Podcast Episode 5 (transcript)
5: ‘Levelling the playing field: A Review of Mentoring in the CaBan Initial Teacher Education programme’ with Dr Luke Jones and Gethin Foulkes
Professor Tom Crick is joined by Dr Luke Jones and Gethin Foulkes to discuss their article, ‘Levelling the playing field: A Review of Mentoring in the CaBan Initial Teacher Education programme’. https://doi.org/10.16922/wje.24.2.3
TC: Hello and welcome to the Wales Journal of Education podcast. I’m Professor Tom Crick, one of the editors of the journal. Today, I’m joined by Dr Luke Jones and Gethin Foulkes from the University of Chester. We’ll be discussing their article, entitled ‘Levelling the playing field: A Review of Mentoring in the CaBan Initial Teacher Education programme’, which they have co-authored with Steven Tones of the University of Chester and Rhys C. Jones from Bangor University. Luke and Gethin, thanks for talking to us on the podcast today.
LJ: Thank you.
GF: Hello. Thank you.
TC: There’s lots to discuss here. This is a really interesting and timely piece of work. Can you just tell us something about yourselves? Just a brief introduction to who you are and what you do?
LJ: I’m from a PE background. I started my career and experienced a lot of coaching, in the sense of coaching football and rugby teams but also coaching individuals. For me, that was mainly focused on canoeing at international level. In doing that, I was actually relying on mentoring approaches, although I didn’t really realise that at the time.
GF: Similarly to Luke, I’m from a PE background, but also from a musical background. Similarly again to Luke, I’ve been using a lot of mentoring approaches probably without realising it, over the years.
TC: Thanks, both. That’s a really nice segue into the kind of rationale and motivation for doing this work. Obviously, we’re undergoing the most profound system-level reforms in Wales that are ongoing and we’re still seeing the effects, certainly for the new Curriculum for Wales, but particularly for Initial Teacher Education. What framed you for doing this work?
GF: At the University of Chester, we were fortunate to go into partnership with Prifysgol Bangor university a number of years ago. We’ve gone our separate ways since then and Bangor have carried on on their own. That partnership was called CaBan, and it’s still running as CaBan Bangor. We were both part of the team that set up the mentoring practices for the partnership, along with Steve Tones, who you mentioned before, and Rhys Coetmor Jones from Bangor. We drew heavily on the research that we’d done previously, leading up to that time period, predominantly on dialogic mentoring, on student perceptions of networks, on the value of informal conversations. We wanted to find out how that research-informed programme that we’d put together was seen through the eyes of the people who were actually in the thick of it.
TC: Thanks, both. That leads us nicely to the overarching focus of the article, particularly its aims and subject and the underlying research question. You mentioned the dialogic mentoring. Can you just talk a bit more about the methodology methods and research questions?
LJ: Yes. The overarching aim of the study was to examine the impact of the mentorship approach adopted by the CaBan ITE programme. There’s a range of inter-related factors, influences and professional learning of associate teachers. When I say associate teachers, I mean student teachers, trainee teachers, those that have not yet qualified but are learning to teach. A range of factors influences their development. However, arguably the most significant influence on their progress is the guidance and support of their mentor, a more experienced, knowledgeable teacher who works alongside the AT during their time at the placement school. Mentoring is a critical element, and it’s understood to include three overlapping aims. Firstly, the mentor facilitates the AT’s professional learning. They basically help them to become a better teacher; secondly, that they integrate them into the school community, make them feel accepted and part of the team; and finally, that they empower them to take increasing responsibility for their own learning. The key thing there is that mentors can be powerful agents of growth and development, but the presence of a mentor is not sufficient on its own to guarantee the progress of the associate teacher. It’s how they mentor that matters. There are lots of different models that aim to understand and explain how people mentor. But the theoretical frame that we’ve used is Bokeno and Gantt’s monologic-dialogic model. Monologic in the sense of one person talking at the other, i.e. as in having a monologue, and dialogic in the sense of two people talking togethers as equals. In the CaBan programme, the model that emerged is centred on the mentor and their use of dialogic approaches to promote the professional learning of associate teachers. The introductory paragraph of the handbook at CaBan reflects this and notes that their vision for mentoring is dialogic at heart. So, the overarching aim, as I said, for our paper is to examine the impact of the mentoring approach, which in this case is the dialogic mentoring approach that’s been adopted by the CaBan ITE programme.
