Dear Annie
You have given us such valuable insights in your posting about Chinese teachers - how can we work with you to assist understandings about mentoring and coaching? Are there some areas of existing professional development for Chinese teachers where mentoring and coaching can be embedded so knowledge is passed on by more experienced teachers and more generated?
I am particular;ly interested where you talk about mentoring in a two-way mode - please can you share some ideas about this model with us? Is this mentoring and coaching as co-enquiry?
Best,
Sarah
PS It was lovely to spend time with you last Friday! Can we start representing the thinking of some of your teacher colleagues in China on our website - I know you have many transcripts.
re,
Dear Sarah, Dear all,
Thanks for all the information. Though I am not in the field of coaching and mentoring area yet, I do keep my mind on this field as it came up as an issue in my PhD field work with Chinese secondary schools. The subjects in my study covers a wide range of experience and expertise, such as novice teachers, experienced teachers and veterans, where I could see how their expertise of different groups could be implemented by coaching and mentoring in a two way mode. Though new teachers lack experiences and expertise in practice, they don bring with them their ideals and new development in the area gained from the teacher education course. While experienced teachers do have some repertoire of hands-on tips as to how to coping classroom chaos, unruly students, the pace and the time planning etc. which suits the new teachers immediate needs, while they can help the new teachers to realise and modify their ideals as discovered in the narratives of the participants. Veteran teachers have normally experienced through all the stages and some of them have reached serenity with positive attitude. They can give consultancy to the newer ones. This could be achieved by the mentoring system. However, in China mentoring and coaching has yet come into an area of research or part of the educational system. People and schools informally use this concept and practice and unconsciously.
I would like to work further on this area.
Best wishes.
Annie Hongqin Zhao
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