Elements of Successful Mentoring of a Female School Leader

Abstract

This case study examines the successful mentoring relationship between an early-career principal and her mentor as they participated in an Entry Year Program for early-career school administrators as a component of an Administrative Leadership Academy (ALA). Using a feminist poststructuralist framework, the findings show that contrary to traditional mentoring paradigms, which hold that the exchange of information is passed from the mentor to the protégé, the success of this mentoring experience was the nonhierarchal and mutual learning interactions afforded the protégé and her mentor. Implications of such findings are offered for future entry programs to increase support of more nontraditional leaders moving into the school principalship.

Notes

¹The Administrative Leadership Academy: Entry Year Program (ALA: EYP) under study was created to address the professional development needs of early-career principals. The language governed by principal licensure in the Midwestern state within which the ALA: EYP is located mandates that provisionally licensed principals complete an Entry Year Program (EYP) in order to be professionally licensed by the state department of education. Over a period of four years, a consortium of universities, representing five state regions, developed and piloted an Entry Year Program (Creasap et. al., 2005).

²These activities included simulations, role playing, professional discourse, and collegial interaction. The training focused on the following: defining the mentor's role and responsibilities; expectations and the reflective process; management issues related to tasks that principals need to accomplish prior to and during the academic year; leadership issues related to assessing the learning environments, standards-based education, academic content standards, multiple measures of student achievement, and classroom walkthroughs; and professional development, including the ISLLC Standards, design qualities for licensure programs, and entry-year program options within the state.

³A Critical Friend is a trusted person who asks provocative questions, and provides a critique of another person's work as a friend. The key to the Critical Friends relationship is trust. Critical Friends groups grew out of a kitchen-table discussion in New York in 1995. A group of educators met to talk about the challenges they face in schools. The members of the group were not making progress and decided to create an opportunity for experts to come together to struggle with these challenges. The group developed protocols to bring people together around best practices and research. In the face of standards and accountability, they decided to design a system where experts would have the opportunity to learn and work together to come up with solutions. The Critical Friends developed a set of protocols (frameworks) to take the work and infuse it with research on best practices to increase learning and improve student achievement. Members of Critical Friends groups are encouraged to use one another as resources for thoughts and ideas.