Educators universally agree that teacher mentoring programs and professional learning are two essential factors in the scope of support for early-career teachers (Smith& Ingersoll, 2004). As schools grapple with the decline of certified teachers exacerbated by the pandemic, it is more important than ever to consider the type and frequency of…

This qualitative study explores the holistic approaches that seven mentors use to attend to the well-being of new professionals as they transition into the classroom. We define holistic mentoring as practices that intertwine the professional with the personal, and bring together the aesthetic, intellectual, and moral in supporting beginning…

Urban school districts are beleaguered with the high attrition rate of teachers. This results in a staff that is largely inexperienced, and a large cost to the district in training and induction programs. Mentoring programs have been linked to new teacher retention, and one particular mentoring program, Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), is widely…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between mentoring and Early Career Teacher retention, within an urban school district in Maryland. The research examined mentoring and teacher retention in an urban school district. There were 11 participants in the study. Seven of the participants remained in the district after their…

Teacher retention continues to be a concern in public education. The concerns related to this negative trend were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and schools and school districts are finding themselves in a precarious position. Many states and local school districts are creatively utilizing alternative certification methods to increase the…

We facilitate a year-long teacher induction program in the United States involving early-career teachers in urban elementary schools as a means to advance their inclusive mathematics practices. The participants in this program joined in professional learning experiences and discussions focused on advancing inclusive mathematics education with…

Elementary school teachers in testing grades have had different responsibilities over the years. Urban schools are constantly expected to provide students with a more intense curriculum and rigorous instruction. The duties and responsibilities of a first-year teacher directly affect how novice teachers judge their performance and effectiveness.…

Beginning special education teachers often leave the field within the first 3-5 years of employment. There is ample research available on mentoring programs for beginning teachers. However, limited research exists on mentoring programs for beginning special education teachers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the lived…

The first years of teaching can be difficult for some teachers and substantial numbers of them leave the profession early in their careers. This attrition can be detrimental to student academic outcomes and financially damaging to school districts. One solution schools have implemented is peer mentoring teacher induction programs. The Peer…

The similarity of teaching assignments between mentor and novice teachers are typically regarded as necessary prerequisites for successful mentoring relationships. Yet, due to the personnel shortages and specialized teaching assignments in special education, it is not always possible to match novice special educators with veteran special…

This article puts forth a multidimensional framework for empirically testing the effects of teacher mentoring, focusing on interactions between formal mentors and novice teachers and the setting in which these interactions occur. Analyzing survey and administrative data from Chicago Public Schools with a multilevel propensity-score weighting…

Novice special education teachers (SETs) often report on stress and burnout in their jobs, identifying collaboration with colleagues as a factor that supports them during the first years (Belknap & Taymans, 2015). While previous research focused on teachers' support from their mentor teachers, administrators, and colleagues, in this study we…

Background/Context: Mentors play a central role in preparing new teachers. This is multifaceted and demanding work, for which they rarely receive training, instead often relying on their own intuition or past experiences to guide their practice. As a result, most mentoring assumes the format of observation followed by feedback, emphasizing…

This article describes a research-enriched, action-oriented plan for supporting educators in PreK-12 district-wide mentoring through online professional development inspired by Kram's model.

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to explore the extent to which mentorship of new special education teachers working in high need, urban schools incorporated instruction of a teachers' own social and emotional learning competencies and how these teachings impacted new special education teachers' job satisfaction and…