Exploring Mentoring Models for Building Leadership Capacity Among Languages Educators

Abstract

Guiding national policies and frameworks for the work of teachers promote progressing through levels of practice towards leadership, with a focus on inquiry and teacher change through collaborative professional learning. Languages teachers have been leaders and inquirers in their own classrooms, but a shared concern has been isolation from other colleagues. Being part of a professional association provides a way to counter the isolation and to engage in collaborative inquiry and mentoring communities. The authors report on Australian professional learning projects and research aimed at increasing language teacher agency and leadership capabilities, through networked communities. Models of mentoring, with a focus on reflexive praxis that challenges 'master-apprentice' as the defining mentoring paradigm, have been shown to be effective in providing platforms for ongoing growth and longer-term sustainability in the profession. Such models, arising from a leadership project conducted by the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA) in Australia are offered as approaches to assist with increasing both teacher agency and leadership within the language teacher community.