The target groups are mentors and head teachers/headmasters from primary and secondary schools.
Issues covered by the Program and results of the event:
After a carefully constructed Modular curriculum for a mentor-teacher training course in which the basic topics and main issues of mentoring were specified, the Training Materials for mentor teachers were created. The created materials elaborate on the identified topics and issues and offer practical examples and tasks. The tasks are aimed at improving teachers' mentoring competences and giving them an insight into the ways of upgrading these competences.
At the beginning of the program, the attendees filled out a questionnaire on their views and ' opinions about the importance of mentoring. The following notions related to mentoring were identified: responsibility, importance, challenge, a demanding task, i.e. mentoring is described as “a responsible and complex task that requires long and rich work experience, careful preparation for work, a lot of patience and tolerance, as well as respect for all participants in the mentoring process”. The attendees also stressed the importance of the mentor's influence on the mentee and vice versa. Mentees can influence the mentor's work and improve it, by bringing innovations to the mentor‘s work. In other words, through the exchange of experiences, both mentors and mentees can benefit. However, in these intense interactions misunderstandings may occur and these can cause conflict situations. Such being the case, most of the tasks focus on improving communication and cooperation between mentors and mentees, as well as on the professional socialization of novice teachers.
For the program implementation, 5 tasks from the created materials were selected. The tasks focused on and piloted issues related to the relationship between mentor and mentee and the process of novice teacher professional socialization and the development of career identity. The tasks were organized in three practical parts. The focus of the first part was on the relationship between mentor and mentee, emphasizing the ways to raise the mentees' self-confidence.
The second and third practical parts emphasized personal prerequisites, in the form of preparation and motivation of mentees and the motivation of mentors to set their further personal development goals, cooperation between mentors and mentees as a condition for successful mentoring, as well as acceptance of differences in the cooperation process.
After completing the tasks, the attendees summarized their opinions on the assignments and the program. They expressed high satisfaction with the content of the program. All tasks were assessed as very inspiring and useful for work with mentees. The attendees reported that they had similar ideas and faced similar problems, so the completion of the tasks and the discussion that developed during solving the tasks was extremely useful for the participants of the event.
In order to ensure the direct application of the project results in practice, it is planned to accredit the program of continuous professional development of teachers for the school years 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 at the Institute for the Advancement of Education in Serbia. This will provide a larger coverage of teachers who will be trained for mentoring. The effect of the program will also be reflected in better preparation of young people for teaching profession, i.e. it will influence their decision to remain in the profession.
