Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Information for mentors
The role of a mentor
Mentors play a crucial role in the development of student teachers as expert professionals and role models. Mentors knowingly pass on their skills by modelling and sharing feedback with students but perhaps as importantly, they pass on their tacit knowledge about what being a teacher means in a broader sense.
The skills of Mentoring were described in the 2016 National Standards for Mentoring as:
- Personal qualities – establishing trusting relationships, modelling high standards of practice, and empathising with the challenges a student faces.
- Teaching – supporting students to develop their teaching practice in order to set high expectations and to meet the needs of all pupils.
- Professionalism – inducting the student into professional norms and values, helping them to understand the importance of the role and responsibilities of teachers in society.
- Self-development and working in partnership – continuing to develop their own professional knowledge, skills and understanding and invest time in developing a good working relationship within relevant ITT partnerships.
In the Leeds Beckett Partnership, we ask mentors to:
- With the support of the university Link Tutor, assess our students accurately against expected progress statements in PebblePad, and in their final placement against the Teachers' Standards.
- Support your student in continually reviewing and extending their subject knowledge. On PebblePad there are subject overviews that will help you to understand what your student is taught at the university and how your role can fit with this.
- Maintain records as required in PebblePad. Your student and Link Tutor will help you in this.
- Make sure your student understands the procedures and policies of the school and you have agreed with your student on a broad structure for the placement including when the student is expected to arrive and leave and how they should spend their time when not teaching.
Support as a mentor
Leeds Beckett University will provide free mentor training that will ensure connectedness, consistency and high-quality support for all students.
Mentor training will ensure that not only are our mentors knowledgeable in the key skills needed to be a good mentor but also aware of the training journey of our students and have the specialist skills needed to develop teachers. Primary and secondary colleagues will join separate training sessions which will be tailored to the needs of new mentors and those returning to work with Leeds Beckett University. Attendance at, and completion of training is an expectation for all mentors, and this will be monitored.
Some of the mentor training will be delivered via live, face-to-face sessions, some delivered via live virtual sessions, and some will be via online self-directed learning modules via our learning portal that may include links to videos to watch and tasks to complete.
You will be asked to complete a self-assessment audit of your own training needs as a mentor, and this will be used to help guide your mentor training over the year.
Whilst on placement, each student is assigned a university Link Tutor who will make regular contact with your student and you and be a source of support. They will complete an in-person visit to your school roughly halfway through placement to moderate a progress review and meet with your student and you at the end of the placement to sign it off.
Leeds Beckett Mentoring Principles
The development of school-based colleagues is an important part of delivering high quality early career teacher development. We draw on key areas of the research evidence and practitioner literature base including the CCF, ECF and DfE 2016 Mentor Standards. Our principles have been informed by: Knight’s work on instructional coaching (2017), Billett’s framework for supporting workplace learning (2015), the work of Hobson et al. on ONSIDE mentoring and Lofthouse’s work on professional learning (2018). This is combined with our experience of over 100 years of working with teachers in schools supporting students and delivering mentor training across our 500-strong school partnership.
Our mentor training curriculum is developed by experienced research-active university staff, ITE colleagues and partnership schools with knowledge in phase-specific and subject-specific approaches to high-quality teacher training ensuring high-quality mentor training.
Our trained mentors will know what is essential to support student teachers to succeed. They will understand how to bridge the students’ taught curriculum and school placement learning requirements. Our sequenced and coherent mentor training curriculum is designed with our students’ curriculum at its heart.
Open dialogue, post-training mentor feedback, quality assurance visits and dialogue with students and mentors will keep our delivery high-quality, comprehensive and fit-for-purpose.
The aims of our mentor training:
- Ensure that all students are supported by mentors with appropriate training, understanding and skills to support phase specific and subject specific development.
- Ensure that Mentors have a strong understanding of the student curriculum and can support student needs and step-by-step progression.
- Ensure that high-quality mentor provision can be sustained as a key component of effective ITT partnership.
- Develop mentors who engage in self-reflective practice and personal growth and have necessary mentoring skills, understand and build effective relationships with students and support the development of other mentors.
