologically grounded action, revealing hidden assumptions, and posing critical questions (Hlebowitsh 1993). In what ways do such perspectives inform mentor curriculum development? Theoretical underpinnings include programme conceptions, stated or unstated, of what mentoring means and the purposes it serves, the underlying values being promoted, and messages about the knowledge needed to mentor new teachers. If one believes mentoring can be codified concisely and taught as routine practice, a transmission model, using lectures and formulaic activities, may guide development. If mentoring is cast primarily as helping novices adapt to local school norms, mentor development will feature ways to help new teachers fit in to survive. If a programme values critical perspectives on schools and holds that mentors can guide teachers to be change-agents making schools better serve all students, parents, and teachers, then mentor development may foster critical stances (Achinstein and Barrett 2004, Baron 2006). A neo-Marxist perspective on curriculum holds that schools reproduce inequalities, and that such reproduction must be resisted (Lynch 1989). From such a perspective, mentor curriculum would foreground ways mentors can learn to resist schools’ reproduction of inequality. Such radical projects, however, remain in the ‘world of not yet’ unless they engage in actions including mediation, compromise, and a search for radical possibilities within current approaches to schooling (Deever 1996). For mentor curriculum, this includes learning to navigate complex school-district power relations while strategizing advocacy of curricula that promote equity (Achinstein 2006). What is glaringly absent, however, reveals a programme’s null curriculum (Eisner 1994). This points to theoretical dimensions not adequately explored, dimensions of mentoring that a curriculum leaves out. A programme, for example, that provides explicit directives to manage new teachers in entirely predictable ways conceives of mentors as experts in charge, capable of pre-determined solutions. The null curriculum of this model, however, includes the complex, unpredictable nature of the mentor and new teacher as two human actors sorting dilemmas of teaching practice. Absent, also, is a sense of the mentor as an in-the-mentoring-moment actor who uses expertise to read the mentoring situation (Orland 2001), gauging and adjusting to the new teacher’s needs, and the mentor’s readiness to examine particular phenomena. Similarly, a programme that broad-strokes culturally and linguistically diverse students under an umbrella of ‘all’ students excludes the impact of social and institutional structures on inequitable learning opportunities and achievement of many youth. Finally, we consider learned curriculum (Cuban 1995). What do mentors learn from programme materials, professional-development offerings, programme purposes and messages? What do they take from sessions and use? Do assessments gauge the impact of activities and elicit the mentors’ feedback on programme successes and problems? Are assessments multiple, adequately varied? How, then, does an induction leader select resources,


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development activities, and underlying purposes for mentor development, and with what degree of structure and support? What image of the mentor and models of mentor knowledge and skill undergird the curriculum? What is implied in programme processes, what null or left out? These are questions we consider, reporting from four cases of induction leaders developing mentoring curriculum. Method


Context for study California has had a well-funded state-wide programme of beginningteacher support and assessment. Over several years, experienced teachers became mentors for new teachers. Many then assumed leadership for teacher induction, organizing professional development for mentors and leading programmes in districts and multi-district consortia for teacher induction. Since the late 1990s, over 70 of these leaders have participated in the Leadership Network for Teacher Induction (LNTI) sponsored by the New Teacher Center at UCSC. The network proved a rich site to explore issues in developing curricula for mentors of new teachers. By network we refer to a group of educators engaged in related work sustained over time; and rather than rely solely on transmission of outsider knowledge, LNTI used features of other successful education networks: an on-going learning community using mutual knowledge, learning, and collaboration to explore critical issues (Lieberman and Grolnick 1996). Tapping rich and varied experiences, LNTI members engaged other leaders representing programmes supporting 2750 new teachers in over 60 districts in Northern California. Sites varied from lower-income, large urban districts of almost exclusively students of colour, to smaller, more affluent suburban districts in predominantly white communities. The range encouraged discussions of similarities and differences in what teacher induction means, what mentoring can yield, and how teacher induction problems can be identified and addressed. LNTI members met at least 9 days a year to collaborate on innovations in induction, to conduct actionresearch cycles on teacher induction problems, and to generate ongoing support for common work. Participants The key participants (all of whom share authorship of this paper) were seven teacher induction leaders who conducted a total of four action-research projects during the 2002–2003 academic year. These leaders wrote cases of their projects which are highlighted in this paper through summaries, key ideas, and results, preserving original language and data excerpts when possible. The lead author also participated as a facilitator of several workshops on analysing project data and of a 3-day summer institute on writing cases from action-research projects. He also engaged in analytic work of

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understanding cross-cutting themes of a larger set of nine cases, selecting the four present cases as thematically connected.1


