Mentoring for quality improvement: a case study of a mentor teacher in the reform process.

Abstract. As qualified teachers are central to children receiving a high-quality preschool education, many policy initiatives aimed at improving program quality are thwarted when insufficient attention is paid to the professional development of the workforce. One response to this issue has been to create teacher leadership roles so that teachers mentor colleagues through the process of translating policies into practices. This article reports on a case study of one such mentor teacher involved in helping child care teachers implement the High/Scope curriculum. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, the mentor teacher was found to engage in 14 different activities within the categories of technical assistance, professional development, leadership, district-related work, and other. Despite utilizing skills identified as central to effective mentoring and teacher learning, the mentor teacher found it difficult to assist some teachers because of a lack of expertise, inappropriate training, and multiple job demands. This article argues that these issues, while not new, take on a different meaning when considered in relation to the aims of mentoring roles in early childhood policy efforts when, as often occurs, classroom teachers have more experience than their mentors.

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Catalyzed by the research evidence that a high-quality early education can ameliorate the effects of disadvantage and produce ongoing benefits for children and society as a whole (Barnett, 1998), preschool is one of the fastest growing sectors of public education. Central to any efforts to improve the education young children receive in their local communities is a qualified teaching workforce (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001). An extensive research base demonstrates that teachers with higher levels of education and specialized training are more likely to be sensitive to their students, facilitate their language and cognitive development, and work with children in developmentally appropriate ways (Dwyer, Chait, & McKee, 2000; Helburn, 1995; Whitebook, 2003). Despite the research evidence, however, policymakers intent on implementing quality preschool programs face several barriers to recruiting and retaining qualified teachers.

The first of these barriers is the lack of qualifications held by many early childhood teachers already in the workforce. Although kindergarten teachers are required to have a minimum of a bachelor's degree (Kaye, 2001), most preschool teachers have little more than a high school diploma and are not required to have much training in early childhood education (Azer, LeMoine, Morgan, Clifford, & Crawford, 2002). Compounding this issue further are the inadequate wages and conditions that characterize the work of teaching young children. Minimal salaries are commonplace and the field has a "higher concentration of poverty-level jobs than almost any other occupation in the United States" (Laverty, Siepak, Burton, Whitebook, & Bellm, 2002, p. 3). These inadequate conditions are manifested in a staff turnover that averages around one-third each year (Saluja, Early, & Clifford, 2002), and that offers few incentives for teachers to enter the profession, let alone undertake professional development opportunities. Thus, policymakers intent on ensuring that all children benefit from a quality early educational experience face a unique set of challenges. Without qualified teachers with specialized knowledge and expertise in early education, it is not possible to ensure that quality will be created or maintained at the classroom level; however, getting qualified teachers to enter and remain in the field is almost impossible because of the poor working conditions.

One response to these challenges has been the creation of mentoring programs and the leadership role of mentor or master teacher. Mentors are exemplary teachers who use their extensive experience and understandings of early childhood education to facilitate the professional development of less experienced and skilled peers (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996). Mentor teachers are being used to address three policy-related problems concerning the creation of a qualified and knowledgeable workforce (Little, 1990). First, pairing competent educators with novice teachers provides a means of inducting and training new members to the profession. Second, the creation of an explicit leadership role in what is typically a fairly flat career structure provides an incentive for more experienced teachers to maintain their commitment to the field. Third, mentors--in the form of local curriculum specialists or staff developers--assist with the implementation of district and school improvement initiatives. As change agents, these mentor teachers provide the practical expertise or technical assistance to classroom teachers that help them to implement new ideas in their daily practices.

While mentoring programs for new or novice teachers have been commonplace in early childhood education since the 1980s (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996), the model of mentor as change agent within larger instructional reform efforts is a relatively new one. This article reports the findings of a case study of one such mentor teacher with the aim of shedding light on this leadership role and its potential to improve program quality through teacher development. To set the scene, the literature on this kind of reentering work is first reviewed.

Mentoring and Educational Reform Efforts

Most of the research base on reentering in early childhood examines this leadership work as an aspect of the student teaching experience in preservice teacher preparation programs or as an induction program for beginning teachers (e.g., Clifford, 1999; Martin & Trueax, 1997). In these studies, the mentoring relationship is usually conceptualized as a highly personal one in which the mentor works with a small group of proteges over time, helping them to make sense of, and respond to, some of the complexities of classroom work encountered in the first year or so of teaching. Thus, while mentors are viewed as instructional leaders, this leadership is often organized as part of their daily work responsibilities and in response to the particular needs of those being mentored. As a consequence, aside from the documented benefits of this role, such as new learning, self-esteem, and motivation to stay in the classroom (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996), mentors also face the challenge of finding enough time to balance their responsibilities as leaders with those of the classroom (Clifford, 1999).

In contrast, mentor teachers working within specific early childhood reform initiatives are often employed outside of the programs in which they work. While the intent of this reentering work is still the sharing of pedagogical expertise, the mentor usually has a particular curriculum and teaching focus and works with a caseload of teachers, trying to help them reframe their practices in response to a particular policy initiative. In addition, because of the variation in qualifications and the multiple contexts in which preschool education takes place (e.g., Head Start, for-profit child care, etc.), the teachers to be supported will potentially have a wide range of professional experience and knowledge, and there may be little similarity in the ways they approach their work. The differing circumstances structuring this kind of mentoring work, therefore, may incite additional challenges to those reported by mentors responsible for inducting new members to the profession. While there is not a lot of research available, a small number of researchers using qualitative methods (Rust & Friedus, 2001; Silin & Schwartz, 2003) have begun to shed some light on the complexities of these mentoring roles in early childhood contexts.

