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Mentoring Early Career Mathematics Teachers from the Mentees’ Perspective—a Case Study from China

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Abstract

Although mentoring has been considered to be important for beginning teachers to situate themselves within the school community, only a few studies on the opportunities of mentoring and possible difficulties from the perceptions of the mentee have been carried out, especially in East Asia. In this paper, a study based on a multiple case approach that investigated how three early career mathematics teachers from Shanghai were mentored is presented. Qualitative text analysis is used to analyse interviews with the beginning teachers during their initial two years of teaching. Four types of one-to-one mentoring could be identified: unnecessary, demonstrative, supportive and collaborative, taking into consideration both the mentor’s and the mentee’s activities during the mentoring process as well as the mentee’s perception of the supportiveness of the mentoring activities. Different opportunities and difficulties in the various types of mentoring could be identified, offering insight for a possible advancement of research regarding this important phase of teachers’ professional development.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Professor Jianpan Wang, the director of Shanghai Research Base for School Mathematics Education, and the chair of ICME-14, for his support on the development of the manuscript.

Funding

The manuscript is supported in part by young researchers’ research fund of East China Normal University (41300201012222060), by the grant from Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No. 18dz2271000), and by the grant from Key Research Institutes in Humanities and Social Sciences authorised by Ministry of Education (No. 16JJD880023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical Sciences, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Xiaoli Lu

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg & Australian Catholic University, Von-Melle-Park 8, 20146, Hamburg, Germany

    Gabriele Kaiser

  3. Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR

    Frederick Koon Shing Leung

Authors
  1. Xiaoli Lu
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  2. Gabriele Kaiser
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  3. Frederick Koon Shing Leung
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Correspondence to Frederick Koon Shing Leung.

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Lu, X., Kaiser, G. & Leung, F.K.S. Mentoring Early Career Mathematics Teachers from the Mentees’ Perspective—a Case Study from China. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 18, 1355–1374 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10027-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10027-y

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