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Shared instructional leadership: The role of the principal in a mentor teacher program
Abstract
Numerous national reform reports have been written about the quality of teacher education. Improving the skills of beginning teachers has been a major area of concern to educators and legislators. In order to address the issues of improving teacher training, teacher performance and teacher retention, mentor teacher programs have been developed. Since beginning teachers have much to learn about the teaching/learning process, becoming a fully competent teacher can be facilitated during the early stages of professional development by a mentor teacher. Principals have played a critical part in this process. However, there is an absence of literature on their role in the induction of beginning teachers. The purposes of this study were to determine the impact the principal makes in sharing, advancing, and encouraging teacher leadership; as well as, to determine what mentor teachers felt were effective leadership strategies employed by their principals as teachers assumed a leadership role in their schools. The mentor teachers and principals of the sixteen schools who participated in a pilot mentor teacher program in a large urban district in Massachusetts were the subjects of this study. Fourteen principals and twenty-one mentor teachers completed questionnaires. In order to gain additional data and insights beyond the questionnaire responses, interviews were conducted with three of the fourteen principals. The researcher concluded: the pilot mentor teacher program functioned in isolation within many of the participating schools; principals were supportive of the concept that shared leadership can successfully contribute to enhanced training and preparation for new teachers; and mentor teachers did not positively view the contributions of their principals to the program. The support and involvement of the principal and a school climate conducive to schoolwide sharing and learning are important to the success of a mentor teacher program. Continued documentation of the effect of mentor teacher programs and the role of the principal will be essential as experienced teachers help new teachers improve the practice of teaching.
Subject Area
Educational administration|Elementary education|Teacher education
Recommended Citation
Powell, Marjorie, "Shared instructional leadership: The role of the principal in a mentor teacher program" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9239779.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9239779