In their case study of staff developers in Project New Beginnings, Silin and Schwartz (2003) observed these individuals take on three distinct roles of strategist, translator, and advocate as they worked in an urban public school district. As strategists, the staff developers worked with teachers to negotiate the tensions between new district initiatives and their efforts to become more learner-centered in practice. In the role of translator, staff developers clarified the differing district policies for teachers. As advocates, the staff developers moved beyond the classroom door to talk with administrators on behalf of teachers. Others have identified the additional roles of nurturer, teacher, learner, professional role model, coach, and curriculum developer (Rust & Friedus, 2001). In addition to the multiple functions that make up the role of mentor teachers in reform efforts, the change facilitators in a study by Rust, Ely, Krasnow, and Miller (2001) elaborate on the ambiguous nature of their work in Head Start classrooms. As one facilitator put it, "You're not a staff developer. You're not a teacher. You're not a supervisor. It's a very anomalous position" (p. 21). For Silin and Schwartz (2003), this role ambiguity may be related to the challenge of negotiating a vision for instructional reform in response to the local conditions that vary between classrooms and across educational settings.

Further insights are offered from the K12 educational sector, where teacher leadership roles have been commonplace for some time (Miles, Saxl, & Lieberman, 1988; Silva, Gimbert, & Nolan, 2000; Smylie, 1992). Comparisons of the perspectives of classroom teachers and their mentors have found conflicting understandings of the purpose and role of mentors. While teacher leaders may define their function as one of help-giving, facilitation, and knowledge provision, classroom teachers identify more benefits of mentor teacher roles for the school and district than they do for themselves (Smylie & Denny, 1990). According to Smylie (1992), teacher leadership roles are often in contradiction to the values of privacy, equality, and autonomy that structure the work of teaching; therefore, even if mentors are well-regarded, teachers will not always welcome or seek their input.

In summary, therefore, the available evidence on mentor teachers involved in early childhood policy-related work is a small set of descriptive studies that attest to their multifaceted role, and their complicated positioning as both outsider and insider within reform initiatives. If policies aimed at quality improvement through teacher development are to have their intended effect, then much more empirical knowledge is needed about this form of mentoring. In particular, questions as to the kinds of mentoring roles and activities that facilitate improved teaching practices, and the way this mentoring work should be structured and organized, need to be addressed. This study sought to extend the research base in these ways through an in-depth examination of one mentor teacher and the strategies she used to encourage preschool teachers to improve their practices. Guiding the investigation were the following research questions: What activities constitute the work of a mentor teacher? What strategies did the mentor teacher use in an effort to facilitate quality improvement? What personal and organizational factors interplayed with the way this mentor teacher performed her work?

Background to the Study

The findings reported in this article are part of a larger study that examined the implementation of court-ordered preschool in two low-income school districts in New Jersey. This evaluation study employed qualitative and quantitative procedures across the course of three years to document the various relationships and policies that facilitated the implementation of district preschool plans. As the focus of the larger study was on the policies that contributed to school districts' implementing universal preschool programs, the research team became interested in the work of the mentor teachers--known in this policy initiative as master teachers--and how their role facilitated quality improvement efforts at the classroom level.

The position of an early childhood master teacher was a direct outcome of the Abbott v. Burke (1998) New Jersey Supreme Court decision that required the state's 30 poorest school districts to implement high-quality preschool programs for all eligible 3- and 4-year-old children. High-quality programs were defined as those having a class size of no more than 15 students with a certified teacher and teacher assistant in each class; a developmentally appropriate curriculum, linked to the state's core curriculum content standards; and the provision of adequate facilities, special education, bilingual education, transportation, health, and other services as needed. As a means of transitioning this policy into practice, districts were allowed to collaborate with existing community-based programs (e.g., child care, Head Start, etc.), and the leadership position of "master teacher" was created to facilitate quality improvement in these programs.

According to the job description of the New Jersey Department of Education (1999), master teachers' responsibilities were to include coordinating and articulating with the district the professional development for child care teachers, in addition to directly reentering and providing resources and support to these teachers. The role of the master teachers, therefore, was envisioned as the provision of classroom-based training and other assistance that might help preschool teachers to alter and improve the quality of their curriculum and teaching practices.

To gain an in-depth understanding of how master teachers approached their work, two distinct sources of data were collected: 1) a series of telephone interviews that used a retrospective time diary method with 17 master teachers across the state (see Ryan, Hornbeck, & Frede, 2004) and 2) case studies of three master teachers. A case study of one of these master teachers who participated in both research projects constitutes the focus of this article.

Method

The research project described here began in the second year of data collection in the larger evaluation project. As the first author had already been in the two districts for 12 months, the selection of the master teacher for this study was made purposefully, based on her familiarity with the master teachers working in each district, as well as on several criteria. The first criterion was that the master teacher had to be involved in reentering work and classroom-based assistance activities, rather than other administrative duties, on a regular basis. In one district, for example, some of the master teachers were given the job of training only so that they primarily provided formal workshops for early childhood teachers rather than working in classrooms. As the intent of the study was to gain a sense of the strategies employed by the master teacher to mentor change, a second criterion was that the individual selected was willing and able to think out loud and explain his/her actions. A third criterion was the perceived competence of the master teacher. The intent was to choose someone who was viewed to be performing his/ her work as a mentor of change to a high standard. To fulfill these latter two criteria, the selection of the case also was made in consultation with the early childhood supervisor of the district.

