Education Commons^™

“Taking The Most Delicate Care”: Beginnings Of A Mentoring Relationship Between Teachers And Coaches In An Australian School, Jane Southcott, Karen Marangio, Donna Rady, Maria Gindidis

The Qualitative Report

We explore the beginnings of professional coaching/mentoring relationships between teachers and university mentors in an Australian school. Often overlooked, initial steps are crucial, holding the seeds of eventual success or failure. Our mentoring program was undertaken in a large, independent, co-educational school in suburban Melbourne, Victoria. In our constructivist study, underpinned by our desire to explore on the lived experiences of others, we report on the understandings of three of the mentors/researchers and the teachers that they worked with. We gathered data from teacher-written statements and mentor journals. Using thematic analysis, we developed our findings, performing epoché as we hold …