Mentoring in Early Childhood Settings

1
Mentoring in Early
Childhood Settings

• Pauline Harris
• Faculty of Education
• University of Wollongong
• pharris_at_uow.edu.au

2
Workshop Overview

• What is mentoring?
• Why implement mentoring in early childhood
  settings?
• How is mentoring undertaken?
• What makes up a mentoring program?
• What are the key steps in planning a
  mentoring program?

3
What is mentoring?

• To value the growth and development of children,
  we must value our own growth and development as
  early childhood practitioners.
• Soave McCormick Ferguson, 2005

4
Workshop Activity 1

• What does mentoring mean to you?
• Reflect, record and share in your group

5
Definitions of Mentoring
Not any one thing
A sharing experience and a sharing of
experience
A creative friendship
?
A partnership of mutual benefit
A learning relationship
A long-term engagement whereby you are working
with the same people and changing or enhancing
that level of engagement over time. It is not a
linear process
When two people find space in their working
lives to reflect on their work and practice
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Definitions of Mentoring
An alliance of two people that creates a space
for dialogue that results in definition, action
and learning for both. (Rolfe-Flett, 2001)
Typically, it is a one-to-one relationship
between a more experienced and a less experienced
employee. It is based upon encouragement,
constructive comments, openness, mutual trust,
respect and a willingness to share. (Spencer,
1999)
What lies behind us and what lies before us are
tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
(Oliver Wendell-Holmes)
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What mentoring is and is not

• Mentoring is not supervision
• Mentoring is not only role-modelling
• Mentoring involves direct assistance of career
  planning and professional development through
  teaching, counselling, role-modelling, providing
  support, protecting, promoting and/or sponsoring.

8
Role of the Mentor

• To commit themselves to the mentoring program and
  their mentee
• Encourage exploration of ideas
• Encourage risk-taking
• Listen when mentee has a problem
• Provide appropriate and timely advice
• Provide access to appropriate skills training
• Assist mentee to identify solve problems
• Help mentee to shift and broaden their
  perspectives
• Confront negative intentions or behaviours

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Role of the Mentee

• Commit themselves to the mentoring program and
  their mentor
• Take on new challenges and responsibilities
• Seek and be receptive of feedback
• Accept responsibility for their own growth and
  development
• Be willing to take risks

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Why implement mentoring in early childhood
settings?

• Create a collaborative learning culture where
  teamwork and mentoring become normal social
  practices through informed, reflective practice
  that infuses interactions and deliberations
  and by taking advantage of, rather than
  resisting, the natural power of complexity.
• Davis Pratt, 2005, Early Childhood Educators

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Benefits to Mentors

• Develop a close working relationship with mentee
• Personal growth and professional development
• Different perspectives on issues
• Enhanced communication and leadership skills
• Deepened insights into workplace complexities
• Receive public recognition
• A way of making a contribution
• Revitalised interest in their work
• Opportunity to exert influence in an organisation

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Benefits to Mentees

• Personal growth and self-development plans
• Support in developing and implementing targeted
  development activities
• Enhance likelihood for success
• Development of specific skills and knowledge
• Deepened understanding of organisation
• Expanded vision
• Extended networks and support systems
• Enhanced communication and interpersonal skills
• Improved promotion opportunities
• Enhanced status and sense of standing

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Benefits to Organisation

• Increasing ability to attract and retain talent
• Discovery of latent talent
• Improved employee commitment
• Enhanced motivation for managers
• Retaining corporate knowledge
• Increased organisational capacity for
  professional development
• Enhanced organisational culture and image
• People feeling valued through recognition of
  individual contributions

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Workshop Activity 2

• Reflect on the benefits of mentoring that have
  been presented. Which of these in particular
  apply to your setting?
• Share and discuss with your group.