Data collection and analysis As part of their involvement in LNTI, all network members engaged in action-research cycles that included problem-framing, data collection to understand focal problems, an action plan for making change in a focal problem area, further data collection to track the impact of action efforts, analysis of data, examination of emerging themes, and writing of cases. Professional-development workshops throughout the year featured methods of data collection and some simple and some more complex quantitative and qualitative data-analytic procedures. The teams shared data from mentor and new teacher surveys, from transcripts of mentor and new teacher conversations, and from other sources and, led by LNTI co-ordinators and research colleagues, engaged in team analysis of data and in planning analytic procedures. For the 3-day intensive summer institute in 2003, teams stayed at a retreat centre and participated in structured events for close review of data and problem-solving to make sense of the data. Research models and analytic strategies scaffolded the process. In informal sessions, teams immersed themselves in data and writing of cases, often into the late evening or in early-rising hours. At times teams met with the lead author, other institute co-facilitators, and others for intensive sessions with blackboard, chalk, and laptops to map project details, chunk data, connect ideas, and distil, articulate, and substantiate emerging themes. The full group met periodically over the 3 days to showcase highlights of developing understandings, elicit peer feedback, raise issues, and maintain community cohesion. Projects from the full group resulted in varied degrees of completeness, from several later-published solo- and co-authored book chapters (e.g. Athanases et al. 2006, Helman 2006) to less complete reports in need of more data or further analysis from projected ongoing work. Beyond case-by-case analytic work, a second level of analysis involved close reading of nine case studies of action research to consider cross-cutting themes. A question driving this level of analysis was, ‘What is this a case of?’ (Shulman 1992). In several instances, case authors had considered this issue and had reflected elaborately on what their case meant. However, a case can mean many things, so considering the cases alongside each other enabled new perspectives and themes to emerge (although these by no means were the only themes worthy of study). Case data, as well as the case authors’ resulting themes and supporting evidence, all served as data for a kind of meta-action research (Radencich et al. 1998). Here the constant comparative method (Merriam 1998) guided analysis, supported by insights already gleaned from intimate knowledge of projects and cases. For this level of analysis, the lead author and a research colleague analysed case data on multiple levels, following Miles and Huberman (1994). We used matrices and other displays to condense and compare. We then pulled illustrative examples from cases to compare and contrast particular projects’ features. We discussed


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thematic currents and critiqued each other’s perspectives on which themes were most salient and why. The resulting condensed treatment of cases went through repeated drafts to preserve particulars and to maintain analytic threads across cases. Case authors reviewed and responded to distilled case drafts and to overall analytic and thematic threads.


Overview of four focal cases Table 1 shows participants, some details of contexts, and the data collected. The table shows that project demographics varied. Cases 1 and 2 came from projects in suburban districts of predominantly white and Asian students, both overall financially comfortable settings. Cases 3 and 4, on the other hand, came from work in more socio-economically-, culturally-, and linguistically-diverse communities, particularly in the large urban district of Case 3. Size of mentor and new teacher cohorts also varied. Case 1 involved the largest group of mentors (105); Case 3 served a large group of 100 mentors but targeted a pilot group of 26, 50% of whom were teachers of colour. The other two projects worked with smaller mentor cohorts. The number of new teachers served, again, was higher for Cases 1 and 3. The Case 3 project annually served between 250–400 new teachers. Table 1 allows a simple reading of the number of new teachers served by project mentors. While the induction programme of Case 1 served a large group of mentors, each mentor served, on average, 1.5 new teachers. Mentors in this project received stipends for this work, and were expected to attend training in mentoring. In sharp contrast, the table shows the programme in Case 2 spent resources differently. To serve 78 new teachers (exactly half of the number served in Case 1), 14 mentors worked at a ratio of more than 5.5 new teachers per mentor. Rather than offering stipends to a large number of mentors, this project paid fewer, but 15 of 16 worked parttime as mentors and part-time in teaching or co-ordination roles, and one worked full-time as a mentor. This well-resourced programme enabled much release-time for mentors to observe and conference with new teachers during the school day. Case 3 concerned a large urban district with mentors working at a ratio of nearly three new teachers per mentor. These mentors were full-time teachers allowed three release-days per year to work with new teachers, but these days were underused because of the district’s inability to recruit sufficient substitute teachers to provide release time for mentors. Also, unco-ordinated and unwieldy internal procedures prevented timely internal communication between administrative offices that could have better informed mentors early in the year about their assigned teachers and responsibilities. Finally, the project in Case 4 blended full-time release for three mentors with stipend-supported work of others. Table 1 shows that all four projects had a focus. Cases 1 and 2 focused their work at the level of developing the capacity of the mentor to help new teachers become more effective in their work. Case 1 focused on alignment of a programme adopted from an external agency with the mentors’ abilities to foster improvement of teaching among novices. Case 2 somewhat similarly began with mentors’ capacity to work with teachers. In contrast, Cases

Jennifer and Gordon

Susan and Virginia

Suzi and Susan

1

2

3

4

b

K–8 suburban district, 460 T, 10, 000 S; middle-to-low income; 40% white, 19% Asian, 29% Latino, 4% African American, 4% Filipino; 50 languages; 27% free/reduced lunch

Large unified (K–12) urban district; 50, 000 S; 50% African American, 25% Latino, 17% Asian, 5% white; over 30% limited English proficiency; over 60% free/reduced lunch

Consortium: 2 suburban high school districts; 6000 S; mostly middle-class to affluent; 60% white, 20% Asian, 7% Latino, 5% African American

Large unified (K–12) suburban district: 29 schools; 979 T; 20,742 S; mostly white middle class

Induction programme site and student demographicsa

T = teachers; S = students. M = mentors; T = new teachers; P = principals.

Judy

Case number

a

Induction leaders and network member

19

100 Pilot group: 26 (50% Ts of colour)

14

105

Number of mentors served

64

270 Pilot group: 26 (50%+ Ts of colour; 43% emergency permit Ts)

78

156

Number of new teachers served

Literacy: develop literate thinkers

Equity: close achievement gap for African American and Latino students

Clear and direct link between mentor programme and improved teaching Build capacity to mentor (50%+ of mentors had little or no mentor training)

Project focus: year of study

Written and phone surveys (M and T): regarding frequency and quality of interactions; impact of programme events, and conversations on practice. Interviews. Posters of M and T thinking in work session. Group discussion notes with M and T Pre-assessment survey: M. Interviews: 6 M. Web survey: 94 questions on self-efficacy regarding teaching diverse students. Focus group: 9 M: regarding effectiveness of training; impact of mentor role; needs assessment. Written assessment: 5 M on impact of training on mentoring. Coffee talk notes and reflections with M Surveys: pilot groups of M and T: on preparedness, self-efficacy and motivation related to equity teaching and mentoring. Interviews: 3 T, 3 M, 3 P: nature of relationships and understanding of programme framework. Focus group 5 M: on use of programme framework. Narratives: interactions with and observations of selected M Informal observations of Ts’ reading programmes. Survey reading instruction: 3 more times during year. Observations of Ts’ reading instruction. Group discussions with Ts

Data collectedb

Table 1. Contexts and data collected for focal case studies of action research projects on mentor development.


