Mentors By Choice, Not Design: Help-Seeking by Beginning Teachers

Abstract

This paper focuses on the informal help or advice that beginning teachers seek. The data reported in this study, gathered from 128 first-year teachers, suggest that beginning teachers are selective in whom they ask for help. They seek help from experienced teachers they perceive as friendly and caring, independent of whether the teachers are formally recognized as their mentors. Most of the teachers in the sample reported that they would seek help from someone other than their mentor if they had a serious problem in teaching. Satisfaction with help from other sources, an unwillingness to seek formal help, and organizational factors are explored as possible reasons why these beginning teachers reported that they would seek help from others rather than from their assigned mentors. Issues of teacher socialization are also discussed.