The educator chosen for the study, to be known here as Carolyn, was in her second year as a master teacher in the district. In keeping with the job description, Carolyn was a certified special education and early childhood specialist who had worked for two years in special education settings before taking up the position of master teacher. While she had not worked directly in preschool settings, Carolyn reported having some experience in training adults because of her work as an early intervention specialist for a consulting firm.

Data Collection Procedures

As the aim of a case study is to build an in-depth description of a bounded system across time (Yin, 2002), a combination of quantitative and qualitative procedures were employed to study this master teacher in action. Across the course of 12 months, data was collected using a retrospective time diary, observations of the master teacher at work, informal interviews, as well as document analysis. Each of these methods is described next.

Time Diary. To gain a sense of the kinds of activities the master teacher was involved in during a typical day, and therefore how her work time was allocated, the retrospective time diary method was used (Ver Ploeg et al., 2000). This method involves asking respondents over the telephone to account for all of their activities over a 24-hour period in a structured interview. The retrospective time diary method is one of the most common measures of time use available and has been found to be a viable measure of individual time allocation (Barnett & Boyce, 1995; Juster, 1985). Validity and reliability studies show that the time use reported in retrospective time diaries is not overly inflated or underreported, and that this method produces "highly replicable and reliable results" (Robinson, 1985, p. 59) as compared to other measures, such as leave-behind diaries and the use of observational procedures.

This interview, conducted by the second author, asked the master teacher to respond to a series of open-ended questions about her activities over the previous 24 hours. As the interviews were conducted in the evening, the interviewer began by asking the master teacher, "Let's begin with 24 hours ago; were you doing any work-related activities?" If not, the interviewer then asked the participant to recall the time that she began work the previous day. The interviewer then asked the master teacher what she did at the time she began work for the day and when this activity ended. These responses (including the segment of time when the master teacher was not working) were manually recorded verbatim on a record sheet. To gain more specific information about how the time was being used in each particular work activity, a number of probes were also employed to elicit information about the nature of the task, who else was involved, where the work took place, and if any other activity was occurring at the same time. If the master teacher reported doing two activities simultaneously (i.e., having a meeting during lunch), the interviewer recorded the amount of time spent on each task. Once the work task allocated to the first time period had been accounted for, the same questions were asked again for the next task and time block by asking the interviewee, "What did you do next?" These time blocks were not predetermined according to a set period, such as every 30 minutes, but corresponded to how the individual reported using his/her time (e.g., 40 minutes meeting with a teacher, 15 minutes for paperwork, etc). At the conclusion of the interview, the total work time was calculated and the length of time spent on each activity was noted in minutes.

Observations. Observations were conducted once a month across the 2000-2001 school year. As a non-participant observer, the second author recorded field jottings in a notebook (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) of the master teacher's talk and actions during various activities, such as visits to child care centers, district meetings, planning sessions, and the like. These jottings were then expanded into field notes and recreated as a computer file at the end of the day by the second author.

Interviews. To supplement observations of the master teacher, the observer also engaged in informal interviews with her, usually before and after each distinct activity. In line with the aims of teacher cognition research (Clarke & Peterson, 1986), the main focus of these interviews was to ascertain the master teacher's reasoning for the differing actions she took and the frames of reference she used to support her actions. All conversations with the master teacher were audiotaped (with her permission) and transcribed verbatim. These transcripts were then integrated with the field notes for each day of observation. Field notes, therefore, consisted of a dated and timed catalogue of the day's events, followed by a description of each activity. Inserted between each of these described activities was the transcribed conversation between Carolyn and the observer.

In addition to these conversations, a semi-structured interview that was conducted in the first year of the evaluation study with the district's three master teachers was reexamined for Carolyn's responses to questions about her professional background and training, and about her perceptions of her work role.

Document Collection. A variety of documents were collected while conducting field work, including the job description for master teachers produced by the state department of education, information packets provided to teachers in the district, written resources created by Carolyn and given to teachers in various training sessions and on her visits to centers, and meeting notes. These documents provided written exemplars of Carolyn' strategies as well as the educational and organizational contexts in which she worked.

Data Analysis

The data record used to construct the case study was analyzed in three phases, each of which was guided by the research questions. In the first phase, the compiled data record was examined for the kinds of activities that constituted the work of the master teacher. This analysis began with the coding scheme previously developed to evaluate the time diaries of the larger group of master teachers, and it involved the second author reading through the log and coding for type of activity.

From this analysis, a subsequent coding scheme was developed that delineated activity and, depending on the activity, the setting for this function. For example, paperwork tasks were divided into two different activity codes: one that signified paperwork for the district and the other, paperwork conducted in relation to centers or teachers. To ensure reliability, a second member of the research team used the coding scheme blindly on a sub-sample of the time diary interviews to 80 percent agreement. Where disagreement occurred, both researchers examined the activity to determine the best descriptor or code.

The final coding scheme consisted of 18 possible activities that were then collapsed into five major categories: technical assistance, professional development, district-related work, leadership activities, and other (see Table 1). The total number of minutes spent on each activity was calculated as a percentage of the day's work time for each individual master teacher. As master teachers varied in length of work day, the mean time allocated to each activity was then weighted in relation to the number of master teachers reporting the activity. From this analysis, therefore, we had a typology of activities that applied to a larger group of master teachers, as well as an analysis of the activities engaged in by Carolyn in her time diary and the percentage of time she spent on these activities during a typical work day.

To validate whether the activities reported in the time diary were an accurate account of the master teacher's work time, the coding scheme was used to examine the qualitative data record, which comprised field notes, documents, and verbatim conversations with the master teacher. Chunks of texts pertaining to these differing activities were then collated together, and the number of times the mentor teacher participated in these activities over the year was recorded. The results showed that the coding scheme accurately portrayed the activities associated with being a master teacher.