TC: Thanks, Luke. I’m sure those three things you mentioned will be picked up as we go through this podcast. Just to link back to the type of data you collected, particularly you mentioned the associate teachers. How have you come to those findings, and what type of data were you able to collect as part of this project?
GF: Essentially, in simple terms, we just asked people. It was questionnaires, group interviews, that helped us to generate the data. We had roughly 15 mentors and 48 associate teachers, so it was a combination of questionnaires as well as face-to-face group interviews that we did either in person or later on, we ended up doing them over Microsoft Teams or Zoom for geographical, logistical reasons. I don’t know if you know, but north Wales is pretty big. We conducted those in English and in Welsh as well, for our Welsh-speaking colleagues.
TC: Again, I think this reflects the very nature of doing this type of data collection in Wales and across geographically diverse or distributed populations. I think that some of the points that you mentioned there around representative populations, I guess, or representative samples for this piece of work, and particularly ensuring you’ve got the English-medium and the Welsh-medium dimensions as well. Did you spot any differences from an English-medium perspective compared to a Welsh-medium perspective?
GF: No, essentially not. They were all saying very similar things. There didn’t seem to be anything in the data that we generated that was a significant or any kind of difference between them really. They were all pulling in the same direction, and all mentioning the same sorts of things.
TC: Just to pick up on the three points you mentioned before, Luke. Thanks, Gethin. Those three themes, and particularly the power and the potential impact from the dialogic mentoring approach, that kind of empowerment agency piece and also the shared professional learning piece. We know that’s a key priority, certainly for Wales, from building capacity and capability for a teaching profession to deliver the new curriculum but as part of wider system-level reforms. How would you describe, if you had the chance with the Minister, you had a 30 second elevator pitch with the Minister for Education, how would you describe the most important findings of this piece of work?
LJ: I’m not sure if I could do it in 30 seconds, but I can give it a go.
TC: OK, two minutes, two minutes, there we go.
LJ: Thank you. I think the article had lots of different things but in reality it boiled down to maybe five key findings to talk about. First of all, that the dialogic approach changed the relationship. Within the CaBan programme, the role of the mentor is regarded as being more important but paradoxically, the mentors are less important in their relationship with the AT. There has been what one mentor called a levelling of the playing field. The relative power of the mentor in their relationship with their associate teacher has been reduced. That hierarchical expert-novice relationship has largely been replaced by the emergence of a more democratic and collaborative partnership. Secondly, the dialogic approach has changed the mentor’s perception of knowledge. The mentors who committed to the dialogic approach moved away from the belief that they were the ones that held all the knowledge, had all the expertise. Instead, they seemingly accepted more of a democratic position, accepted that pedagogical knowledge is socially constructed through the experiences of all participants. They basically began to ask for and listen to the views of their associate teachers. The third thing was that within the programme, there are still some monologic aspects. So, while the programme is considered to be dialogic, it still deliberately includes some aspects of monologic feedback in the form of more formal lesson observations by the mentor. As soon as you have somebody in the lesson with a clipboard and a form making judgements, you’re back to that hierarchical balance of power. Some formal observations do still take place in CaBan, although they occur far less frequently and they have been adapted. There are no grades, for example. There were mixed views on that. The ATs, to an extent, accepted that. They saw value in having the clarity of feedback and targets, so that was good. But a number of them were still troubled by formal lesson observations, even though they’d been watered down. For example, one said ‘it made me so anxious and stressed. I didn’t find them helpful as I could not give my best’. Another said it ‘lowered my self-esteem and created a lot of anxiety issues’ and so on. It’s a tricky one because the formal lesson observations can provide clarity and direction but they’ve also got that potential to undermine progress if they’re not handled sympathetically.
TC: Just to jump in there around that kind of theme around power and hierarchies but I guess more so assessment and monitoring. We’ve seen that, certainly not just in Wales but across the whole of the system across the four nations of the UK, around measuring success and measuring impact or attainment, certainly from an inspectorate perspective but clearly for teacher standards. That raises some really interesting questions, especially when you’re talking about early career teachers. We’re seeing momentous change in Wales because of the new curriculum but the wider cultural and behavioural shifts as well around all the wider reforms. Just how that power imbalance might… You mentioned agency and autonomy and empowerment, but how associate teachers are empowered to challenge existing practices and perhaps engage in more innovative pedagogy and practice or when they might have different pedagogical beliefs. How are they empowered to challenge some of that? Did the dialogic mentoring approach facilitate some of those discussions?
