Mentorship: Could It Be the Key to Maintaining a Professional Learning Community?

Abstract

Education is a profession which grows and changes with increasingly diversifying communities. Educators have experienced a long history of well-intentioned improvement efforts that have not had the opportunity to be institutionalized in their schools and this can lead teachers to believe that school improvement may be out of reach. With a backdrop of constantly changing initiatives and goals in schools, teachers have started to take charge of their own improvement and have gathered in communities that improve professional practice. One of these kinds of communities, simply titled a Professional Learning Community, has shown considerable effectiveness in improving teaching practice and maintaining changes. With so many well-documented benefits, school divisions have a desire for these communities but have not been able to foster them within their divisions. Therefore, this paper adds recommendations for schools and school divisions to incorporate a mentorship aspect to their induction programs which can help integrate newcomers into a community that already has established practices and norms of professional learning.