Identification of training needs of early career teachers in a mentoring program^*

Abstract

The development of supervision, monitoring, and support actions constitute relevant assistance for early career teachers since there are varied limitations of initial training and difficulties at the beginning of this professional activity. Given this scenario, the Hybrid Mentoring Program (HMP) works as an action to induce teaching in a constructive-collaborative research project that aims to offer early career teachers monitoring and support through a process called mentoring, in which an experienced teacher - with more than ten years of professional experience - accompanies early career teachers with a maximum of five years of experience, assisting them in the development of their professional skills, as well as in the foundation of new competence practices. In this article, we sought to identify and understand the training needs presented by early career teachers participating in a mentoring program. The theoretical frameworks involved early career teachers’ challenges, difficulties, and training needs. The research is qualitative, with interpretative descriptive analysis of digital narratives produced through the dialogue between two early career teachers and their respective mentors via different tools in HMP’s Moodle environment. The categories emerged from the readings of the data set, and the results indicate that the mentoring actions developed in the HMP made it possible to capture how the participants report their difficulties at the beginning of their teaching careers and how these configured as training needs to be worked on by the mentor-beginner dyad.

Keywords:
Training needs; Early career teachers; Mentoring