LJ: Yes, it did. That’s an interesting point, really, because the overwhelming view of the dialogic approach was positive, but there was some resistance to change, largely because of what you were talking about there. The power aspects behind it and some of the difficulties, really, for the mentors in accepting that change. I think, put simply, the monologic approach is easier for the mentor because it’s more straightforward, it’s more simple. It’s basically their view is the one that counts. But when they adopt a dialogic approach, it is a more democratic, more participatory, social approach. It’s not just, for the AT, about replicating the mentor’s existing ideas, but it’s allowing them to challenge some aspects and to have a go for themselves. That’s harder to manage for the mentor because they’re trying to demonstrate what effective teaching is, but at the same time allowing that challenge to occur, allowing people to have their voice and to have their say. In some cases, that led to disagreements. It was tricky sometimes for mentors because there was maybe deeper-seated, deeper-rooted disagreements that actually maybe exacerbated sometimes some of the tension in that relationship. The overriding picture was that it was positive, it brought about positive changes for the mentors and ATs, and yet actually when you allow associate teachers to have that more powerful position, it does sometimes result in conflict. It could be desirable conflict, but equally, it could create some tension.
TC: I think it’s really interesting around helpful tension and helpful friction, particularly when you’re talking about professional practice and it could be very context-specific. We have primary and secondary PGCE at Swansea University, and fairly new provision. We’ve had very similar thoughts and discussions about how you prepare new teachers to enter the profession, but also how do you rapidly prepare them for moving from their undergraduate or Masters level study into doing a PGCE, into joining the teaching profession over a very short period of time. Actually preparing them for that friction, those discussions and different contexts, in different school settings and how that actually works. That evaluation apprehension or the concerns around evaluation is the real lived experience, I guess. That’s a reality of education at all levels, and at all contexts and settings, and preparing for useful formative, constructive evaluation and actually how that can support and develop their professional practice is a difficult thing I think to develop in early career teachers. How do you see that now? Has some of this work fed back into the provision at Chester and perhaps has also fed into the provision at Bangor?
GF: Yes, absolutely. The implications for the research are pretty easy to see, particularly from an ITE context. Those democratic values offer powerful approaches for adult learners. Those experiences build AT confidence and it builds the acceptance the ATs feel, and confidence and acceptance, of course, are necessary for successful outcomes and increasing the number of teachers that we educate, not only in Wales but probably across the UK. Of course, there is a shortage everywhere, isn’t there? In balance, and certainly at the beginning of the process where the ATs are relatively novice, instructive approaches are efficient, desirable, just tell them what to do. But then as they progress and as they build confidence, there needs to be a process that helps them to self-regulate. That needs to happen, and mentors need training, perhaps, in how to facilitate that, because it’s not easy. They may be able to do that relatively intuitively, but it seems logical to be explicit about what the research is telling us about effective mentoring practice. This then, of course, takes mentors time, and we know, of course, teachers have loads of time during the day, don’t they? It requires mentors to be open. Luke mentioned those difficult conversations about your own practice sometimes can be not easy for them, and again that might be where mentor training can help. These considerations about their own practice can be useful openings perhaps to think about everything that the Donaldson framework has put into place and the changes that are happening more broadly in Wales. Probably, relationships are key, and responding to the needs of the associate teachers is really important. Do they need to just be told, don’t do that, do this, because that’s non-negotiable? Or is it time for the mentor to realise that this is a good time for a deeper, perhaps more authentic, learning conversation? That’s the balance that’s at play, I think, for mentors, and the strains that come with that.
