Equality of mentoring and coaching opportunity: making both available to pre-service teachers

The purpose of this paper is to explore why mentoring is preferred over coaching when supporting pre-service teachers, compared with other stages in a teacher’s career where coaching is more readily available.

The paper first draws upon pre-existing literature which addresses the ways in which mentoring is used for pre-service teachers; followed by a discussion of the place and use of coaching within education. It then focuses on data generated from interviews with senior teachers responsible for the induction of pre-service teachers within three UK-based secondary schools and compares this to findings about mentor and coach approaches used in other sectors or contexts.

Findings point towards an imbalance in the use of mentoring and coaching within education, with a particular underuse of coaching for pre-service teachers. Some mentoring (and indeed coaching) interventions are founded on a deficit model; therefore mentors of pre-service teachers could be helped and supported to make greater use of a mentor-coach integrated asset-based approach, which encourages the use of reflection and self-directed learning.

Schools using internal mentors for pre-service teachers, or internal coaches for post-qualified teachers, could benefit from understanding what a mentor-coach integrated approach might look like, founded on an asset-based model.

The literature is limited with regards to the use of coaching for pre-service teachers. This paper examines the use of mentoring and coaching within schools in a more balanced way; questioning the underlying beliefs about the purpose of mentoring and coaching and whether or not these are based on deficit or asset-based models.