| Summary: | Mentorship as a tool to develop the pedagogical and content knowledge of inservice
teachers, regardless of experience, is a field in education which has gained
popularity worldwide. The review of literature however, provided evidence that
mentoring in education has primarily focused on the benefits received by novice
teachers and not experienced teachers. Areas addressed in the literature review
include the important role of continuous professional development programmes in
the improvement of the teachers’ classroom practices and by inference, their
learners’ achievements.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the experiences and
understandings of seven experienced natural science teachers as mentees in a
professional development programme (the ILLS project). Through the use of a
qualitative case study approach, I examined the activities that supported the
development of the participants as they interacted with the guided support of a
mentor teacher, and aimed to understand how the mentees made sense of their
experiences in this mentoring relationship. The activities included lesson-planning,
classroom observations and reflection meetings and the professional development
support, through mentoring, was embedded on-site and in-context.
This research revealed that the mentee teachers were motivated by the opportunity
to enhance their professional growth through the support of a mentor. The teachers
also perceived that their subject content and pedagogical knowledge were enriched
by participating in the mentoring process. === Science and Technology Education === M. Ed. (Natural Science Education)
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