The second phase of analysis involved reexamining the qualitative data record to describe the activities engaged in by Carolyn that were concerned with mentoring teachers. Here, we were concerned primarily with the activities within the categories of technical assistance and professional development, as these were the kinds of functions outlined in the job description that reflected the intent of the policy. Using the process of categorical aggregation outlined by Stake (1995), the chunked excerpts of text related to specific activities were examined for patterns of practice, and then detailed descriptions of these patterns were constructed.

Guided by the literature, which says that effective mentoring requires intensive periods of time and a supportive organizational structure (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996), the third phase of analysis entailed examining excerpts of text in which the master teacher was not involved in mentoring work. Here we examined the complete data record, as well as the activity categories of district-related work, leadership, and miscellaneous, to make sense of the responsibilities and contexts that interplayed with Carolyn's mentoring functions.

From these three stages, a case study was constructed of the master teacher's work across the school year, and was sent to her to ensure that our findings were credible. As a further means of demonstrating the validity of the findings to the reader, the account that follows includes excerpts from the data record itself. This evidence trail provides insight into the logic underpinning our interpretations.

Findings

Resonating with other studies of teacher leaders (Rust et al., 2001; Silin & Schwartz, 2003) in early childhood reform efforts, the findings of this study illuminate the complicated and multifaceted aspects of this kind of mentoring work.

What Activities Comprised the Work of the Mentor Teacher?

Across both the time diary and the qualitative data record, being a master teacher meant that Carolyn's time and attention were divided among a number of activities. The following overview of one day's events, excerpted from the field notes, provides a sense of the diversity of functions associated with this role.

Our first stop at 9:00 a.m. is the Aurora Learning Center. It is a beautiful, clean center. Carolyn greets the staff warmly in the first classroom and makes notes about things going on. She notices that the room arrangement has changed and speaks briefly with the staff in the room after completing her observation. At 10:00 a.m., we move into another room where there is a new co-teacher. Carolyn jots down her impressions over the course of the next hour. She is concerned about how much direction the teacher is giving children but wants to give her a chance to learn the curriculum before offering any critique. Carolyn makes dates with both the new teacher and the director to come to the model program to observe a class there. After making this arrangement, we take a break for lunch. At 1:00 p.m., Carolyn has a meeting scheduled with a teacher at the Family Child Care Center. We meet with the teacher while the children are taking a nap. Carolyn and the teacher discuss curriculum webbing and Carolyn demonstrates this procedure. We finish with the teacher at 2:15 p.m. and head back to the office. At 3:15 p.m., Carolyn, along with the other master teachers and the preschool teachers in the public school preschool program, attends a meeting led by the Early Childhood Supervisor. The focus of this meeting is to review a workshop on literacy and make a newsletter to send out to all community programs with guidelines and tips about how to make a literacy-rich classroom.

The time diary revealed that Carolyn participated in 10 different activities over a workday of 7 hours and 20 minutes that began at 8:45 a.m. and concluded at 4:05 p.m. As Table 2 indicates, the largest amount of Carolyn's time (115 minutes) was spent meeting with teachers about the High/Scope curriculum, accounting for 26 percent of her workday. The paperwork related to these visits to centers to meet with teachers required Carolyn to allocate 65 minutes, or 15 percent of her workday. Completing policy-related work, which included meeting with other master teachers about collaborating with the regional Head Start program took another 17 percent of Carolyn's time, or 75 minutes. The remainder of Carolyn's time was spread fairly evenly across 10 different activities: including paperwork for the district, phone calls, driving, building rapport, supporting one of her colleagues, breaks, and miscellaneous tasks such as taking a few minutes to chat with administrative personnel.

When the observational data record was examined using the same activity codes, it was found that in addition to the 10 activities reported by Carolyn in her time diary, she also engaged in four other tasks (see Table 3). Throughout the seven days, we observed Carolyn across the school year, she was involved in professional development activities on four occasions, observed in classrooms five times, and participated in leadership training by observing the High/Scope trainer on visits to classrooms. As the observations of Carolyn usually involved accompanying her on visits to preschool centers, we did not observe her participating in much administrative work, such as making phone calls and completing paperwork for the district. Similarly, we did not see Carolyn engage in any activities that could be categorized as miscellaneous.

What Strategies Did the Master Teacher Use To Facilitate Quality Improvement?

As the member of a team of three master teachers, Carolyn was assigned five community-based preschool centers and 20 teachers for whom she had primary responsibility to help adopt and implement the High/Scope curriculum. To enact her job as a mentor of change with these teachers, Carolyn employed a range of technical assistance strategies, including rapport building, classroom observations, and meetings with teachers, as well as professional development activities.

Providing Technical Assistance

Rapport Building. Mentoring is an activity that is based on a personal relationship that requires some building of trust and Affinity between mentor and mentee. In her first year on the job, Carolyn had found it difficult to build this kind of relationship with many teachers, as she explains: Every day I went out and said to them in one form or another, "I'm here to help you." I understand that you are mandated to learn this curriculum and to implement it, but how can I be a resource to you? How can I mentor you? How can I help you to understand this better?" But you have to get over such a feeling from them, a defensiveness that "they are coming in to judge me."

Given this experience, Carolyn began her second year as a master teacher with the aim of sharing the change process with teachers. In her words, "I want them to think more about what they are doing and come to different realizations, instead of me being there always saying, "I saw this, that, and the other. Why don't you try this?"

