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Teacher Mentoring Research Alliance

Research Alliance Information Flyer

A research alliance is a group of regional stakeholders who share a specific education concern. The stakeholders agree to work together to learn more about the concern to be able to make sound decisions to improve education outcomes.

The goal of teacher mentoring is to understand the impacts and costs associated with an innovative program in a large, urban school district in Colorado that uses recently retired master teachers to provide on-on-one mentoring to probationary teachers in Title I schools. Initially, Research alliance participants include mentors, mentor program leaders, and teachers in Aurora Public Schools, an urban school district in Colorado. Subsequently, additional districts from other states will be invited.

This alliance proposes to understand the impacts and costs associated with an innovative program in a large, urban school district in Colorado that uses recently retired master teachers to provide one-on-one mentoring to probationary teachers in Title I schools.  Two approaches will be used to examine these impacts, including a randomized control trial (RCT) study to analyze impacts on student achievement and a descriptive analysis to examine the structures, goals, costs and return on investment of the mentoring program as compared with traditional mentoring programs throughout the region.New teachers who participate in the Retired Mentors for New Teachers Program meet with mentors both individually in their classrooms and as a cohort with other new teachers in their schools.  This mix allows support to be tailored to the needs of each teacher and enhances the mentor’s understanding of the particular challenges faced in each classroom while building a model that supports collaboration among new teachers that can be sustained when mentoring is no longer provided. Mentors use a mix of approaches including: co-teaching lessons, classroom observation with feedback, modeling lesson design and delivery, engaging in joint analysis and reflection on data and assessment use, facilitating literature studies, and visits by mentees to classrooms of current master teachers to conduct joint observations and reflections.
Research Questions. The primary research question for this study is : Do elementary students with teachers who participate in the Retired Mentors for New Teachers p rogram perform better on measures of achievement than students with teachers who do not participate? Additional exploratory questions will address:

  1. How does participation affect teacher retention and teacher performance as reflected in administrator evaluations, turnover data, and teacher self-assessments?
    1. How does participation affect school culture, teacher working conditions, teacher attitudes, school leader attitudes, and staff collaboration?
  2. In what ways do implementation and outcomes vary across different types of teachers and schools?
  3. What is the estimated cost and return on investment associated with the mentoring intervention, taking into account factors such as training costs and administrator time investments?  How do these costs differ from traditional district mentoring programs?

Resources

Research Alliance Information Flyer
REL Central Contact
Dale DeCesare
Deputy Associate Director
dmd@apaconsulting.net
720-227-0089