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3 and 4 began with focal areas driven by local needs of students. The programme of Case 3 grounded its project in closing the achievement gap for African-American and Latino youth, its leaders calling this ‘a moral imperative’. The programme of Case 4 likewise began with a local student need: developing their grades K–8 students into ‘literate thinkers’, a goal the district had identified as central and challenging. In both Cases 3 and 4, then, the mentor curriculum began with particular student need informed by local context. The work of new teachers and mentors built upward from these grounded foci. The four projects used an array of data to learn about their programmes’ effectiveness in focal areas. Table 1 shows that all projects used surveys of mentors or new teachers or both to learn about these participants’ knowledge, needs, routines of engaging their mentor programme, evaluation of quality of interactions, reflections on the impact of programme events and on the importance of mentor self-efficacy and motivation about programme foci. While several projects surveyed new teachers, Case 4 most closely surveyed new teachers’ classroom practices and needs related to their project focus of literacy. In that project, in addition to the beginning-of-the-year survey on teachers’ reading strategies, teachers were surveyed three more times during the year to gauge evolving understandings of literacy strategies and of experiments in practice. Surveys across projects included some with few questions, to the web survey of Case 2 that asked 94 questions. Surveys were conventional written open-ended forms and Likert scales, as well as phone surveys in Case 1 and the web survey of Case 2. Other forms of data included interviews, focus groups, written assessments and notes from group discussions, and posters of work sessions. Finally, two groups explored informal data-gathering. Case 2 used notes of small-group informal coffee talks with mentors about on-going practices, problems, and needs. A member of the team from Case 3 wrote narratives describing practices of several mentors and new teachers as these related to the project focus of equity. Across cases: the tension of generic supports and tailored focus in mentor curriculum The cases revealed a tension. On one hand, programmes sought structure to achieve the goals identified by project foci. In some cases, this meant adopting materials from external sources and, in some cases, adapting them as needed. On the other hand, mentor curriculum needed to respond to local needs and mentor concerns. The cases relate in this tension in mentor curriculum development between use of generic supports and a more tailored and contextualized focus. Case 1: the danger of adopting scripted mentor curricula Case 1 highlights the danger of forms overwhelming purposes. Judy McCurdy’s district had adopted a programme of guided events for mentors


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and new teachers to use together. Many district mentors had completed a 3day training course in the use of materials focused on several teaching events. Events included maintaining classrooms, supporting all students’ learning, and lesson planning. Materials came packaged and in a box for use by mentors. As one of the induction leaders, Judy found new teachers reported little value in use of materials, found the process swamped by too much paperwork, and hated ‘the dreaded box’ because it asked them to complete time-consuming tasks, often unlinked to pressing classroom and student needs. Judy noted how, in some instances, mentors thought the programme prescribed steps and did not invite flexible use of resources. Feeling unequipped to adapt materials, some mentors retreated to buddy roles, offering emotional support and sample lessons but little in the way of critical conversations about teaching and learning. A second-year mentor, Lillian, proudly told how she walked into a new teacher’s room after school to discover her crying after being yelled at by an irate parent. Lillian listened to the teacher and suggested they jointly craft an e-mail message to the parent. She then put cheery notes and gifts in the teacher’s mailbox to ease the pain of the event. Lillian felt comfortable in the role of ‘been there, done that’ with her new teacher. Lillian’s concern with the teacher’s need for reassurance was, of course, valued. However, repeatedly ‘putting out a fire’ and calming nerves created a relationship of strictly emotional support. Tools to deliver and assess lessons, arrange a classroom, and monitor teacher interactions with students were missing in the master plan of their work. Lillian did not use the adopted, albeit generic, materials of the induction programme of which she was a part. Judy noted another missed opportunity for new teacher, mentor, and programme. In many cases, the box of materials had gone unopened. Why, Judy wondered, had mentors failed to adapt materials for use? After all, teachers wanted support for issues the events featured and reported appreciating being observed and reflecting with mentors. Through inquiry, Judy learned that part of the problem was a failure in mentor development. The project had relied on curriculum-as-object, with too little attention to activities to support use of materials and to linking purposes with tools. In many cases, mentors were unclear about programme goals and purposes and how programme processes might link to improvement of practice. The district programme had missed opportunities to adapt principles from the adopted packaged programme to meet the needs of the individuals it served. Without knowing if and how materials could be critiqued, adapted, or selectively used, even more experienced mentors retreated to supplying lessons and other practical goodies. This appeared more valuable than taking on overwhelming and taxing materials the district had adopted. Data showed mentors could reply to survey questions in appropriate terminology but often did not understand the reasons for programme processes. Was this similar, Judy mused, to a teacher posting rules for classroom conduct versus student-generated rules that create student ‘buy-in’? In some cases, mentors had no prior knowledge of the services they were expected to provide. Those who attended sessions often received the same training over and over. Judy wondered about this. If educators need to differentiate lesson plans for different areas of student achievement, shouldn’t mentor


