International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
all fields of trade and craft do not only impart skills to their trainees but monitor the trainees development and
progress in mastering and using the skills effectively. It is a process and not a once-for-all habit of imparting
knowledge and skill. As a process, mentoring makes provisions for monitoring, follow-up, sponsorship and
guidance .It follows the approach of apprenticeship and internship. A once-for-all approach abandons the trainee
( on graduation) leaving him/her to grapple in darkness and stumble in many mistakes in the process of
applying the knowledge and skills received.
Mentoring aimed at further professional development of teachers, who graduated from teacher-education
institutions is lacking in the three levels of teacher-education in Nigeria. Teacher educators in Teacher Training
Colleges, Colleges of Education and Universities do not have any formal mentoring partnership or relationship
through which the skill and pedagogical development aimed at professional growth is fostered. By a formal
partnership we mean a formal arrangement whether documented or not by which a fresh graduate teacher is
mentored, through close follow-up, advocacy or support in the school he/she is posted to teach. Whatever exists
at the informal level, if any does not have any citable impact A mentoring relationship is defined by Parloe
(1992) cited in Metros and Yang(2006) as helping and supporting people to manage their own learning in order
to maximize their professional potential, develop their skills, improve their performance, and become the person
they want to be. A once –for-all-approach mentioned above is what is in vogue up until now (the reasons for
this and problems associated with it will be discussed later).
RATIONALE FOR MENTORING
Some important concepts in the definition that need to be emphasized are helping and supporting people, skill
development, and improvement of performance. Organisations or institutions employ people that are assumed to
have the necessary qualifications to work. These qualifications are mere paper certificates that show the area of
knowledge in which the employee is trained. The new employees can not fit in properly if he does not
painstakingly understudy the older and more experienced staff. This involves a purposeful helping and
supporting with skill, knowledge, ideas, workable strategies which providence and experience have bestowed on
the mentor. Again mentorship involves skill development. It could be observed that higher institutions in Nigeria
exposed the students more to the theoretical aspect of their curriculum. Development of professional skill which
in turn guarantees career development is in most cases learnt on the job .Development of professional skills
takes place in the field and is best and faster done when an experienced hand is available to train or to be
understudied.
Improvement of performance is another thing that mentorship aims at achieving .Improvement on ones skills
invariably leads to the improvement of performance. Again mentoring has a serious element of close
supervision. Increased performance and quality output are directly linked. Training under a good and
experienced senior colleague helps improve performance on the part of the new staff. Under the rubric of
intelligence, mentorship not only provides a transfer of knowledge, but demonstrates how to acquire and apply
the critical thinking skills and the habits of enquiry and logical argument needed to create and communicate that
knowledge (Ross and Mahy,1997).Thus mentoring turns a neophyte to a genius. It transfers the masters
knowledge to the mentee and equips him/her with philosophical foundations through which solution to problems
in the organisation could be sought for whether the mentor is around or not.
The United States of America has applied mentoring approach in their school systems and found that it is
enhancing the teachers performance and productivity. Barlin (2010) revealed that after a large body of evidence
showed that mentoring approach significantly improved performance of new teachers, many education leaders
started to invest in new-teacher mentoring. He said “when mentors are well-selected, well-trained, and given the
time to work intensively with new teachers, they not only help average teachers become good, but good teachers
become great’’ It is also organized in the US in a way that it could be between the faculty and students , and
between students and students . All the mentoring approaches in the US are yielding good result.
TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMMES IN NIGERIA
Teacher education refers to the policies and procedures designed to equip prospective teachers with the
knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom, school
and wider community. Teacher education programmes in Nigeria are offered in three education institutions
namely Teacher Training Colleges ,Colleges of Education, Universities/Institutes of Education Nigerian
Teachers Institute . Each of these awards different professional certificates in Education. Teachers Training
Colleges award Teachers Grade 11 certificate(TC11) . Colleges of Education award Nigerian Certificate in
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