15
How is mentoring undertaken?

• Mentoring is so much more challenging than I
  expected it to be. I thought I would meet my
  mentee, we'd become instant friends and then we'd
  chat about early childhood education together. It
  takes lots of experience and support to become a
  good mentor.
• An early childhood educator in Klinger, 2003

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Types of Mentoring

• One-to-one mentoring
• Close hierarchical relationship
• Expensive on time
• Limits matchings between mentor and mentee that
  can be made
• Provides guaranteed commitment of mentor to
  mentee

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Types of Mentoring

• Mentoring hubs
• Mentor working with a number of mentees at once
• May work with each mentee individually and with
  all mentees as a group
• Allows and encourages mentees to coach each other
  and develop significant peer relationships
• Increases number of matchings that can be made
• Requires a large time commitment of mentor
• Difficult to guarantee equal commitment to each
  mentee
• Mentee needs to be more self-reliant and
  take more responsibility for their
  own development

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Types of Mentoring

• On-site mentors
• Readily available for ad hoc meetings, informal
  shadowing and counselling
• Might be difficult to identify an appropriate
  mentor who is more senior than the mentee but not
  the mentees immediate supervisor
• The mentor usually is more senior but can also be
  a more experienced peer

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Types of Mentoring

• Off-site mentors
• Mentee has opportunity to see variety of ways of
  working management styles
• Mentor is separate from mentees direct line
  manager
• Mentoring must be organised and formal, removing
  opportunities for informal ad hoc coaching and
  counselling
• One-site workplaces can work in
  co-operation with other work
  sites

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Workshop Activity 3

• What type of mentoring do you think would best
  suit your early childhood workplace and team
  needs? Why?
• Reflect, share and discuss with your group

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Mentoring Functions

• Some perceptions of mentoring
• Fill the empty vessel
• Nurture the seed
• Fix up the patient
• Help climb the ladder
• Facilitate discovery of anothers
  career path

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Mentoring Functions

• Some effective strategies
• Shadowing
• Mentee follows mentor around in daily work,
  observing and discussing observations to identify
  ways to improve own performance
• Trialling
• Mentee chooses an idea or process and sets up a
  situation in which it can be piloted and
  reflected upon with mentor

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Mentoring Functions

• Some effective strategies
• Job rotation
• Mentee gains experience in various tasks and
  divisions of a workplace or organisation
• Project work
• Mentee becomes part of a project team set up or
  related to learning goals, to learn specific
  skills related to project and team work

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Mentoring Functions

• Some effective strategies
• Coaching
• Mentee seeks out or is matched with people with
  specific technical skills
• Counselling
• Mentor helps mentee to identify and resolve their
  own problems

25
Mentoring Functions

• Some effective strategies
• Visits off-site
• Mentee looks at examples of good practice in
  other workplaces, and discusses this experience
  with mentor to clarify the learning and suggest
  improvements in their own practices
• Research
• Mentor provides ideas on professional reading and
  other professional development through manuals,
  videos/DVDs, workshops, conferences and so on

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Workshop Activity 4

• To what extent do you have opportunity to be
  involved in these mentoring functions in your
  early childhood setting, as mentor and/or mentee?
  
• Which of these would you like to be involved in,
  why, and how might you initiate such involvement?
• Share and discuss with your group.

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Mentoring Relationships

• Trust
• Honesty
• Good will
• Good questions
• Confidentiality
• Respect
• Reciprocity
• Encouragement
• Active listening
• Chemistry
• Time

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Phases in Developing a Mentoring Relationship
Maturity
Disengagement
Development
Initiation
Redefinition
(Rolfe-Flett, 2002)
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What makes up a mentoring
program?

• One of the things that I've been privileged to
  have in my own career is some really great
  mentors who have encouraged me in my work - who
  supported me as I took risks and stretched the
  boundaries to help achieve my goals, and I'd like
  to do the same for others.
• Anne Glover, Early Childhood Educator

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Components of a Mentoring Program

• Information kits about the program
• Purpose
• How it will work
• Who will be involved
• Other details
• Training support and workshops

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Components of a Mentoring Program

• Mentoring meetings between mentor and mentee/s
• Debriefing and review meetings of all mentors and
  mentees
• Discuss achievements, challenges, questions and
  concerns
• Networking
• Opportunities to form supportive alliances and
  obtain information

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Components of a Mentoring Program

• Informal/social activities
• Foster group interaction
• Workbooks and journals
• Provide structure and resources for the program
• Newsletters
• Provide information and updates and maintain
  interest
• Evaluation
• Monitor progress and evaluate program outcomes
  and participant feedback
• Ongoing and responsive, e.g., meetings,
  questionnaires

