Preparing future principals: facilitating the development of a mentoring mindset through graduate coursework

Abstract

Aspiring school leaders rarely emerge from their principal preparation programs fully ready for the challenges that await them as new administrators, with much evidence revealing the need for continued mentoring and professional development. The author developed graduate course content that taught students the knowledge, skills and dispositions of protégéship in a principal preparation program, encouraging them to develop a mentoring mindset. A framework for protégéship, derived from several sources in the mentoring literature, is described. The author required students to approach individuals to formally mentor them. Student responses to this assignment indicated their acknowledgement of mentoring needs, awareness of the need for preparation and recognition of the benefits of seeking a mentor. This research contributes to the thin region of literature on protégé preparation for mentoring. The protégéship framework and protégé preparation activities can be adapted for mentoring programs in the United States or internationally.

Keywords:

• protégéship
• protégé preparation
• principal preparation
• protégé perspective on mentoring