“I need more help, but everyone expects me to know it”: perceived mentoring needs of contemporary second-year early career teachers

“I need more help, but everyone expects me
to know it”: perceived mentoring needs of
contemporary second-year early career teachers

While there has been theoretical and empirical address of the changing characteristics of teachers as they progress through the early years of their professional careers, much less research has considered how this influences the changing ways in which early career teachers (ECTs) may prefer to experience mentoring during this time. Most ECT mentoring research and in-school mentoring programmes focus on teachers in their first year of the profession, or ECTs in very broad terms. Consequently, the specific mentoring needs and preferred approaches of second-year teachers, in particular, remain unclear. In this paper, we report on data collected via researcher field notes, an online survey, and professional learning activities with 15 mentors and ECTs in their second year of teaching in Queensland, Australia. Using a combination of descriptive statistics and directed qualitative content analysis, findings indicated that second-year teachers identify as having specific mentoring needs that they perceive require a unique combination of directive and co-exploratory mentoring approaches. Critically drawing on theories of teacher development, these findings have implications for schools and systems both in Australia and internationally in the development of policies and programmes for mentoring beyond the first year of teaching.