To achieve this aim, Carolyn spent time building, and in some cases rebuilding, her relationships with preschool teachers. This rapport building was done in two ways. The first way was more informal and involved casual interchanges with child care staff in which High/Scope and other district initiatives were not the focus of the interaction. A social person, Carolyn would often drop by centers, even if she had not arranged to visit, in order to say "hi." On one occasion, for example, Carolyn brought one center a batch of cookies she had baked the night before. A second and much more formal way that Carolyn built rapport with preschool staff was to plan her time so that wherever possible, she was present and available to teaching staff in every one of her designated centers on a regular basis. Carolyn explains her rationale behind this planning:

I've set something up for the next three weeks with [center's name] so I'll feel like I've been there.... A week or two will go by where I am doing everything at once with somebody and I feel like I'm giving them a lot of time. But I do think that I do that with each center so that at least throughout the month everybody gets a concentrated amount of time.

Rather than wanting to be seen as a supervisor, Carolyn described her approach with teachers as "polite and social." During her exchanges with teachers and other center staff, Carolyn always presented herself as a friendly colleague, a resource person who wanted to help. For example, when a teacher on one of our observations mentioned that she was not sure how she was supposed to afford college classes, Carolyn immediately responded with the offer to obtain scholarship information. Our field notes also describe the positive way in which Carolyn's presence was received by care staff. For example, when Carolyn accompanied a teacher whom she usually did not work with on a visit to one program, the teacher said, "We miss seeing you, Carolyn."

Classroom Observation. Establishing personal relationships with classroom teachers and other center staff was only a beginning step in the process of mentoring change with teachers. Most of Carolyn's mentoring work was conducted during her extended visits to classrooms, where she worked with teachers to help them implement the High/Scope curriculum and improve the quality of their interactions with children.

To provide relevant technical assistance, Carolyn first had to know how each individual teacher approached her work, identify the areas that needed to be changed to be in line with district policy, and then develop strategies that would help teachers to alter their daily practices. Therefore, a large part of Carolyn's work in preschool classrooms began with her observing teachers in action through the use of the Preschool Quality Assessment Instrument (PQA). Produced by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, the PQA is an evaluation instrument that uses a Likert scale and anecdotal notes to rate the learning environment, daily routine, and adult-child interactions within a particular classroom.

In keeping with her aim of partnering with teachers in the change process, Carolyn shared the PQA with teachers at the beginning of the school year and whenever new teachers were employed in the district. This familiarization process involved providing teachers with a copy of the instrument and talking with them about how it was to be used and what the district would be looking for when using the instrument. Carolyn explains her rationale for this familiarization process in relation to beginning her mentoring work with a new teacher: "Just to give Miss Luz a fair chance, I want to go over the PQA packet with her just so that she's clear on where I'm coming from, what's expected of her."

Once this familiarization process had been completed, Carolyn usually began her visits by saying "hi" to the staff and then situating herself in a part of the classroom, observing and making notes on the PQA. These observations enabled Carolyn to make a general assessment of all aspects of a teacher's practice. This information was then used to individualize the technical assistance she provided to each teacher. In the following excerpt from our field notes, Carolyn reflects on her PQA jottings about a classroom teacher whom she has just observed teaching small group and planning time.

It's been a month and a half since I've been in there. Her labels were wonderful, good variety, everything was labeled.... The main thing I thought with her room today was she's got the schedule down, transitions, and I thought that was great to have such consistency with all the change and her being so new. Small group, she's still having a lot of trouble with. I guess with the whole idea and concept of it all. So that part doesn't seem to be tying together with her. Even though she has warm interactions with the children there is still that borderline, you know, she bends down to talk to them, and she starts out with problem solving but she doesn't follow through and she's real quick to jump in and solve the problem for the kids. So I am going to work with her this afternoon on just interactions, problem solving in general.

By using observational methods to diagnose changes taking place in the practices of her caseload of teachers, Carolyn was able to make informed decisions about how to help teachers to reshape their practices in line with the district policy (i.e., that they implement the High/Scope curriculum).

Meetings With Teachers. In order to offer teachers some assistance that might lead to change in their curriculum and teaching practices, Carolyn usually followed up her visits to centers with regularly scheduled meetings with each of the classroom teachers she was working with. These meetings tended to take two different forms.

The first type of meeting was used for the purposes of communicating Carolyn's evaluations of teachers' efforts to implement the High/Scope curriculum, and for Carolyn to offer her insights on ways to address particular pedagogical or curricular issues that were not in keeping with the intent of the curriculum. Always conscious of the need to maintain a positive relationship with teachers--and with the aim of sharing authority for the change process with them--Carolyn tended to weave this advice-giving into a conversation with teachers, taking care to structure the content of her advice, as she explains:

You can't perseverate [sic] on small things when there are larger things you have to deal with ... and you don't want to say stuff about everything because then you are not going to get anywhere. They are just going to clam up and get defensive. And then it's overwhelming for them.

One way Carolyn framed the conversation around these larger issues was to focus on one aspect of the curriculum. In the following excerpt from field notes, taken halfway through the year after she visited a center where a teacher had been experimenting with the physical arrangement of her classroom, Carolyn explains how she gave advice to this teacher:

Yasmine has a very hard time with change. She's a new teacher in the room and she has done what she feels are necessary new changes. So I'll just go in and say, "I noticed that all the kids are at those two tables together and it has the potential to be really loud and they seemed a little cramped; does that bother you when you are teaching? Where do you do your small groups?" I kind of throw these ideas out to her, like "how about this?" I try to make suggestions rather than go in and say "do this."