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curriculum meet the needs of various levels of mentor knowledge and experience as well? Judy noted that the California State Budget Act and Assembly Senate Bill 2041 (1998–1999) was passed to provide teacher induction that successfully met beginning teachers’ needs. Was that lost on some districts and teacher associations concerned solely with fulfilling another state mandate? Soon, ‘judicious application of the paperwork’ became the battle cry in Judy’s district. Clearly, core principles had to be better translated to all parties. Professional-development time was needed for mentors to understand more deeply programme purposes, for pairs of mentors and teachers to adopt and adapt materials, and for mentors to collaborate with other mentors. Co-ordinators also needed to engage administrators so they, too, were clear about programme purposes and potential values. Case 2: adopting and adapting with scripts and beyond Unlike Judy’s group, Jennifer Abrams and Gordon Jack used no packaged programme but adopted selected tools and training developed by outsiders for their first year as induction leaders. About learning structures required to develop new knowledge, they knew adults differed from children, but what that meant for mentor curriculum was unclear. Like Judy, they found new mentors ready to provide emotional support but less ready to help new teachers question their practice and develop strategies to improve or refine it. They hoped the adopted tools would help. Mentors met 12 times over the year for full morning or afternoon workshops that included lecture, smalland large-group discussion, videos, and reflective writing related to effective mentoring strategies. The team’s research indicated that forms and models helped new coaches transition out of ‘cheerleading’ and into a more substantive and educative role. Phases of a coaching conference and specific modelling of language, illustrated during workshops, provided mentors’ with a vocabulary and structure for reflective conversations with new teachers. Scripting what phases of a coaching conference sound like helped mentors run meetings. In the area of reinforcement, as one example, a staff developer identified goals such as recommending to a new teacher continued use of a skill, explaining how it promotes learning, and eliciting a teacher’s perception of things discussed. She illustrated mentors’ language with ‘sentence stems’ such as ‘I saw you effectively use this strategy when you …’, and ‘What do you think makes sense of what I just said about …’. Mentors reported that the model allowed them to be more directive with new teachers as well as more supportive in acknowledging successes. One noted that it ‘gave me language I needed to do good observations’. Another stated, ‘Now I can really engage my people in a way I couldn’t before’. The model also helped mentors make a subtle shift from purely nurturing to guiding practice. Tools from the New Teacher Center at UCSC also supported mentors’ data-gathering to guide new teachers’ reflection. Most useful were tools for selective scripting (of a teacher’s chosen focus of student and teacher


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comments in class); classroom maps to enable reflection on student performance; and student-engagement tallies, often recorded on maps, to summarize lesson activity and student-engagement trends. As a result of training and use of the instruments, 70% of the new coaches claimed they felt ‘Quite a bit’ to ‘Very’ effective in collecting observation data by the end of the year. However, the mentors felt less comfortable using data to guide support. Jennifer and Gordon learned that mentors needed structured time to roleplay or practice reflective conferences based on data collected in classroom observation and needed guided practice to limit data collection to specific areas outlined in a pre-observation conference. ‘I still overscript’, one mentor admitted in a focus group, ‘because I’m afraid I’ll leave out something important’. Jennifer and Gordon found it critical to scaffold instruction for new mentors with scripted training and tools, but mentors needed time to process seminar information, practise use of tools in groups, and discuss difficult situations or cases. The programme had to be adapted for mentors to make sense of a new role and the knowledge needed to enact it well. Repeatedly, mentors reported a need for time to brainstorm, collaborate, practise the use of a coaching language, share and discuss issues, and talk about real cases that might assist them in ‘owning’ the role of coach. One mentor struggled, for example, with how to get a new teacher to consider class and race when reviewing student-achievement data. The mentor also had observed that the teacher’s persistent classroom-management issues centred on the only two African-American students in class. When asked about these students, the teacher typically shifted responsibility from herself and onto students, noting ‘I just think they would be more comfortable at another school’, revealing an unwillingness to be more responsive. After explaining the case, the mentor role-played a 20-minute reflective conference with another mentor to assess the teacher’s understanding of cultural differences and encouraging her to consider how this understanding might affect her response to these students. Colleagues analysed the conversation and offered suggestions. ‘[The conversation] not only allowed us to observe practice’, one new mentor said, ‘but brainstorm possible solutions to an incredibly challenging situation’. Such comments encouraged the team to restructure seminars for the next year to allow more time to process, role-play, work with cases, and collectively problem-solve. Templates, structures, and protocols appeared helpful for new mentors’ success, but the team’s research strongly suggested it was essential to provide time at all sessions for mentors to process content, reflect on experiences, and internalize information through case study, role-play, and collective problem-solving. Expecting adults to just ‘get it’ because they are adults and not students seemed reasonable in respecting an adult’s wisdom, but the team found it was not what was needed for mentor growth. Scaffolding, templates, and chunking of material is congruent with adult-learning theory. However, unlike Judy’s situation in Case 1 where mentors and new teachers frequently resisted and critiqued the ‘dreaded box’ of materials as overwhelming and busy-work, Jennifer and Gordon learned they could use carefully selected and tested scaffolds as long as they used them in the context of small-group work, role-playing, and


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rich and adequate processing time. This case suggests that mentor development may benefit from both explicit scaffolding with tools adopted from external sources and reflective instruction in which new processes are adapted to mentors’ individual and group concerns. The case reminds us that mentor-leaders face the same dilemma as the classroom teacher: needing to discern when to persist in content coverage and when to go deep in curriculum to meet diverse learners’ needs.


