ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to allow science teachers to reflect upon their mentoring practices. It asks them to consider what a beginning teacher might reasonably expect from them as a mentor, the characteristics and some actions of effective/ineffective mentors. The chapter introduces Hudson’s constructivist approaches to effective mentoring. It then focuses on some effective mentoring actions to support beginning teacher expectations of science teachers, such as: enabling a beginning teacher to self-reflect and discuss their expectations of themselves and expectations of science teachers, conducting an induction programme, suggesting ways to balance working life with other commitments and supporting the beginning teacher to meet teacher standards. Mentoring a beginning science teacher necessarily requires the mentor to adopt a twin tracked approach to the way they co-construct a beginning teacher’s professional identity, since they are to be a teacher first and a science specialist second. Hudson’s effective mentoring factors include personal attributes that the mentor needs to exhibit for constructive dialogue.
