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Solutions to the enduring problem of teacher retention increasingly focus on the need for quality induction programs for beginning teachers. One response of the New South Wales [NSW] Department of Education and Training is to nominate school mentors for all beginning teachers. This article reports on research that investigates the extent to which e-learning networks can support school mentoring to enhance induction programs. Beginning teachers from five NSW schools were monitored as they accessed a mentoring online program provided by the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) over a three-month period.

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Universities in many western nations are experiencing increasing performance measures for academic accountability. This paper maps the pitted pathway that has led Australian universities from mentoring to monitoring and from performance enhancement to performance evaluation, and reviews implications for teaching and learning in higher education. We explore understandings of good mentoring and its effects and examine the social and political climate out of which quality assurance processes have arisen, to articulate the aims and philosophies underpinning these approaches. Drawing on the published literature, we critique processes that have as their main goals monitoring rather than mentoring, and performance evaluation rather than performance enhancement. From our perspectives as teachers in higher education in Australia we raise issues for consideration, including the tensions between practice and promise and the roles of mentors and monitors in promoting growth or compliance. We discuss criteria and models for evaluating mentoring and monitoring.

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