As much as Carolyn wanted the teachers to collaborate in the change process, however, she was also aware that for some teachers, this was too high an expectation. Carolyn elaborates on this problem: "We have to do a lot of teaching--what are the characteristics of preschoolers, what are developmental levels, what is developmentally appropriate? Then if someone doesn't have these skills, you have to kind of say, 'What can we do?'" In response to this question, a second kind of meeting with teachers involved Carolyn modeling or demonstrating visually the actions and concepts she was trying to explain.

On a few occasions, Carolyn would actually use herself as the model to show teachers how she would approach a particular strategy, as in the following example:

Carolyn meets with Teresa while the children in her class nap. Carolyn asks Teresa how she is doing with webbing her lesson plans. Teresa says she isn't doing it very well Carolyn picks a topic of interest and webs out a lesson plan with Teresa for approximately half an hour. Carolyn then asks Teresa how she is doing with the PQA. Teresa doesn't have her PQA with her and thinks she may have lost it. Carolyn uses her PQA form to discuss some of the areas with Teresa. Teresa answers that she is doing about the same in all areas.

Because of the pressures of time on Carolyn's schedule, more frequently this modeling took the form of accompanying teachers in her caseload to observe other colleagues within the district considered to be proficient in implementing the High/ Scope curriculum. For example, the district had set up what it considered to be "model" program, which was also the only public school preschool program, ant Carolyn would often accompany teachers on an observational visit to one of this program's classrooms. As Carolyn says, "What I usually do when people come in [to the classroom at the model program] is I sit there with them and point out things and refer [them] back to their room." On one of these visits that we observed, Carolyn did exactly this, sitting alongside one of the preschool teachers while she observed her actions for two and a half hours. After this, Carolyn and the teacher met in a separate room to discuss the morning's activities, particularly the teacher's use of positive discipline techniques.

As the model program was markedly different than the work contexts of teachers in community child care centers, toward the end of the year Carolyn also began to experiment with bringing in visual images from other teachers in these community programs who were enacting exemplary practices. For example, in February Carolyn took a lot of photographs of the art center and how it was arranged in one classroom at a particular center, so that she could show teachers at another preschool center how various materials can be made appealing and accessible to children. On this visit, Carolyn also took a videotape of a particular teacher and how she implemented the daily High/Scope routine. Having these images on hand when she met with teachers meant that Carolyn could provide concrete and realistic examples for teachers to imitate in their own contexts.

Thus, meetings with teachers was a strategy that enabled Carolyn to provide individualized technical assistance to teachers, such as giving feedback, offering advice, and providing models on how to implement aspects of the High/Scope curriculum.

Professional Development Workshops

Most of the teachers with whom Carolyn worked had no formal qualifications in early childhood education, and she learned in her first year that it could not be assumed that they had a well-grounded understanding of developmentally appropriate practice or the High/Scope curriculum. Therefore, offering workshops during nap time--when two or three teachers could participate was an efficient means for Carolyn to follow up and expand on the advice she provided to teachers. During our observations of Carolyn, she gave workshops to small groups of teachers at different sites on a diverse range of topics, including teacher-child interactions, planning/using webbing, reviewing with children, and using praise versus encouragement. In the following example, Carolyn explains how she approaches these workshops within the context of one she is about to facilitate on praise versus encouragement with all the teachers at one of the centers:

We're doing a little group thing. I usually do a typed-up thing for them. I have some sort of handout. I show a video. They need more basics. Last week we did interactions, problem solving at [center's name]. I'm hoping the praise versus encouragement goes well.

These training opportunities enabled teachers to expand on their understandings of the curriculum and their interpretations of how it should be enacted, as Julie, a child care teacher, explains:

She helped me on the small group. It was explained to us over the summer (during a training session), it'd have to be like this one particular way. But then Carolyn came in and she explained you can do many different things. You can have a discussion. It doesn't have to be a hands-on activity.

While this less formal approach to professional development offered teachers the opportunity to learn about the High/Scope curriculum within the realities of their own workday and center contexts, Carolyn's work as a master teacher also involved providing formal training sessions to district staff. Over the course of the year, we observed Carolyn facilitate one of three workshops for teaching assistants. In collaboration with her master teacher colleagues, Donna and Maggie, Carolyn took the participants through a number of activities, as described in the following field notes:

The assistant teacher training took place in the cafeteria of the district preschool program. Everyone looks at the High/Scope wheel of learning (in their packet of materials) and Donna does an active learning activity with the group. First, everyone colors a picture of a balloon with the same color crayon. The second activity is one where real balloons are brought out for participants to explore. Donna asks the participants what differences they noticed between the active and non-active learning groups. She then puts the list of key experiences (curriculum content) on the easel and asks which experiences this exercise touched upon. Maggie takes over and talks about plan, do, and review. They watch a video on planning from High/Scope. The group then watches similar High/Scope videos on work time and review. Carolyn then takes over to talk about how adults can support children's learning during small group time. She has the group break into three smaller groups, and they do a lesson with multicolored beans. Carolyn points out that, similar to the children they have in their own classrooms, each adult had a different experience with the beans. Lastly, the participants fill out a review of the workshop.

We also observed Carolyn's planning for a workshop series centered on enhancing children's language and literacy skills. This planning included developing two sessions, which were to be given between January and March, on the use of felt beards for telling stories. As part of this preparation, Carolyn worked with another teacher to try out the telling of a new story, and compiled a packet of resources for teachers that included a list of materials to make felt board stories and practical guidelines for telling them.

What Personal and Organizational Factors Interplayed With the Way the Mentor Teacher Performed Her Work?

