Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 16. Number 3, September 2025 Pp. 472-475
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol16no3.29
Book Review
Mentoring Teachers: Supporting Learning, Wellbeing and Retention
Title: Mentoring Teachers: Supporting Learning, Wellbeing and Retention
Author: Angi Malderez
Year of Publication: 2024
Place of publication: United Kingdom
Publisher: Routledge
Pages:149
Reviewer: Hamdan F. Alzahrani
How to cite: Alzahrani, H. F. (2025). Mentoring Teachers: Supporting Learning, Wellbeing and Retention. By Malderez, A. Arab World English Journal, 16(3): 472-475.
https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol16no3.29
Mentoring Teachers: Supporting Learning, Wellbeing and Retention presents a form of nonjudgmental mentoring that is supported by both practical and theoretical evidence. The author puts forward that mentoring must be non-judgmental and based on trust and understanding where mentees are scaffolded throughout, with mentors taking the five roles of a supporter, an acculturator, a model, a sponsor and an educator to help mentees develop as informed reflective practitioners, who are confident and capable of making their own decisions and judgements.
The book has ten chapters preceded by an introduction. The author starts her book with some clarifications of her views of teaching and mentoring, and how she sees her professional identity as a teacher, a mentor as well as a researcher in the area. The first few pages set the scene for a reader-friendly book by avoiding jargon and through an accessible writing style. One of the key ideas presented in the introduction, and that is referred to frequently in the book is Systematic Informed Reflective Practice (SIRP). Another core idea that the author asserts is that mentors need to analyse the features of mentoring in their contexts. Context is defined in this book as “People, Place and (point in) Time” (Wedell and Malderez, 2013, p.15). According to the author, the contextual analysis can help mentors identify features of their contexts that can facilitate or impede mentoring.
After preparing readers for the five roles of a mentor by elucidating the conceptual meaning of mentoring in this book, and by considering context, the author discusses each role in a sperate chapter. The book shows how a mentor can support a mentee throughout a mentoring programme. Active listening is a key skill that a mentor needs to possess to effectively support mentees. This skill is highlighted by the author where she draws on the levels of listening in coaching by citing van Nieuwerburgh (2020), and adding her own observations and commentaries to each level. One level that stands out is that a mentor needs to reflect back to what a mentee has said by paraphrasing and rechecking their understanding. It could be noticed that the nonjudgmental listening is a joint feature in mentoring and coaching as well as in Cooperative Development (CD) where a listener in CD is labeled as an understander to reflect the non-judgmental nature of such a role (see Edge,1992).
The author also discusses how introducing mentees to their new institutions and communities of practice is a vital role for mentors. The writer points out that the role of an acculturator is much more needed by new career teachers who need to know their micro context and its norms. Also, a beginning teacher needs to be introduced to local, national and international communities of practice that can help them further their professional learning. As for long serving teachers, if they are new to an institution, then they might need what a beginning teacher does with regard to introducing them to the immediate context and its norms as well as to local communities of practice.
Besides the roles of a supporter and acculturator, the book sheds light on the model role of mentors, where they display the professional side of a teacher. The author suggests some ways for mentors to achieve that. One salient feature of this role emphasised in this book is that mentors need to show how they take care of their own ongoing learning and make their own decisions and plans visible to their mentees. For example, mentors can share with mentees their experiential knowledge about an aspect of their teaching, and mentors can talk their mentees through their decisions and informed practices. The author also considers how mentors should use their professional capital that stems mainly from their knowledge and professional contacts to facilitate the growth of a mentee. Sharing knowledge with mentees is a balancing act according to the author in that mentors need to provide their mentees with some knowledge, especially about methods and strategies to teach something in the right time. However, mentors should be aware of when they should refrain from doing so to allow a mentee to develop at their own pace and develop the ability and the skill to make their own professional judgments and decisions.
Special attention in the book is given to the educator role of mentors, where they can scaffold mentees to develop into informed reflective practitioners. The author proposes a model of mentoring that can be used in the post-lesson mentoring meetings to enhance a mentee’s SIRP, where ideally a mentor has not observed a mentee. The five-step model has some distinctive features such as it is led by the mentee and the mentor takes the role of a facilitator of reflection and helps the mentee to refine his or her own understanding of successful, challenging or puzzling experiences. The mentor also helps mentees to develop their noticing skills by asking some questions when invited to do so. The mentor is not judgmental and should listen actively and if asked, he or she could add some ideas. Mentees need to reach their own informed conclusions and plans for future interventions based on the process and outcome of the post-lesson mentoring meeting. In the educator role, the author also deals with the pre-lesson mentoring which focuses on scaffolding mentees by means of a flexible guide to help them plan their lessons.
After discussing the five roles of a mentor, the author problematises the assessment of mentees by highlighting challenges when mentors are tasked with such a role or when mentees are to be assessed by others (managers, supervisors, trainers). The author shows how mentors can support their mentees to navigate challenges associated with observation.
Given that mentoring requires knowledge, skills and learning from experience, mentors need to take care of their ongoing learning. The author recommends that mentors use the framework of SIRP for their own learning. They can do that on their own by asking themselves questions relating to each step in the model. Also, they can do that with another mentor and/or with a group of mentors or even with their mentees. However, the author makes some caveats when doing so with mentees. The author also encourages mentors to engage with research-based ideas which have useful practical implications, such as scaffolding, noticing, reflective practice. As springboard for teacher learning, the book highlights both real life stories related to teaching and mentoring, and allegorical stories which can be a source of thrill and learning. As for the latter, the author presents three allegorical stories and invites readers to get the learnt lessons pertaining to mentoring. The author leaves readers with a positive note of three successful stories for three mentors where such stories reflect that mentoring can be rewarding for the profession and mentors themselves despite the challenges that can encounter mentors.
All things considered, this book has many strengths. For instance, the author conceptualises mentoring based on her wide experience as a teacher, a mentor and as a well-known researcher in the area of mentoring. This is evident throughout the book where she vividly reflects on her own teaching and mentoring experiences, and also refers to some research where needed to theorise such experiences. Besides, the book provides insights and practical ideas to mentors of both new career teachers and experienced teachers, where many comparisons of how to mentor them are explicit in most chapters. On the other hand, while the author compares mentoring and coaching briefly in a few paragraphs at the beginning of the book, I think, as a reader, the relationship between mentoring and coaching is worth more discussion, and hence more space (perhaps a chapter). This is so for two reasons. Firstly, the author mentions that she hopes that her book will play a role in rebuilding the reputation of mentoring, as it is badly impacted by judgmental mentoring, and which , according to the author, explains why some have opted for coaching, and it also justifies the addition of coaching to mentoring. Secondly, mentoring and coaching as terms are almost always used adjacently, and some key researchers in the area provide an encompassing definition of both (see Maxwell et al, 2022). All in all, this book is a valuable source for mentors and other professionals who want to have an idea of supporting, acculturating, sponsoring, modelling, and educating teachers.
Reviewer:
Dr. Hamdan F. Alzahrani
King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
References
Edge, J. (1992). “Cooperative Development.” ELT Journal, 46(1), 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/46.1.62
Maxwell, B., Hobson, A.J., and Manning, C., (2022). Mentoring and coaching trainee and early career teachers: conceptual review. The National Institute of Teaching.
van Nieuwerburgh, C. (2020). An Introduction to Coaching Skills: A Practical Guide. London: Sage
Wedell, M., & Malderez, A. (2013). Understanding Language Classroom Contexts: The Starting Point for Change. Bloomsbury Academic.