Mentoring of newly qualified teachers in Zambian secondary schools: an introspection of teachers' and headteachers' perspectives in selected districts of Zambia.
Date
2016
Authors
Banja, Khulupirika Madalitso
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Zambia
Abstract
This was a descriptive survey study. Its aim was to explore the perceptions of teachers, head teachers and senior education officials towards the mentorship of newly qualified teachers in secondary schools in Zambia. The study was anchored on Kram’s Mentor Role Theory.
Two hundred and seventeen (217) respondents participated in the study, consisting of ninety-two (92) newly qualified teachers, ninety-seven (97) heads of department, fifteen (15) head teachers from 18 schools in six districts, and thirteen senior management officials from the Ministry of General Education. Quantitative data were collected using self-administered questionnaires while qualitative data were collected from open-ended segments of the self-administered questionnaires and through in-depth face-to-face interviews. The quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 computer programme for windows to obtain frequencies, percentages and Chi-Square test (X2) used in the study. Qualitative data on the other hand were analysed using text and thematic analysis, by way of coding and categorisation of themes emerging from the data.
The study revealed that there was no policy on mentorship of newly qualified teachers in the Ministry of General Education (MoGE). Further, the study revealed that headteachers and senior education officials did not understand the meaning of the concept of mentorship and misunderstood it for related concepts like orientation. The study also revealed that newly qualified teachers needed help from long serving teachers in various areas of their professional work owing, amongst others, to inadequate exposure to classroom situations and activities during training and to the mismatch between content learnt during initial teacher training and content required for classroom teaching.
In addition, the results of the study show that newly qualified teachers faced challenges ranging from being perceived as competitors by long serving teachers to generally negative attitudes towards newly qualified teachers in schools to being inadequately prepared to teach during training.
Furthermore, the study revealed that newly qualified teachers posed such challenges to schools as failure to teach competently and lack of commitment to duty, among others.
Coping strategies resorted to by the newly qualified teachers included regularly consulting heads of department and other long serving teachers.
In terms of benefits of mentorship, the majority of the respondents perceived mentorship of newly qualified teachers to be beneficial in many ways. These included building the confidence of newly qualified teachers to teach, adjustment to their new working environment, helping newly qualified teachers understand their subject content better and develop competence.
Description
PHD EDUCATION
Keywords
Teachers orientation--Zambia. , Mentoring in education--Zambia. , First year teachers--Supervision of-Zambia.