Case 3: adapting mentor curriculum: foregrounding equity in a large urban district Unlike Jennifer and Gordon, Susan Kwock and Virginia Johnson faced an urgent local need inciting them to focus and adapt mentor curriculum very specifically. In a large urban district serving mostly middle- to low-income youth of colour, Susan, Virginia, and other district mentor-leaders placed equity at the core of their induction programme. Because of the inequitable educational status of district African-American and Latino students and a low teacher-retention rate, the goals included supporting new teachers in culturally competent instruction and equity pedagogy to increase learning opportunities for targeted students of colour and to close the achievement gap. Of 270 new teachers hired the year of the project, Susan and Virginia worked with a sub-set—26 new mentors and 26 new teachers; 50% of each group were teachers of colour, and 43% of the new teachers held emergency permits. The core questions were: What competencies must a mentor possess to effectively guide the development of new teachers toward culturally responsive practices? What tools can help both new and experienced teachers reflect on and develop equity pedagogy? To induct teachers into the district with equity as the programme core, the six California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP) provided a frame for use in mentor development and to guide teacher development, but they were inadequate to fulfil the needs of a district this size serving such a high percentage of traditionally underserved student populations. CSTP broadstrokes ‘all’ students without acknowledging specialized needs or inequities of the education system as it pertains to targeted students. This compelled the team to adapt the standards into a Culturally Responsive Standards for the Teaching Profession (CRSTP) framework. The tool is based on equity principles postulated by various researchers (Grossman 1984, Nobles 1991, Kuykendall 1992, Nieto 1999) who make explicit the requirement for teachers to know about their students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Modifications were made for use by mentors and new teachers to give descriptions of practicing greater cultural specificity and to make it easier for mentors and new teachers to use. The six CRSTP consist of descriptions of practice specially designed for teaching African-American and Latino students, with performance scales to accompany each teaching standard and its various elements. For example, the state standard of ‘Engaging and supporting all students in learning’ includes an element called ‘facilitating learning experiences that promote autonomy, interaction, and choice’. The original document lists

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items that include ‘support and monitor student collaboration during learning activities’. The CRSTP revised this document to include ‘teacher facilitates learning experiences that promote divergent points of view’. In so doing, the document signals an environment that is more than individuals working together, but one that explicitly supports and even promotes perspectives that differ. The team also created two new items for this element: (a) teacher works with families to extend students’ learning and development of confidence and choice at home and school; and (b) teacher integrates multicultural and cross-cultural knowledge into curriculum. These items explicitly support linking school to family and to culturally diverse bodies of knowledge and experience. Two-thirds to three-quarters of mentors rated their training in the CRSTP extensive, the quality high, and their ability to apply it high. One noted: It is a great document. I’m very familiar with it and have been reading it like a ‘bible’. And it really breaks it down, even though we are talking about helping beginning teachers here, even for veterans.

A new teacher used the CRSTP framework as a self-assessment and reflective tool. She illustrated thoughtfully how she adapted culturally responsive practices based on cultural learning styles and student backgrounds in her teaching. She demonstrated how she continually revised a lesson plan she taught many times to adapt it to unique needs of each student and groups of students. She added scaffolding each time she taught the lesson to make it more accessible to diverse learners; made it more student-centred by encouraging students to be co-constructors of knowledge; and restructured learning experiences to help students develop metacognitive awareness. Like others, this teacher stated that she used the CRSTP to guide her assessment and modification of daily practice. Data also revealed new teachers’ receptivity to assistance in development of culturally responsive practices. Nearly three-quarters of the new teachers indicated a high priority to have assistance with instructional planning to meet specific needs of the focus populations, and 89% expressed as high priority a desire to have effective culturally relevant literacy strategies made available to them. In addition, over 80% indicated willingness to open their classrooms for critique and specific feedback from mentors, while 60% wanted to invite mentors to come into their classrooms to demonstrate and model lessons. New teachers did not just want help with strategies for teaching ‘all’ students, but overwhelmingly wanted assistance with developing culturally responsive practices for teaching underserved students. The data indicated there was a group of mentors generally knowledgeable about equity work, confident about culturally responsive pedagogy, and enthusiastic in advancing an equity agenda. The study also showed a group of new teachers eager to learn and be supported in development. The study was limited by self-reports, and no claim was made about closing the achievement gap. That work required future examination of how mentors directly ‘walk the equity talk’ in work with new teachers, and how new teachers do so with students. It was critical at this level to ensure that



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support services and resources would be systematically and strategically placed to support and assess new teachers’ application of equity pedagogy in the classroom. The data also revealed several barriers impeded the work. Over 50% of mentors, all full-time teachers, thought the biggest challenge was finding time to observe and meet with their new teachers and having a structure and time for collaboration with new teachers and other mentors. Mentors wanted time to observe new teachers in class; new teachers needed time to observe mentors in the classroom; mentors and teachers needed time to examine student work together and to engage in reflective conversation about what is observed, what is tried, and where it all needs to go. Systemic barriers such as cumbersome hiring procedures and untimely, sometimes unresponsive, bureaucratic practices impeded the work. The district’s inability to recruit sufficient substitute teachers to provide release time for mentors, unco-ordinated and unwieldy internal procedures preventing timely internal communication between administrative offices, and systemic flux in terms of personnel and structural changes all had a negative impact on the work. Nonetheless, despite impediments, adapting state standards to focus mentors and new teachers on equity in instruction provided focus for the full team. Mentors recommended further refinement of pedagogical descriptors and a more condensed version of the adapted framework to achieve wider use of it as a self-assessment and self-reflective tool among new teachers and mentors. For Susan and Virginia, the core question remained: How do we build and sustain an individual and collective will to forge ahead in the work to close the achievement gap? Certainly, institutional structures need to change, but careful attention to adaptation of tools to advance an equity agenda was key in mentor and teacher development in this project to help insure a focus remained on equitable learning opportunities for students too often underserved by schools. Case 4: inventing: a focused curriculum of mentoring for literacy Unlike the others, Case 4 highlights how induction leaders invented a new mentoring curriculum based on needs assessments of students, teachers, mentors, and the district. Suzi Riley and Susan Totaro as new induction leaders held a new responsibility for mentor development in the relatively small mentoring programme in their mixed-SES, fairly diverse suburban district. Capitalizing on the small size and on a district-wide literacy initiative, they focused mentor development sharply on subject-matter knowledge and pedagogy, embedding the work in local concerns for grades K–6, and inventing support to advance a highly focused agenda. New teachers reported insecurity about the district’s goal of developing powerful literate thinkers of all students. One new 1st-grade teacher noted, ‘When I first realized that helping a child develop into a lifelong reader was my responsibility … I was terribly overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure that I could do it. … I wasn’t even sure where to start’. Helping a child become a successful and life-long reader is a daunting task for new teachers as they search for effective reading strategies. Mentor leaders Suzi and Susan asked: Would on-going support


