Graduation Year

2006

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Granting Department

Interdisciplinary Education

Major Professor

Waynne B. James, Ed.D.

Committee Member

William F. Benjamin, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Howard Johnston, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Carol A. Mullen, Ph.D.

Keywords

Career and Psychosocial Functions, Survey, Education, Mentors, Elementary Public Schools

Abstract

National Board-certified (NBC) teachers are recognized as accomplished teachers who have met the National Board’s stringent standards. These teachers are encouraged to serve as mentors to novice teachers and veteran teachers in candidacy for National Board Certification. This study identified and compared the career and psychosocial mentoring functions that NBC teacher mentors and non-NBC teacher mentors perceived they provided to their protégés at the elementary grade levels. National Board-certified protégés’ perceptions of having the functions provided were compared with those of their teacher mentors and with the protégés of non-NBC teacher mentors.

The research was conducted in a large urban school district in Florida and included 190 participants: 95 mentors and their protégés. The teacher mentors’ perceptions of having provided the mentoring functions were assessed using the Mentoring Functions Scale for the Mentor, and the protégés’ perceptions were measured with the Mentoring Functions Scale for the Protégé. Both instruments were adapted for this study from a previous mentoring scale for the protégé developed by Noe (1988). Results for the study indicated no statistically significant differences between the NBC teacher mentors and the non-NBC teacher mentors in their perceptions of having provided the functions. Significant differences were found between NBC teacher mentors and their protégés on the exposure-and-visibility function, between non-NBC teacher mentors and their protégés on the challenging assignments function, and between all mentors and all protégés on the challenging assignments function.

Implications for teacher mentors, administrators, and scholars are provided. These include developing or updating existing mentoring programs to include the career and psychosocial functions studied in this research, providing mentors and protégés with information about the functions in order to assess the existence of specific functions, expanding professional development time to address functions that may have been inadequate, and possibly limiting the number of protégés with whom teacher mentors interact and guide.

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