As the professional landscape is becoming more sophisticated, prospective specialists need mentorship and guidance to stay focused and motivated. Hargreaves and Fullan (2000) consider mentoring to be a significant part of the teaching process and believe that it should be incorporated into schooling. The world is living in the fourth professional age, where complexities of taught subjects are facilitated by the diverse cultural backgrounds of students. The authors’ thesis is that teaching and teacher preparation should change fundamentally to accommodate collaboration between colleagues and parents and enforce continuous learning throughout the career.
The researchers argue that the landscape of mentoring should change as the model of professionalism evolves. The new age of professionalism has brought with it unique challenges mentors should have a capacity to solve (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000). These new difficulties include the need for providing emotional support along with teaching required subjects, increased complexity of teaching methodologies along with materials, and the need to work with communities, not only with students (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000). Mentors should be able to contribute to an “improvement-oriented profession in schools” (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000, p. 55). Often overlooked is “teaching’s emotional dimension,” which makes teachers great (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000, p. 53). Implications of this research include the necessity to restructure how teachers are prepared on a fundamental level and to introduce changes to the school system.
Although the authors provide strong arguments, they only rely on the available literature and their subjective opinion to draw conclusions. The study would benefit from quantitative research that could reveal, for instance, to what extent the demographic landscape has changed and what teachers should know about it. The authors raise the question of whether or not the current school system should be altered radically but fail to present any quantitative data.
Reference
Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (2000). Mentoring in the new millennium.Theory Into Practice, 39(1), 50-56. Web.