Developing Teacher Educators In Uganda Using a Mentoring Approach: a case study

This study is about intent and experience in a primary teacher education mentoring initiative in Uganda. The initiative’s intent was to extend teacher educators’ capacities, enabling them to improve primary education quality in all government schools across Uganda. The main research question was about how mentoring is understood in a mentoring programme to improve teacher education in Uganda. A framework is used map three constituencies: the expectations of the mentoring initiative originators as expressed through local documentation and the expectations and experiences in the initiative of mentors and co-ordinating centre tutors (CCTs). Semi-structured interviews were the main form of data collection and included twenty-eight CCTs who were based in one primary teachers college (PTC) in Eastern Uganda and fifteen international volunteer educators (mentors) based in separate PTCs across Uganda (recruited by an NGO, VSO). The study found that mentoring is interpreted in a range of ways within the mentoring programme. These interpretations affected both sides of the mentoring relationship to different degrees and at different points in the development of the initiative. Even with the broad parity in seniority and experience of CCTs and mentors, the operationalising of the initiative resulted in mentors leading (or facilitating) the mentoring relationship. Yet the acceptance of personal professional learning in CCTs is a key phenomenon if the work is to be sustainable. The areas of challenge were the expectations of the foreign volunteer educator mentor in the placement, the impact on motivation of intermittent funding and the negotiation of productive professional relationships.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

edd

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

The Open University

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Lyseight-jones, Pauline Elaine

Language dc:language

en