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Structure in a Mentoring Program
Too little structure
Too much structure
Initial enthusiasm wanes Lack of
direction Meetings are without purpose,
continuity or outcome Few mentoring partnerships
continue Disillusionment occurs Mentoring
dismissed as fad
Contrived and stilted Inhibits mentoring
relationship Paperwork reporting takes up
time Management may seem like manipulation Mentori
ng is equated with performance appraisal
(Rolfe-Flett, 2002)
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Structure in a Mentoring Program

• Minimum of structure would include
• Overall mentoring objectives
• General guidelines that include mentoring policy
  but leave scope for mentors and mentees to make
  their own arrangements
• Occasional phone contact by program co-ordinator
  to monitor program
• A short questionnaire at end of program to
  evaluate results
• (Rolfe-Flett, 2002)

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Structure in a Mentoring Program

• Additional strategies
• Conduct a SWOT analysis with participants
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats
• Provide checklists, pro formae and guides and
  allow participants option of using them or not
• Facilitate group discussions during training
  sessions

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Workshop Activity 5

• What kind of structure would you see as feasible
  and desirable in your early childhood setting?
• What elements would you want to include and why?
• Share, record and discuss with your group

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What are the key steps in planning a mentoring
program?

• Parents, children and staff are the
  organizations priority supporting its
  practitioners and valuing their contributions,
  the organization believes that the creation of a
  mentoring culture will increase quality and
  produce an excellent standard of care for
  children and their families. early childhood
  staff is what have made, and will continue to
  make, the organization successful. The
  organization believes that their early childhood
  staff is the means to achieving their
  organizations ends. It holds the philosophy of
  "what goes around comes around in the circle of
  care ".
• Partners in Practice
• Bringing a Mentoring Culture to Life Within A
  Childs World Family Child Care Services in
  Niagara

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Research

• Analyse individual and organisational
  needs
• eg., a SWOT analysis
• Identify desired outcomes
• Clarify issues to be addressed
• Eg., staff turnover, knowledge dissemination and
  uptake, communication processes, career
  management issues
• Determine mentoring training needs
• Formulate evaluation criteria

39
Program Design

• Plan what needs to be done
• Identify who will be involved
• Establish what resources will be required
• Create a time line
• Include a communication strategy that informs all
  staff of the program
• Develop procedures and processes for monitoring
  and evaluating the program

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Training

• Ensure mentors and mentees have the necessary
  skills for mentoring and being mentored
• Develop shared understanding of
• Their own and each others roles and
  responsibilities as mentor and mentee
• Objectives and processes of the program
• Access to resources and assistance
• How the program is to be evaluated

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Pilot

• Plan and implement a small scale trial program
• Monitor and evaluate the trial
• Debrief participants on the evaluation and invite
  discussion and ways forward
• Identify refinements of the pilot program for
  full-scale implementation

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Implement the Program

• Plan the mentoring program on a full scale
• Launch the program
• Monitor as an ongoing process
• Evaluate program at its end
• Manage the programs conclusion and exit
• Celebrate the programs successes and
  participants achievements and contributions, and
  reflect on the challenges and ways ahead.

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Workshop Activity 6

• Identify a core issue in an early childhood
  setting that a mentoring program could address.
• Working through the planning steps that have been
  outlined, identify and discuss ways you could
• Research
• Design
• Train
• Pilot
• Launch and fully implement and evaluate
• a mentoring program to address a core issue that
  you have identified.

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Workshop Activity 6

• Identify issues in an early childhood setting
  that a mentoring program could address.
• Analyse needs
• What is the core issue that you seek to improve?
• What are the related issues contributing to the
  core issue?
• Develop objectives
• What role could mentors take in addressing the
  core and related issues?
• What would be the objectives of the mentoring
  program?
• Identify skills and training requirements
• What knowledge, skills and attitudes would
  mentors need to be effective in this role?
• What training will participants need? How will it
  be provided?
• Develop a plan and timeline
• How will communication shared understanding of
  the program be established?
• What resources will be needed and used? How will
  they be obtained?
• How will training be provided?
• How will the program be co-ordinated, piloted ,
  launched and evaluated?

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In Closing

• Mentoring cannot realize its true potential if it
  is not an integral part of the early childhood
  care system. It must be seen as a thread that
  permeates the system and enriches all aspects of
  early childhood. To truly have an impact on the
  care provided to children in early childhood
  practice, mentoring must be recognized for its
  value by all stakeholders in the system including
  practitioners, child care organizations, early
  childhood care and education programs and funding
  bodies.
• Soave McCormick, 2005