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directly impact new teachers’ literacy practices and help their students consistently increase their reading levels? This case illustrates the invention of mentor development using original designs and local resources to meet district needs. Just as new teachers needed knowledge and skills, so did their mentors. Professional development in reading strategies and student assessment were necessary. The team’s use of district literacy coaches helped them develop varied mentoring techniques, including demonstrations of ideas to engage students in literacy activities and ideas for designing effective classroom centres. They created a library of professional-development books on current research about literacy. The most powerful learning experiences for mentors resulted from weekly discussions on articles and findings. These discussions often offered insights that could be shared with new teachers. Concurrent with these discussions, mentors conducted informal observations of new teachers’ reading programmes early in the year to help design their mentoring programme. They also surveyed new teachers on specific reading strategies to determine where to begin direct support. They learned that only one-third of new teachers used any kind of small-group or individualized instruction for literacy, only one-third used levelled books to guide reading instruction, and none taught reading for 100 minutes or more per week. Some teachers only occasionally used running records of literacy development and were then unclear as to their real purpose. A few teachers did not see their value at all. Teachers lacked background knowledge, appropriate resources, and confidence to approach instruction. Mentors were buoyed by their newfound confidence that research they had conducted could guide their mentoring agenda. They helped their new teachers take the assessment information they gathered and use this information to design a programme to take students to the next level of reading development. Assessment started to be looked upon as a ‘dipstick’ to check student progress and to assess student needs, and was used as a basis to design further instruction. Both mentors and new teachers began to see more values in on-going assessment. Mentor modelling of how to teach reading provided needed first-hand experience with what could be done, and appeared to have a strong impact on new teachers’ practices. Mentors taught guided reading groups for new teachers to observe, enabling teachers to see not only new ideas for teaching reading but also classroom management techniques for maintaining student behaviour of a large group while working with a small group. As teachers became more accomplished at applying newly learned reading strategies, they initiated small reading groups. There now was more conversation about reading with students and less paperwork. Parents reported that their students read much more at home and became better at choosing books appropriate for their reading levels. Teachers themselves stated that they saw more growth in lower students’ reading levels when compared with data from the prior year. In analysing student assessments, the team documented progress with all students that year, some advancing well over the normal 1-year growth. Students began reaping benefits. An end-of-year survey showed twothirds (twice as many) new teachers now used small-group or individualized instruction for literacy. Also, 75% of teachers taught reading for 100 minutes



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or more per week, and 88% now used levelled books to drive instruction. The team were confident that their focused induction programme had a significant impact on their new teachers’ literacy programmes. The next important step was to document the impact of that support on students beyond pieces of achievement data and anecdotes collected. Success appeared attributable to the focused induction work, use of modelled strategies, videos of instructional approaches and other resources, conversations on literacy ideas, and engagement of a district literacy coach. The mentor curriculum arose out of local need, responded explicitly to teachers’ assessed needs in teaching literacy, and used close tailoring through on-going formative assessment of new teachers’ literacy practices. Several mentors needed much of the same subject-matter knowledge development as their mentees needed, and the mentor curriculum addressed this need with material and human resources and on-going reading and inquiry. The programme was well resourced, with three full-time mentor/co-ordinators, and the entire project was supported by leaders’ involvement in cycles of inquiry and involvement in the network of induction leaders. Summary of four cases of inquiry in mentor curriculum development Judy and her team in Case 1 faced the reality that forms and paperwork of an adopted programme had swamped learning targets, causing resistance by mentors and new teachers. Through inquiry, she and her team learned of underlying problems and began considering ways to solve them, noting particularly a need to examine the curriculum-as-object and to build activities so the programme might be understood, adapted, and used. In Case 2, Jennifer and Gordon adopted curricular tools from external sources, scaffolds mentors found useful in engaging their new roles. These new leaders found, however, that beyond these materials they had adopted, the curriculum had to be adapted because new mentors needed time for activities that enabled them to process new understandings, role-play challenging interactions with new teachers, and rehearse their new roles. Adopted forms and scripts grounded the work, but workshop time needed to be adapted to enable mentors, as adult learners, to take up new roles, processes, and understandings. In this sense, they found evidence of Lambert’s (1998) position that self-reflection, self-assessment, and self-direction are critical for adult learning and development. In Case 3, clear philosophical underpinnings shaped the curriculum as Susan, Virginia, and their team translated values and moral commitment into a curricular purpose: to foster equity pedagogy among mentors and new teachers in service of closing the achievement gap for youth of colour in their district. The team turned to state standards and relevant rubrics as scaffolds. However, they found the need to adapt these scaffolds to local need. After revising the language of standards documents and rubrics to sharpen a focus on equity, the team inquired about ways in which mentors and new teachers felt prepared to engage the work of closing the achievement gap. The team found that their adapted rubrics served some mentors and teachers well and further adaptation would make the tools more useful.


