High quality mentoring is a critically important for initial teacher education (Hobson et al, 2009) though it is not always of the highest quality (Hobson and Malderez, 2013; Margo et al, 2008). The Carter review of ITT (2015:41) suggested the following characteristics of effective mentoring:

• Effective mentors are outstanding teachers who are also skilled in deconstructing and explaining their practice – outstanding practitioners are not automatically outstanding mentors;
• Effective mentors are subject and phase experts, aware of the latest developments. Subject mentors should be members of subject mentor networks and should access resources from subject associations;
• The most effective mentors have a secure understanding of the Teachers’ Standards, including a range of methods for assessing against the standards, in a way that goes beyond the minimum requirements for meeting them;
• Effective mentors are strong role-models of all the Teachers’ Standards – for example, they are skilled in managing behaviour effectively. Effective mentors are also good role-models in relation to their own engagement with research.

Effective mentoring is an excellent professional development opportunity for the mentor as it involved them reflecting on their own practice as well as explaining this to the pre-service teacher and helping them to do the same on their own practice - as well as helping the trainees good mentors help the schools to develop their own practice.

This mentor training for those support trainees in their journey as pre-service teachers falls into four key sessions. Each of these sessions has support materials and help the mentor to devleop the key knowledge and skills needed. Of course each mentor-trainee relationship is unique and each journey different but this course will help you to master the key knowledge and skills needed.

Link between the mentoring modules and the 2016 DfE mentoring standards - more

References

• Hobson AJ and Malderez A. (2013) ‘Judgementoring and other threats to realizing the potential of school-based mentoring in teacher education’, International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education 2(2), pp 89-108
• Hobson AJ, Malderez A, Tracey L, Homer MS, Patricia A, Mitchell N, McIntyre J, Cooper D, Roper T, Chambers GN, and Tomlinson PD. (2009). ‘Becoming a Teacher. DCSF Research Report Number DCSF-RR115
• Margo J, Benton M, Withers K, Sodha S, and Tough S. (2008) ‘Those who can?’ Institute for Public Policy Research
• Carter A (2015) Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training (ITT); HMSO

The information here will help you to consider the core elements of developing as a mentor and the core roles and responsibilites. This is mostly focussed on what will be covered at M level but if you are thinking about the UoH certifcation then this will still be useful.