By utilizing this combination of technical assistance and professional development strategies, Carolyn reported to us in February of the school year that at least half of the teachers in the group she worked with were starting to understand the High/Scope curriculum. Yet, Carolyn also stated feeling at a "loss" as to what to do to mentor less responsive teachers to align their practices with the district-endorsed curriculum, As Carolyn put it, "You know, I'm like, how many ways can we teach this? I'm stuck for ideas or methods. I don't have a lot of time to model." Analysis of the data record in regards to the third research question highlights several factors that contributed to Carolyn's ongoing struggle to effect change with some teachers.

The first factor was Carolyn's lack of professional experience. Mentors are typically defined as exemplary or master teachers who use their expertise and professional experience to support less experienced colleagues (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996). As mentioned previously, Carolyn came to the position of master teacher with two years' experience in the field. In her first year after graduating from college, Carolyn worked as a special education teacher with 1st- to 3rd-graders in a learning support classroom. After 12 months, Carolyn left this job to take up the position of early childhood intervention specialist for a consulting firm. This new job focused on evaluating the development of individual students and provided Carolyn with experience as a staff developer, as she was expected to work with teachers to help them differentiate their instruction to meet the needs of young special education students. Carolyn remained in this position for a year before becoming a master teacher in Southampton. Thus, although Carolyn had some experience working with adults, it can be argued that Carolyn did not have an experiential base from which to draw specific examples and ideas to model to teachers how they might adapt this curriculum to their own particular classroom contexts. Given that many of the teachers not only had more teaching experience than Carolyn, but also had been creating and enacting their own curricula for some time as well, it is not surprising that some may have resisted the changes she suggested.

Simply locating the challenges Carolyn faced in her leadership role as a problem of individual experience overlooks the social and organizational contexts that structure mentoring relationships. A second factor that shaped Carolyn's mentoring work was the way she and classroom teachers were trained for their roles in this reform initiative. Carolyn's training to be a mentor teacher involved learning about the High/ Scope curriculum, but because she was net employed as a master teacher until October of the school year, she was not able to receive any formal training in the district's chosen curriculum model until she had been on the job for several months. Moreover, Carolyn's training was identical to that of the classroom teachers and was taken at the same time as some of the teachers in her caseload. Thus, from the outset, Carolyn was not positioned as a teacher leader by the administration, and this positioning had consequences for her interactions with teachers. At one child care center where we observed on a weekly basis, Julie, a preschool teacher, told us, "I don't necessarily think that their (the master teachers) input or critiquing anybody's work is fair because they don't know High/Scope either." Without specialized training to establish the role of the master teachers in the district, it was difficult for Carolyn to act as a mentor to teachers, or as someone who had expertise and leadership skills that teachers might find useful in their efforts to adopt a new curriculum.

In her second year, the district administration made several structural changes to support the work of master teachers, including leadership training in the High/ Scope curriculum for the master teacher team, changing the master teacher position title to early childhood program coordinator (ECPC), and specifying their work as the provision of technical assistance to classroom teachers, rather than to all child care staff. Despite these supports, Carolyn was still expected to perform multiple duties, in addition to consulting with classroom teachers. The second largest amount of time given to a task during the workday reported by Carolyn in her time diary was policy work for the district. Regardless of the new job description for master teachers, almost a third of our observation visits of Carolyn involved district-related work of some kind that included acting as a secretary for specific district meetings, co-facilitating a meeting with the early childhood supervisor, and giving a workshop to teacher assistants. In addition to work for the district, there was the leadership training in High/Scope, and various unexpected activities, such as the time Carolyn had to alter her plans to visit a center so that she could take the place of one of her colleagues at a meeting. While many of these tasks were aimed at improving classroom quality, these duties impinged on the opportunities available for Carolyn to interact with teachers on an individual basis. Carolyn explains:

All of the ECPCs went through [the calendar] and out of the 180 days, when we took out the week we were at NAEYC, our workshop days, our lead teacher training days and tried to figure out how many days we had for technical assistance with the sites and we got 80 days. That's not including office work, sick, or personal days.

Mentoring takes time, and with the multiple demands of the master teacher position, it was difficult for Carolyn to find the time needed to give individualized and intensive assistance to classroom teachers as they attempted to respond to the curriculum initiative.

Discussion

The findings of this case study of one mentor teacher highlight some of the tensions created when "expertise" is defined as qualifications and little recognition is given to the unique circumstances structuring mentoring work in preschool reform initiatives. Whereas in traditional models of mentoring, the mentor is viewed as an authority on pedagogy because of his/her experience, the fact that those being mentored in preschool reform initiatives are not novices means that the person assigned this leadership role does not automatically have credibility with those s/he is supposed to mentor. Although the study reported here is a case study of one mentor teacher and the findings cannot be generalized, it would seem that much more attention must be paid to the training of teacher leaders for this different kind of mentoring role, as well as considering the way their function and the work of classroom teachers are structured in reform efforts.

It is widely recognized that mentors need specialized training to make the shift from child- to adult-educator. The mentoring literature recommends that mentor teachers receive training in such content as adult and professional development theory, the process of change, communication skills, and modeling (Whitebook & Bellm, 1996). However, as this study illustrates, not all mentors in early childhood education will necessarily have the classroom expertise to use as a foundation for learning how to facilitate teacher development. Moreover, research on teacher preparation (Early & Winton, 2001) and recent national policy reports (e.g., Eager to Learn, Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001) argue that many qualified teachers need to update their professional knowledge base, as they have not been adequately prepared to educate young children who have special needs or come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It therefore follows that even if highly experienced and suitably qualified teachers are hired for this kind of mentoring work, at the very least they are going to need to update their professional knowledge base if they are to facilitate the kinds of changes embodied in current preschool reform agendas. Therefore, training for mentor teachers cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, training for this role will need to address the kinds of pedagogical expertise individual mentor teachers may need, in addition to the instructional content required of the reform itself, as well as management of the change process with experienced teachers.