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Other dimensions of mentor curriculum and team inquiry were needed to further the work. Finally, in Case 4, Suzi and Susan designed a year-long mentor curriculum tailored explicitly to local needs: developing literacy curriculum and students as literate thinkers. Engaging mentors in inquiry about new teachers’ literacy practices through observation and surveys, the programme used invention to meet areas of need in new teachers’ subject-matter knowledge and pedagogy related to literacy. Mentors, too, needed subjectmatter development as they taught, modelled, and engaged teachers in conversations about literacy pedagogy. This sharply focused curriculum appeared to have yielded results for teachers by year’s end. While their programme used scaffolds for mentors and teachers, these scaffolds were explicitly tailored to particular instructional foci and to individual teachers’ needs, tapping material and human resources from the mentor staff and other district personnel. Cross-case themes and discussion We began with considerations of what new mentor co-ordinators need to consider as they shape a mentor curriculum. We defined a mentor curriculum broadly to include materials and resources; activities; implicit curriculum; theoretical underpinnings of goals, purposes, and actions; the null curriculum of mentor development; and the learned curriculum. Three themes emerged from our cross-case analyses: the importance of scaffolds and their limitations; the value of using inquiry and action research so that the mentor curriculum is responsive in context; and the need to maintain focus on students in mentor curriculum. Structures, scaffolds, and their limitations As induction leaders in our cases designed mentor development, they had to determine the nature of the structure and support needed to enact an effective mentor curriculum. Across cases we found that forms, scripts, and tools can scaffold mentor and new teacher learning, but we found a tension: scaffolds impede learning when they lose sensitivity to individuals and groups, and when they eclipse larger learning goals. Induction leaders designing programmes often do not have the benefit of an explicit commitment on the part of a school district to a specific learning objective, such as developing literate thinkers, the district focus in Case 4. Also, leaders may work in very large comprehensive districts and/or multidistrict consortia where such a single focus is not viable. This means mentor curriculum may need to be, at least in part, more generic in nature, as was Judy’s in Case 1—flexible across grade levels and subjects. In such contexts, tools, forms, and scripts may serve as curricular materials to scaffold learning. The challenges of working with these supports remain: they must be sensitive to local needs and monitored for their usefulness with highly diverse mentors and new teachers.



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The case studies reveal a recurring tension between the values of structures and routines to scaffold mentor learning and practice and, on the other hand, a need to adapt scaffolds to local needs and to monitor their usefulness. More experienced others in informal and schooling contexts often teach those less experienced with scaffolds, structures that approximate learning outcomes and that can be dismantled as they grow unnecessary for the learner (Vygotsky 1962, Wood et al. 1976). Problems arise, however, as scaffolds are designed for generic groups, often losing sensitivity to individuals and their contexts. One might ask: scaffolding for whom, when, and in what context? Should teachers use the same scaffolds for all students? Should mentors use the same mentoring curriculum for novices with very different learning needs and degrees of engagement? Should mentor-leaders use the same mentoring routine for new and more veteran mentors? A challenge of scaffolds is that they can become reified, eclipsing the concepts they were meant to teach, and can become insensitive to local and particular needs. Even in using the most scripted curricula, however, possibilities remain for locating radical potential in reforms and for adaptation and appropriation of projects (Deever 1996). Uncovering and testing these possibilities remain parts of the charge of induction leaders whose job it is to design and monitor mentor development. Mentor curriculum as informed but responsive: inquiry and mentor curriculum in context These cases teach us about the need to adopt and adapt and invent, the place for scripts and beyond, in designing mentor curriculum. Generic mentor curriculum models provide templates and starting points, but when imported into local contexts and reified as programme, they likely will fall short. Research on teaching and standards for the profession repeatedly have advanced the tenet that good teaching is teaching in a context, with sensitivity to particular learners. The same tenet holds true for curriculum in new teacher induction and mentor development. The cases highlight the role of inquiry in enabling such understandings to emerge. Judy’s survey of mentors engaging programme materials in Case 1 conflicted with reports of minimal use of the dreaded box of teachingevent guides and forms. Her desire to unlock this disconnect led Judy to raise questions about the failure of her programme to adopt and adapt. Surveys and coffee talks with mentors told Jennifer and Gordon in Case 2 of the power of scaffolds, but an emerging call for workshop time to engage tools more deeply and to reflect on problematic cases alerted these induction leaders to a need to balance tools with processing time based on group and individual need. Susan and Virginia in Case 3 found through surveys, interviews, and observations that mentors and new teachers valued their adaptation of teaching standards to foreground equity. However, data also told them that the tool needed further revision and that its value might depend also on engaging in district-level advocacy for structures to enable an equity agenda to remain in focus. Surveys and observations of new teachers helped Suzi and Susan’s team of mentors in Case 4 assess teacher needs in their project’s


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focal area of developing literate thinkers. New student assessments as dipsticks and on-going surveys of new teachers all served as formative assessments to help the mentor team learn about programme needs and to respond in an on-going fashion through curricular attention. In all of these cases, then, induction leaders used data and deep reflection on their inquiry to gauge the kinds of support needed in particular and local curricula of mentor development. Their specific insights help remind us that context matters, that mentor curriculum needs to engage adults as learners who benefit from tools and other scaffolds but whose particular understandings and attention to specific purposes and local needs call for on-going attention to adaptation. The cases, and Judy’s in particular, also remind us of the need for judicious treatment of data and tentative analyses. Formal data were triangulated with the lived experience of interacting with educators at varying levels. Action research is not just an apology for work not done by outsiders with their more distanced, ‘objective’ perspectives. We are reminded here that the researchers are in the community, with access to what is going on, to forms of data some ethnographers would strive to collect in order to capture the emic perspective. Knowledge of the local, the district, served as touchstone for things learned through formal data. Maintaining focus on students in mentor curriculum The equity project of Case 3 began with a moral imperative. In fact, all three large urban K–12 districts represented in the network and in the nine cases originally reviewed for this study foregrounded equity-focused teaching and mentoring in development and inquiry. This reminds us of how purposes and goals can be shaped from the learner up. It offers other implications for policy and practice. For example, from Case 3 we learned it is possible to foreground equity work in mentoring new teachers and to adapt standards to bring this work into focus. However, while mentors and new teachers responded to one project’s efforts in this regard, the case reminds us that this work is so demanding for teachers in large urban districts in the US, serving mostly youth of colour (many underachieving), that it cannot be done effectively without time, resources, and structured opportunities for on-going mentored apprenticeships in equity-focused teaching. School districts, informed by thoughtful induction leaders, need to allocate or advocate for resources that support new teachers’ efforts to close achievement gaps. Motivation and skills to close achievement gaps are not enough. We do not want the essential work of mentoring new teachers to be viewed by various parties as just ‘another thing on my plate’. We need to continue to ask whose interests are served by curriculum, because schools—and by extension, mentor programmes—reproduce an unequal society (Apple 1995). Susan and Virginia ended their extended case study with this relevant anchoring question: ‘Do we truly will to see each and every child in this nation develop to the peak of his or her capacities?’ (Hilliard 1991: 36). Their case instantiates the principle that educators can be public moral intellectuals and articulate about the larger purposes their programmes and projects serve (Sears 2004).

