Mentor and new teachers' perceptions of the New Teacher Induction Programme in the North West Province

Abstract

It is widely accepted that new teachers find the transition from the student environment to the professional one demanding and, in many cases, overwhelming. The negative experiences of a considerable number of new teachers may have led to the continual rise of global attrition rates and the sense among them of disgruntlement and isolation. The necessity for addressing the needs of new teachers during their transition into professional teaching has resulted in a variety of induction programmes across the globe. The South African Department of Education collaborated with various key stakeholders to develop the New Teacher Induction Programme (NTIP), which should be rolled out in due time. The main aim of this study was to determine that which the NTIP encompasses and whether its contents would address the needs and challenges of new teachers. Furthermore, the study sought to gain insight into the views of the NTIP held by new and mentor teachers. The framework that underpinned this research is the communities of practice theory. The study was qualitative in nature, as the researcher was intent on understanding the experiences of the participants with regard to the NTIP. The researcher conducted semistructured interviews with four mentor and eight new teachers to collect data that would provide the descriptions necessary to understand the phenomenon. The NTIP was analysed by means of detailed document analysis during which the researcher could effectively determine the contents of the NTIP in its entirety. The document analysis that was conducted alongside a study of the interview data yielded several themes that the researcher identified, discussed and interpreted. The results demonstrated that new teachers were not offered any form of induction. The majority of the new teacher participants were overwhelmed and felt overworked and unable to meet the administrative demands made on them. Mentor teachers were unsure of the support that new teachers needed and seemed to rely on the new teachers to make their needs known. They also found it hard to meet the demands of administrative duties over and above the additional pressure of providing effective mentoring. The results point to a need for a comprehensive but simplified approach to induction in schools, as new teachers experience several challenges and have a considerable number of needs. The workload of teachers is already a burden; therefore, the induction process should not add to it. The researcher addressed the problem by developing a framework in which the Quality Management System and the NTIP have been integrated to ensure that induction takes place in a targeted manner where the new and mentor teacher collaborate to identify challenges that could be addressed by means of various structures already available to them.