Week One Journal

"Chapter 2 Building Professional Development Relationships with Adults

The chapter supports your growing capacity to

Partner with others for learning;

Join and plan for a learning partnership;

Begin a cycle of strategies by establishing expectations;

Understand and apply concepts influencing cultural competence and equity;

And evaluate progress in a mentoring relationship.

Exploring effective ways that mentors initially join and plan for professional learning relationships with early childhood teachers is the focus of this chapter. Increasing responsiveness to and awareness of the whole teacher (as mentee, or protégé) through an examination of concepts that influence cultural competence and sustain or weaken engagement in learning is embedded in this discussion. The ideas are applied as foundational strategies associated with general mentoring guidance or specific coaching skills to support reflective relationship-based practices.

How you are is as important as what you do. Jere Pawl & Maria St. John, discussing working with young children and their families (1998). In learning and teaching, manner, deportment, and tone are just as important, if not more important, than what is said. Unaisi Nabobo-Baba & Lavinia Tiko, discussing Fijian cultural conceptions of mentoring, 2009.

An emphasis on mentoring for professional development includes the assumption that teachers learn best in a positive climate based on trust and respect. Teachers joining with a professional guide need a mentor who empathically connects to their concerns and experiences. This concept asserts that the power or the failure of a professional-development relationship lies first in the way of being of the professional working with an early childhood teacher (Johnson & Brinamen, 2006). A focus on relationships also implies that mentoring requires the involvement of a consistent, predictable adult who understands a process for individualizing learning by asking questions, listening, and remaining emotionally present. In Promoting First Relationships, the authors (Kelly, Zuckerman, Sandoval, & Buehlman, 2003, p. 22) refer to supporting the learning of caregivers or families of young children as first requiring “forming mutuality” (p. 22). Johnson and Brinamen (2006) also identify mutuality of endeavor as one of the keys to an effective consultative stance. Current professional definitions (NAEYC & NACCRRA, 2011) would add mentoring and coaching stances or dispositions as needing the same qualities. Wenger applies the concept of mutuality to the establishment of mutuality of engagement, or committing to participate together, to make sense of ideas and experiences (Wenger, 1998, p. 137).

A mentor must remember that an initial focus on building a relationship for learning is much more than establishing a comfortable climate. It is the dynamic interaction of teachers—needing to feel safe to think out loud and plan for gathering information about their questions—with a professional or group, designed to both support and challenge their thinking. Connecting a teacher to others who have an ongoing and collective commitment to learning may result in fostering collaboration for a learning community, or a community of practice (Wenger, 1998), within a program or between teachers from different programs in one community (Elliott, Farris, Alvarado, Peters, Surr, Genser, & Chin, 2000, p. 12). A powerful outcome of relationship-based mentoring is seen when an individual teacher’s feeling of isolation is replaced with a new willingness to join a community of practice or with “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.” (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 4).

It is ironic that, after a mentor successfully builds trust and safety, the next step is to encourage a teacher to wrestle with dilemmas of practice, which often cause feelings of unease, disequilibrium, or confusion. Comparing the differences between beliefs and practices, values and reality, and suggested practices may stimulate a teacher’s wondering about what might be possible. It is these gaps and discrepancies associated with a teacher’s values, beliefs, approaches, and thinking that may be motivators for change (Woolfolk Hoy, Hoy, & Davis, 2009). However, if the gaps between the everyday practices and the new strategies being explored are too great, a teacher may dismiss any new ideas as not fitting his or her situation (Coburn, 2001). Overwhelming a teacher with new information does not tend to produce change, because time is needed to develop, absorb, and apply new knowledge to practice (Garet, Porter, Andrew, & Desimone, 2001; Guskey, 2002). The more common experience reported by preschool teachers is one of being isolated in classrooms or in roles with too little collaboration with others and little or no support for reflecting on practices (Barnett, Epstein, Friedman, Sansanelli, & Hustedt, 2009). Reversing the isolation of experienced teachers through a cycle of observation, practice, reflection, and expert feedback about their own practices has been shown to lead to more supportive teaching interactions (Pianta, Mashburn, Downer, Hamre, & Justice, 2008) and the implementation of effective curricula (Strickland & Riley-Ayers, 2007).

Reflection Make a list of ways in which partnering with another adult for the purpose of increasing and applying professional skills and knowledge is different from simply building a friendship with a colleague. Compare your list with strategies in Table 2.1 that either weaken or promote learning partnerships.

Table 2.1 Conditions for Learning Partnerships

Conditions for Learning A mentor creates conditions for learning partnerships with teachers when he or she	Effective Strategies Examples of effective mentor professional relationship-building strategies	Disruptive Strategies Examples of mentor choices that may weaken professional learning relationships
Builds trust and demonstrates respect	Is fully attentive and a good listener; is willing to focus on emergent issues	Switches the subject abruptly to a prearranged topic without responding to an emergent dilemma
Maintains openness and flexibility	flexibility Encourages practice when needed or tries out new strategies relating to interests	interests Reduces support before teacher is comfortable with new skills or knowledge
Shows interest in goals, points of view, and interests of teacher	Shifts perspective or plans in order to better match interests of teacher	Uses technical language that intimidates a teacher into silence
Has clear professional boundaries	Reviews and negotiates a learning agreement; arrives at an arranged time and is organized and prepared	Has no clear agreement on roles and expectations for mentor or teacher meetings
Focuses on learning needs	meetings Uses mentoring strategies that are preferred by the teacher	Does not individualize or differentiate mentoring strategies to fit teacher’s preferences
Celebrates reaching short-term goals	Notices progress toward a larger goal and makes connections	Suggests dropping a goal for one that is “easier,” expresses frustration, or unfavorably compares the teacher with others who have reached goals faster