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This study of four cases also reminds us, through Case 4, that subjectmatter drills the curriculum of mentor development down to individual students at desks, tables, and carpets because the focus is on what the students are doing and need to do more of in classrooms, to meet educational goals—in this case, of developing into literate thinkers. Achinstein and Athanases (2005) found that effective mentors maintain bifocal perspectives on the new teacher up close and the big picture of students in the background; the present study highlights how the perspective of the induction leader adds another layer. As figure 1 shows, teacher-induction leaders are those primarily responsible for shaping mentor curriculum. Arrows pointing right show that curriculum supports the up-close needs of mentors, the primary clients of mentor curriculum, with the needs of the mentor’s new teachers just beyond, and, at another step removed, the students these new teachers instruct, as well as their diverse learning needs. In the case of Susan and Virginia, the equity focus was threaded up and down the curriculum. It was held in perspective by these induction leaders who prepared the CRSTP

Larger spheres of influence

Local school, district, and community contexts Teacher induction leaders

Mentor curriculum

Figure 1.

Mentors

Mentor curriculum development.

New teachers

Students and their diverse learning needs

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for mentors—adapted state standards tailored to culturally and linguistically youth and to closing the achievement gap for some youth of colour. The framework was developed for mentors’ use with teachers—in order to impact students’ learning. The same held true for Suzi and Susan’s literacy project, in which mentors were supported as the up-close students of the mentor curriculum, to then support teachers, as those teachers instructed students to develop into literate thinkers. The arrows at the bottom of figure 1 also show that mentor curriculum development may be recursive, as parties inform and help reshape curriculum. In Case 2, the mentors shaped the curriculum by calling for processing, reflection, and role-playing. Surveying, interviewing, and observing new teachers enabled induction leaders in Cases 3 and 4 to reshape their work. And both Cases 3 and 4 began with and foregrounded students and their learning, as the driving curricular force. This does not mean that student learning was absent from view in curriculum work of Cases 1 and 2. It does, however, remind us that as educators develop curricula for those some steps removed from students in classrooms, it may be wise to consider beginning with students and their learning, or at least to monitor ways such concerns remain central and able to shape mentor curriculum. We need to try to link the education of teachers (and, by extension, new teacher mentors) with the impact such curricula and learning have on students. This study suggests that, in the case of mentor curriculum, we may be able to see the work of mentor development show up in student learning more quickly and clearly when such curriculum is anchored in student learning and, as the figure also shows, in particular contexts.


Figure 1. Mentor curriculum development.

Toward thoughtful development and inquiry in mentor curriculum This study examined four cases of new teacher induction leaders attempting to design curriculum for the mentors they then were leading. These are cases of new induction leaders working without road maps to guide design of mentor curriculum. However, they were engaged not only in mentor curriculum development, testing new approaches, but also in inquiry in a network of equally engaged induction leaders. Cross-case analyses suggested the need for three elements of mentor curriculum. Tools, scripts, and routines can support the work but generic scaffolds need to be adapted and tailored to local needs and to monitor usefulness. Second, particularly in a time of standards reform and high-stakes assessment, the needs of new teachers may need to be tied to students and their learning, the ultimate target of mentor development, especially in many urban and other high-need districts. Finally, action research and inquiry skills can enable mentors and induction leaders to respond to data about how mentor curriculum must be tailored to particular needs of mentors, new teachers, and students. The developing knowledge of educators such as these highlights problems and successes in a new area of professional knowledge. Beyond historical binaries of curriculum theorizing versus curriculum development, or scholars versus teachers, this ‘curriculum work’ (Marshall et al. 2000)


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engaged us collectively in articulating this knowledge-base. The cases we analysed remind educators that investment in the learning of all youth requires investment in mentoring new teachers. This in turn requires investment of time and resources to develop high-quality induction programmes in which mentor curriculum is carefully designed and monitored for effectiveness. Only then can we hope to achieve the urgent goal of retaining teachers and the larger goal of developing their expertise so all of their students are well served.


Acknowledgements The Leadership Network for Teacher Induction, which supported action research and case-study writing for study-participants, was facilitated by Betty Achinstein, Janet Gless, and Barbara Davis of The New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz (Ellen Moir, Executive Director), US. The Network was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The authors thank Anna Richert for support with action research; Betty Achinstein for assistance with case writing and data analysis; and Kim Ferrario, Brenda Rinard, and David Ross for critical feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. Note 1.

Six of the seven project participants are women; five are white, one African American and one Asian American. The lead author is a white male who teaches and conducts research on teacher education, teacher inquiry, and diversity and equity in education.

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