Senior English Teachers’ Understanding of and Practices in Mentoring

The concept of mentoring was introduced in February, 2010 at a training conference for all SETs in the Batinah South Region. In the study, it was shown that SETs have a limited understanding of mentoring due to the lack of knowledge they have of the process. This has been inferred from the limited definitions of the process the participants presented and from the few examples given by the SETs on the requisite skills and the kinds of support needed for the teachers. None of the participants mentioned the concepts of professional and personal development or professional and personal support. Moreover, none of the participants mentioned professional and personal development as the main purpose of their mentoring work, but they did mention examples that lead to either development. Participant F mentioned professional development when she said, “as you know . . . peer observation is part of the professional development of the teacher.” Furthermore, most of the participants' responses are attributed to either the experience they gained from working as SETs or from their knowledge of the duties they are expected to perform as SETs, especially in their descriptions of how to conduct PLDs, which was found to be the same with the both groups

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