In addition to providing specialized training, it is also necessary that some attention is given to the way the mentor role is structured within a reform initiative. The quantitative and qualitative observations of Carolyn at work show that she was involved in a number of activities for the district that constrained her ability to work directly with child care teachers in their classrooms. In order to capitalize on the potential of teacher leadership roles to facilitate instructional improvement, it is important that policymakers at the local level clearly articulate the focus and intent of this work (Lord & Miller, 2000). The activities that constitute mentoring, such as professional development and technical assistance, need to be clearly defined so that mentors and the classroom teachers they work with have similar interpretations of this leadership role. At the same time, the complex of programs, administration, and institutional histories that characterize the system of preschool requires that policymakers also consider what other supports should be put in place at the district and school/program levels (e.g., assessment systems, supervision, administrator training, etc.) so that teacher leadership roles are one of a system of supports to facilitate reform (Lord & Miller, 2000).

Finally, some consideration also must be given to the intended recipients of mentoring in reform efforts. Studies of K-12 schooling are replete with accounts of the importance of teachers having some ownership of the change process (Datnow & Castellano, 2000; Fullan, 2001). Employing a top-down model of reform, even if it is court-mandated, meant that the mentor teacher in this study was placed in a difficult, and almost impossible, position of getting teachers to buy into, and act on, a proposal that had not even considered the perspectives of those with the most responsibility for making the desired instructional changes a reality. To be sure, it makes sense to control for the wide variation in preschool teacher qualifications and expertise through mandatory curriculum reform and close supervision, particularly when so much public investment is being made. However, given that most preschool teachers currently in the workforce have an average of nine years of experience (Saluja et al., 2002) and have been used to creating their own curriculum, it is highly unlikely that they will consider new policy initiatives if they are not part of the discussion. Therefore, policymakers aiming to improve preschool program quality must structure opportunities for interaction and communication with teachers about intended reform initiatives.

Ideally, opportunities to dialogue about curriculum reform would be planned at the initiation of new policies so that teachers can have some input into, rather than response to, a proposed initiative. Eliciting teacher input would not only enable teachers to feel less mistrustful of top-down initiatives but also would provide administrators and policymakers with valuable information as to some of the constraints they may face during the implementation phase. While we can only speculate, perhaps if the district administration in this study had communicated the functions of the mentoring role to classroom teachers and provided opportunities for teachers and master teachers to talk together about the intended reforms, and about how they might approach these changes, some of the less responsive teachers may have become more motivated to alter their practices.

Given the shortage of qualified teachers, the creation of mentor teacher positions to support preschool teachers to improve their curriculum practices is a thoughtful strategy by policymakers to help shift policy into practice. However, like all well-meaning policies that pay scant attention to the purposes and functions of mentoring vis-a-vis preschool education, it is also highly likely that the success of this leadership role will not be as widespread as intended. While further research is needed that examines the work of mentors in early childhood reform initiatives on a larger scale as well as from the perspectives of those receiving the mentoring, the findings of this study suggest that the field of early childhood education needs to begin creating a culture of instructional leadership within the preschool sector. This task will require a dual focus on both supporting current members of the workforce to build on their experience with formal education, and developing a new group of teacher leaders through some kind of training that recognizes the specialized expertise necessary to facilitate reform. Just as a quality preschool education begins with teachers, so does the ongoing development and improvement of practice. When preschool teachers are valued for their experiential wisdom and have opportunities to shape policy ideas into actual practices, in partnership with mentors who are supported and trained to lead change efforts, then the more likely it is that children will receive the quality early education they deserve.

Table 1
Collapsed Activity Codes

Activity Category                   Activities

Technical Assistance       Rapport building
                           Classroom observation
                           Meetings with teachers
                           Meetings with directors
                           Paperwork for centers
                           Substitute teaching
                           Phone calls

Professional Development   Workshop planning
                           Leading workshops

District-related Work      Policy
                           District paperwork
                           Attending meetings
                           Phone calls for the district

Leadership Activities      Supporting colleagues
                           Attending training

Other                      Driving
                           Breaks
                           Miscellaneous

Table 2
Time Allocated to Different Activities in Time Diary

Activity                   Minutes spent   Percentage of day's work

Technical Assistance
  Rapport building              20                    5
  Meeting with teachers        115                   26
  Paperwork for center          65                   15
  Phone calls                   40                    9

District-related Work
  Policy                        75                   17
  Paperwork for district        10                    2

Leadership Activities
  Supporting colleagues         20                    5

Other
  Driving                       20                    5
  Breaks                        60                   13
  Miscellaneous                 15                    3

Total                          440                   100

Table 3
Activities Across School Year

Activity                   Frequency

Technical Assistance
  Rapport building             1
  Classroom observation        5
  Meeting with teachers        3
  Paperwork for center         3
  Phone calls                 --

Professional Development
  Workshop planning            2
  Leading workshops            2

District-related Work
  Policy                       1
  District paperwork           1

Leadership Activities
  Supporting colleagues        2
  Attending training           1

Other
  Driving                      5
  Breaks                       4
  Miscellaneous               --

Note: This study was funded through a Field-Initiated Studies Grant, award number R305T990324, from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Principal Investigators: Drs. W. S. Barnett, E. Frede, and S. Ryan. We would also like to especially thank Ellen Frede for her methodological expertise and Debra Ackerman for her thoughtful comments on this manuscript.

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Sharon Ryan

Amy Hornbeck

Rutgers University