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Extending the research agenda on mentoring in education
... We consider that, in the intervening years since Kochan's (2013) critique, mentoring (and coaching) research has largely addressed this first limitation, not least through many excellent studies published in IJMCE which, ahead of this issue, has amassed 10 volumes, 37 issues and 206 individual articles [1]. While some parts of the field are inevitably more mature than others (Allen and Eby, 2021), there is now a significant, specialised body of literature on coaching and mentoring (including coaching and mentoring theory and practice) in education. ...
... The second limitation of the evidence base on mentoring in education, for Kochan (2013), was that the research undertaken had been relatively small scale and "focused on single cases, states, countries, or other settings" (p. 168). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the evidence base on coaching and mentoring in education, to provide a commentary on literature published in the first 10 volumes of the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (IJMCE) in particular and to offer some directions for future research in the field.
Design/methodology/approach
This review and position paper draws on the authors’ knowledge of the extant literature on coaching and mentoring in education, their own research in the field and their perspectives as editors of coaching and mentoring journals.
Findings
Among the outcomes of their review and commentary, the authors observe that coaching and mentoring research conducted to date largely occupies two separate fields, and studies published in one field frequently fail to draw on relevant literature from the other or recognise the overlap between them. The authors highlight a number of additional limitations of the evidence base on coaching and mentoring in education and offer some potential means of addressing these.
Originality/value
The paper offers an original reflection on current research into coaching and mentoring in education. It is intended that the paper will inform the design and publication of future studies in this area to strengthen the evidence base and, in turn, inform improvements to coaching and mentoring practice. In particular, the authors hope to encourage the ethical deployment of coaching and mentoring which enhances, rather than inhibits, the well-being of all participants, while realising other positive outcomes.
Purpose
– In the USA, school districts are funding mathematics coaching positions to provide school-level support to teachers. The purpose of this paper is to survey school personnel whose job responsibilities included mathematics coaching in order to examine their job responsibilities and what they felt that their job responsibilities should be.
Design/methodology/approach
– In all, 67 elementary school mathematics coaches completed a survey that included 30 aspects of the job of elementary school mathematics leaders.
Findings
– Quantitative analyses indicated that there were statistically significant differences between their actual roles and their preferred roles on 24 of the 30 items. This means that coaches reported that the aspects of their current role did not align to what they thought their job should be.
Research limitations/implications
– The findings indicate a need to collect further information in a longitudinal study, potentially from a combination of surveys, interviews, and observations, about elementary mathematics coaches’ job responsibilities and the impact that coaches have on both teachers and students.
Practical implications
– The findings indicate a need for school leaders, mathematics leaders (coaches), and classroom teachers to work together to utilize mathematics leaders more effectively so as to best support teachers’ instruction and students’ learning.
Originality/value
– While some research has been published on literacy coaching, the research base on mathematics coaching is scant. This study contributes to the knowledge base about the roles and duties of coaches in elementary school settings.
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