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Effective NQT Mentoring

 This will be my first year mentoring a NQT and I have been thinking a lot about the best way to support them. I recently read Louis’excellent guide for NQT’s and it has got me thinking about the subject-specific guidance that heads of department can offer.

I feel a strong responsibility to make sure I get it as right as possible. We have all seen what happens when NQT’s are not properly supported and this year more than ever when they have only had one placement, I suspect the level of departmental support will be crucial. I have always found the best development to be subject-specific and so I been developing a 3-step strategy to mentoring this year:

1.       Subject Knowledge

Subject knowledge is always assumed to be excellent, but a university degree is a poor proxy for in depth knowledge for the specific content covered in a curriculum. Subject knowledge is sometimes seen as the poor sibling of pedagogical development but the two go hand in hand. Rob Coe’s research has shown that content knowledge has a strong impact on pupil outcomes.

Just like any other form of teaching, to improve this, I need to identify gaps in knowledge. At the start of the year everyone in the department will sit a subject knowledge audit where they RAG themselves on a wide range of topics. These are not based on any specification but used to identify what areas of a subject need improving.

From this, I then look at what I believe the most pressing areas to improve subject knowledge are. As a department, each member is given some reading to do before a departmental meeting where they then discuss what they have read and how it may impact how they teach a topic in class. Through the discussion with those who may have a stronger knowledge of that topic, the hope is that we all improve out subject knowledge.

It is worth noting this process is not unique to NQT’s, we can all improve our subject knowledge and I will undertake the same audit.

2.       Pedagogical Content Knowledge

As well as subject knowledge, Professor Coe also talks about pedagogical content knowledge having a strong evidence for impacting pupil outcomes. There is a lot of great information about pedagogy out there and it seems as a sector we have never been so research-informed. However, how to implement it within a subject is tricky to navigate. This is especially the case when teaching subjects like economics where the online educational presence is limited and so there is less scope for collaboration.

Every half-term I am going to focus on what particular strand of teaching that I believe to be of the most importance:

HT1: Effective teacher explanations

HT2: Routines and Behaviour

HT3: Deliberate Practice

HT4: Cognitive Science (cognitive load theory, retrieval etc)

HT5: Effective feedback

HT6: Dual Coding

Before a sessions, my NQT will read an article on that half terms topic that I have given them. For example in the first week they may read an article about examples and non-examples that the CogSciSci team have written. Then in the meeting we will discuss how that can be used in an upcoming lesson. So how can the use of examples and non-examples help explain what opportunity cost is when teaching scarcity?

The following week we will then evaluate how using this impacted the lesson, if it was effective or not and how this can be further refined. We will then read another paper on another part of effective explanations and repeat the process.

You could define the approach as read –> discuss –> implement –> evaluate.

The hope is that by the end of the year we will have discussed and evaluated how a wide range of educational research can be effectively implemented in a subject-specific manner.

3.       Feedback

Whilst this will hopefully be useful for medium-term development, what they will also need is quick feedback on how they are doing and what to immediately improve. I intend to use the Rosenshine observation form that Adam Boxer created to assist with this. This is not as a prescriptive checklist but rather as the foundation for a conversation around what was seen and how instruction can be more effective.

In addition to this, there will be an expectation of one observation a week (around 15m) where they will observe a colleague and use the same form to note what they have seen. These will be targeted observations based around any areas for development focussed. The idea being they will go to a teacher who is particularly strong at the area for development, to model what best practice looks like.

Of course there is much more to mentoring from an emotional perspective and with regards to collaborative lesson planning and discussions. It is my hope that this will give a structure to the year to ensure there is a system in place for my NQT to get high quality coaching on subject-specific teaching development.

As ever, if anyone has any views I would love to hear them.

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