Outcomes Teacher Mentoring Has on Professional Learning and Delivery of Instruction

A qualitative study using grounded theory was conducted to discover how educational mentoring was transferred to subsequently transform instructional delivery in the second year of teaching for novice secondary school teachers. The study was conducted in a Deep South Texas public school district during the 2017–2018 academic year. After concluding a year of mentoring, interviews were conducted to reveal how the mentoring phenomena helped transform their present day delivery of instruction. Data was gathered through face-to-face interviews with seven participants. During this second year, the novice teachers primarily relied on both what was learned through their mentoring experiences and networking with experienced colleagues. The novice teachers’ mentoring undertakings revealed a greater need to apply newly acquired learning experiences during the initial year of instruction. In addition, fidelity of implementation in the mentoring process played a crucial role in the viable success of the program. Teachers (mentees) were primarily motivated by individual didactic observations during their mentoring experience. Through constant comparative analysis and the use of memoing five key themes revealed how the effectiveness of the mentoring process was interrelated to the novice teachers’ professional learning, development, and instructional delivery. Emerged themes from the data included: mentoring experiences, classroom management and curriculum, instructional practices, professional development, and student learning progress