Mentorship in the Primary School

First Published in 1994. The growing interest in work of mentors within school-based initial teacher training courses in England and Wales is a phenomenon of the recent past. The development of innovative schemes within secondary education, such as the Oxford Internship scheme (Benton, 1990) generated a national debate about the nature of partnership between schools and higher education institutions, which the government joined when it introduced experimental forms of initial teacher education in the Licensed and Articled Teacher schemes (DES, 1988 and 1989). These were extensively school-based, and included both secondary and primary Mentor-like behaviour may come from many sources within a school, and the appointed mentor may engage in such unmentor-like activities as making formal summative assessments of students with career-shaping implications of 'passing' and 'failing'. This volume is an attempt to provide some illumination and indicate some of the central issues to be addressed. However, we hope that the following chapters will provide an informative base from which to launch research into these and other aspects of primary school student teacher mentoring, as well as being of value for those engaged in mentoring and mentor training.