Mentoring in teacher education in Norway

Abstract

Mentoring, where inexperienced students are taught or supervised by more experienced students, has received considerable attention in higher education over the last decades. In Norway, education policy expects higher education institutions to implement mentoring schemes as a means to improve quality. However, surveys show a great variation in concept and design, as well as a lack of empirical evidence to inform about the connection between mentor programs and quality in higher education in Norway. In this article we present the results of a project on mentoring in teacher education for primary and lower secondary school. The study shows a positive effect on student engagement, motivation, and work effort due to the mentoring. The article addresses the question of how mentoring attributed to this. Self-determination theory (SDT), which posits that intrinsic motivation is sustained by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy and relatedness, provides the theoretical framework for the study. By means of empirical data drawn from questionnaires and interviews with students, we investigate how peer-mentoring has impacted on the students’ experiences of competence, autonomy and relatedness. Both mentors and mentees experienced strengthening of competence and efficiency due to mentoring. The need for autonomy, however, was experienced as a challenge in the project, whereas the need for relatedness was highly valued by the participants but not fully met by the mentoring project.