ECF Mentor Briefing for April & May 2024

This news page is for all experienced teachers and leaders registered as Early Career Mentors with Generate Teaching Hub.

Dedicated CPD

The Teach First ECF Mentor Programme is dedicated CPD for you. Over the two years, you will develop a whole range of skills, as well as becoming familiar with the most up to date research and evidence base for teaching and learning.

This is a great opportunity to be learning alongside your ECT. However, in some cases, as a new mentor, you may be supporting a Year 2 ECT. We understand that this can be a little confusing if you are completing Year 1 Mentor Training and your ECT is on Year 2 ECF training.

Your school Induction Tutor will have a copy of the Teach First ECF Programme Guides for Year 1 and Year 2, which can support you in this. There are also short video clips on Brightspace, highlighting what your ECT has covered in their training.

As always, if you would like further support with this, do get in touch ecf@wpat.uk 

Key Learning

Those of you who are currently undertaking Year 1 Mentor Training will look at Module 5 this half term, with a focus on Balancing Support and Challenge. It’s worth noting that the key learning from this is applicable to all mentors, regardless of their stage of training or experience. It reminds us that challenge and support can enable and hinder your ECT’s ability to grow, depending on the balance struck.

As a mentor, you have to manage difficult conversations and try to avoid judge mentoring. Take a look at Hobson’s research paper Judge mentoring and how to avert it: introducing ONSIDE Mentoring for beginning teachers — The University of Brighton to develop your thinking and understanding further.

“Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding.” (Stone, Neen & Patton, 2010)

Mentors who started their training in January will looking at how they can support their ECT in the acquisition of expertise in the classroom. Again, this content is useful for all mentors (and well worth revisiting). Reflecting on both naïve and deliberate practice and reflecting on the principles of which underpin deliberate practice will help you to effectively support and challenge your ECT.

We are lucky to work with mentors who have a broad range of experience and knowledge of mentoring teachers at different stages in their careers. As part of our Appropriate Body Quality Assurance visits, we have been privileged to meet with mentors and hear about the good practice and innovative ways they are supporting ECTs.

If you would like to share your thoughts and experiences of mentoring do get in touch ecf@wpat.uk.

We always welcome feedback and it would be great to build a bank of good practice to share with colleagues.

ECF Mentor Retention Research

UCL have published another in depth research report in to ECF mentoring.

This peort highlights the role mentoring plays in retaining experienced teaching staff. Generate has shared highlights from the research and a link to the whole document in this post.

For any questions about your training or the ECF offer from Generate Teaching Hub please contact ecf@wpat.uk.