NORDMENT: Mentoring beginning teachers in Nordic countries
Background
This project explores how mentoring of newly qualified teachers in Nordic countries are carried out by investigating contextual and relational factors. Newly qualified teachers’ transitions to work life are often described with the term “shock”, which emphasizes their perceived inability to act as expected and to highlight their lack of perceived control of the work situations they face. To answer this challenge, it is a political intention in the Nordic countries that newly qualified teachers should be guided by mentors. For demographic reasons, many teachers will be retiring during the coming years. Low recruitment and retention of beginning teachers may lead to a shortage of qualified staff in the schools. This potential danger of a lack of qualified teachers is, however, different in the various Nordic countries. The induction of mentoring schemes may have a positive impact on teacher commitment and retention, classroom instructional practices, and also indirectly on student achievement. However, there is no agreement on how to provide beginning teachers with beneficial mentoring and support, and there is marked variation between national mentoring schemes in the Nordic countries.
Goals
This project explores how national mentoring schemes in the Nordic countries, school management, school organizational contexts and relational factors influence beginning teachers’ commitment, retention and feelings of mastery and support during their first years of teaching. NORMENT seeks to develop new knowledge with relevance to the field of mentoring, the teacher education sector, policy-makers and education researchers. Research questions to be addressed include how to identify the strengths and weaknesses in the Nordic educational systems using various types of measurement. The project´s purposes are to:
- contribute to knowledge-based policy and practice for mentoring schemes for beginning teachers in the Nordic countries. This will be achieved by analyzing how mentors and beginning teachers perceive issues of significant importance and relevance to the sector itself, as well as to policy-makers and researchers
- disseminate the results to a wide array of stakeholders and users in the Nordic region and internationally.
- strengthen the Nordic region’s position in mentoring research within and outside of Europe.
Methods
Advanced quantitative methods are used to estimate how mentoring schemes, school management, school organizational contexts and relational factors influence beginning teachers’ commitment, retention and feelings of mastery and support. Since there are both significant cultural similarities and somewhat different policy approaches among Nordic countries, the comparative perspective in the research project aims at better understanding of how an intended policy in a particular country directed towards newly-trained teachers actually works.
Activities
The following surveys are distributed as a part of this project:
- Survey with 249 Swedish teachers with 0-5 years of experience
The following articles are written based on these surveys:
- Tiplic, D., Elstad, E., Brandmo, C., Steingrímsdóttir, M., & Engilbertsson, G. (2019). Perceived Organizational Antecedents of Emerging Collaborative Learning Activities Among Icelandic Beginning Teachers. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2019.1616611
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Steingrímsdóttir, M., & Engilbertsson, G. (2018). Mat nýliða á gagnsemi leiðsagnar í starfi kennara [New teachers’ opinions and experiences regarding the support they receive in their first year of teaching]. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun [Netla – Online Journal on Pedagogy and Education]. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24270/netla.2018.3
- Tiplic, D.,Lejonberg, E., & Elstad, E. (2016). Antecedents of Newly Qualified Teachers’ Turnover Intentions: Evidence from Sweden. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research,15(5), 103 -127. http://ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter/article/view/615/307
- Lejonberg, E., & Tiplic, D. (2016). Clear Mentoring: Contributing to Mentees’ Professional Self-confidence and Intention to Stay in their Job. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 24(4), 290-305. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2016.1252110
- Elstad, E., Tiplic, D., & Brandmo, C. (2016). Antecedents of employee collaboration among newly qualified teachers in Danish schools. Scandinavian Journal of Organizational Psychology, 8(2), 5-17.
- Tiplic, D., Brandmo, C., & Elstad, E. (2015). Antecedents of Norwegian beginning teachers’ turnover intentions. Cambridge Journal of Education, 45(4), 451-474. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2014.987642
Data from the surveys have also been presented in the following arenas:
- Tiplic, D., Brandmo, C., Elstad, E., Steingrímsdóttir, M. & Engilbertsson, G. (2016). Antecedents of collaborative-oriented learning activities (COLA) among Icelandic beginning teachers. Paper accepted for presentation at the Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Chicago, USA.
- Lejonberg E. and Tiplic, D. (2015). Clear mentoring: contributing to newly qualified teachers professional self-confidence and intention to stay in their job. Poster presented at ECER conference, Budapest, Hungary
- Lejonberg and Tiplic (2015): Clear mentoring: contributing to newly qualified teachers professional self-confidence and intention to stay in their job. Paper presentation at Mentoring conference, Bodø,
- Brandmo, Christian; Tiplic, Dijana & Elstad, Eyvind (2015). Antecedents of collaboration-oriented learning activities among beginning teachers: Evidence from Denmark. Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Chicago, USA.
- Steingrímsdóttir, M. & Engilbertsson, G. (2014). Mentoring Beginning Teachers in Nordic Countries: Icelandic Data and Analyses. Paper Presented at the Conference EERA, ECER Conference 2014. "The past, the present and future of educational research in Europe" 1.-5. September. Porto, Portugal
- Engilbertsson, G. & Steingrímsdóttir, M. (2014). Nordment: Support to New Beginning Teachers in Iceland. Paper Presented at the Conference on Educational Science, Akureyri, Iceland.
- Steingrímsdóttir, M. & Engilbertsson, G. (2014). Nordment: Support to Icelandic Compulsary and Upper Secondary Schools Teachers. Paper presented at the Conference on Icelandic Sociology, Hólar, Iceland
- Engilbertsson, G. & Steingrímsdóttir, M. (2015). Supporting New Begginning Teachers In Icelandic Secondary Schools. Paper Presented at the Conference The Conference "Secondary School at Crossraoad: Research and development in Icelandic Secondary Schools". University of Iceland, Reykjavík
- Engilbertsson, G. & Steingrímsdóttir, M. (2014). Nordment: Supporting teachers in Compulsary and Upper Secondary Schools in Iceland. Paper Presented at the Educational Caleidoscope Conference at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík.
- Steingrímsdóttir, M. & Engilbertsson, G. (2014). Norment: Supporting NQT. Paper presented the Conference of Social Sciences at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík.
- Steingrímsdóttir, M. & Engilbertsson, G. (2014). Nordment: Mentoring Beginning Teachers In Nordic Countries: Icelandic Results. The Past, Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe, ECER Conference, Porto.
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