Mentors in the Making: Developing New Leaders for New Teachers (the series on school reform)

In response to a growing interest in mentoring and new teacher induction, the authors offer a unique view of developing quality mentors. Drawing on empirical research, practitioner action inquiry, and field-tested practices from induction programs, they explore effective mentoring in diverse educational contexts. With richly contextualized and thoughtfully analyzed excerpts from actual mentoring conversations and powerful examples of practice, the volume offers educators, researchers, and policymakers a reform-minded vision of the future of mentoring. Challenging conventional wisdom, this essential resource:

• Argues that mentors are not born, but developed through conscious, deliberate, ongoing learning.
• Provides a needed link between research and practice in the field of new teacher mentoring, to define a knowledge base for effective mentoring.
• Documents induction and mentoring practices that focus new teachers on individual learners, equity-oriented curriculum and pedagogy, and the educator’s role in reforming school culture.
• Highlights problems and complexities of enacting mentor knowledge and learning in diverse contexts

Betty Achinstein is a researcher at The New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Community, Diversity, and Conflict Among Schoolteachers: The Ties That Blind. Steven Z. Athanases is associate professor in the School of Education, University of California, Davis.