The mentor handbook: a practical guide for VET teacher training

Mentoring is growing in importance because it enhances the skills, confidence and motivation of teaching professionals as well as raises the quality of teaching and training. Knowledge, skills and attitudes would, [the authors] assume, be imparted through a close relationship between mentor and mentee. From an organisational perspective, this not only means that they are more effective, but that they become more integrated into the institution. Mentoring helps organisations to create an environment that nurtures personal and professional development, supports and retains talented practitioners, increases work satisfaction for both mentors and mentees, develops more commitment and loyalty and becomes a stabilising factor in times of change.

[The authors] seek to share in the handbook not only models of useful practice, but also to capture, through case studies and examples, the skills and attitudes required by mentors to support their trainees through guided immersion into the difficult and challenging business of teaching and training in [vocational education and training] VET. The handbook seeks to provide a general methodology for introducing mentoring as well as approaches to recruiting, supporting and training mentors, systems of mentoring and case studies that exemplify practice.

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