TC: I think you’ve both articulated really nicely. We’re seeing not the teacher shortage or recruitment and retention challenge, certainly in Wales, but very clearly in England, across other parts of the UK and obviously in certain subjects and disciplinary areas. But just that kind of overarching question, what does it mean to be a teacher? If you can reflect on other professional contexts, maybe in health and social care or you need a licence to practise and you go through quite a lengthy educational and professional training piece, this raises some very interesting questions around the scale and how ITE providers, certainly in Wales but I guess across the rest of the UK, about how you can approach quite rapidly developing teachers from pre-service teachers to becoming in-service teachers and what that looks like from a training and professional development perspective going forward. I can really see the potential impact across providers, and this is clearly a very hot and live issue for multiple governments, maybe not just in the UK. Just to pick up on some of those threads you mentioned there, maybe linking back to the opportunity to speak to the Minister, or to shape and influence policy in Wales, we’ve seen intense scrutiny of education in Wales. In education, in lots of different contexts. We’ve started to think about international and national rankings, but certainly as part of this wider reform journey, and obviously initial teacher education has been through major reforms in Wales for quite a long time. Where do you see the key implications from your research for education in Wales, quite broadly? I know you’ve touched on this a little bit in some of your responses before, but what do you think are the big take-homes for maybe education in Wales but certainly for initial teacher education or teacher training, professional development, mentoring, that kind of stuff?
LJ: I think one of the biggest things for me that you touched on, Tom, is the issues with the inspectorate at the moment, with Ofsted certainly, less so maybe Estyn. The recognition really that we all suffer from that evaluation apprehension, and that actually we have to be sensitive around that. Not to say that there can’t be scrutiny, and that there can’t be judgements. The way that’s approached has to be sensitive, I think. That maybe is one of the biggest things to come out of this project is that, actually, when people are put under pressure, some people respond positively to that, some people don’t.
That has come out very clearly. They struggle and they don’t perform at their best, so I think we need to have that humanity, really, in the way that we work with young teachers in particular so that we basically get the best out of them, and ultimately then get the best out of the kids.
GF: Just to follow on from that, the second point I’d make is you’ve got to look after your mentors in school. You’ve got to give them time and you’ve got to give them space to be able to do the job. If you’ve got mentors that are under strain and under stress, they’re not going to give your potential teachers, your associate teachers, a very good experience. You’ve got to give them time, space, and you’ve got to recognise that that’s an integral part of creating a teacher, that placement experience.
TC: That’s a very fair comment. You can’t undersell the challenges of becoming a teacher. It’s a hugely rewarding and important profession, but you actually need that immersion, the reality of being a teacher has to be experienced as part of their PGCE or their pre-service training. I think that’s a real tension around what that looks like. How do you provide that helpful friction and tension? How do you assess the various settings and contexts in which they may be working as a teacher down the line? I think that is a real challenge, particularly when we’ve seen everything, industrial action, we’ve seen the real focus on teacher workload, even just people’s, the general public’s wider perception and misunderstanding of what being a teacher entails. I think that was made very live during the Covid pandemic about what people expect teachers to do, not just in a global crisis but actually day to day in loco parentis. I think that’s a really useful point and commentary on where we are now and where we’d like to be going forwards. Thank you very much, both. Is there any key points and themes you’d like to tell the listeners about your work or something that I haven’t asked you about? I suppose the only other thing I’d probably link to from this would be, where is this work going in the future? I know you’ve published some of this wider work in the Wales Journal of Education and in other journals. Where do you see this work developing in the future?
LJ: For those that are interested in finding out more about the dialogic approach, we’ve actually just published an article in the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance. That summarises the model, hopefully, in quite a clear and accessible manner.
GF: We’ve got another article that’s under review which is concerned with the wellbeing of mentors, entitled ‘Who cares?’ On top of that, we’re generating some data at the moment about our own mentoring programme, and it’s about what makes meaningful mentoring experiences, again from the mentor’s perspective. We’ve had a look at the associate teachers and a little bit about mentors and we think that there’s really useful data to be generated there from mentors themselves. That’s going to help policymakers, it’s going to help other researchers, we hope.
TC: Thank you, both. Hopefully, you’ve been tempted to read the article in full that we’ve been discussing today. This is accessible via the Wales Journal of Education website. All articles are bilingual, platinum Open Access, in English and Welsh, they’re available to read at no cost and can be downloaded as many times as you want. Thanks for listening and thank you to our guests, Dr Luke Jones and Gethin Foulkes.
LJ: Thanks, Tom.
GF: Thank you.
TC: This is the fifth in the series of podcasts where I and the other editors discuss the research published in the Wales Journal of Education. You can subscribe in your podcast app or listen on our website. Thank you very much.