All the right features: towards an ‘architecture’ for mentoring trainee teachers in UK further education colleges

Abstract

This paper reviews the range of institutional strategies which it might be appropriate and desirable to have in place to support and enhance the effective mentoring of trainee teachers in UK colleges of further education. The high degree of importance being attached to mentoring by various government bodies, with reference to initial teacher education in particular, is emphasised, as is the rapidity with which this state of affairs has been arrived at. The notion of an institutional architecture for mentoring activity is proposed; this comprises features ranging from those structures necessary to allow certain basic mentoring activities, to those with a more strategic and longer‐term significance. In conclusion, the likely costs of failing to acknowledge the need to build institutional capabilities for mentoring alongside developing individual mentors' skills are identified.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my colleague Professor Ronald Barnett for his extremely valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to the journal's two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The UK further education (FE) colleges cater for learner groups such as 16 year old school leavers, adult returners to study, migrant groups (often non‐native speakers of English) and such relatively new contingents as 14+ learners who may have been excluded from state schools, e.g. on grounds of misbehaviour. It is sometimes called the ‘second chance’ sector by its proponents—and seen by critics of government underfunding of the colleges as often having been treated as ‘second class’. The closest comparison internationally would probably be with the community colleges of the USA.