Using Digital Technologies to Remotely Observe and Mentor Teachers: Lessons From the Field and Policy Implications

Introduction

Mentorship, support, and feedback are critical to the success and career longevity of novice teachers. Quality mentoring and ongoing support of novice teachers directly impacts how long they remain in the teaching field (Gray and Taie, 2015).

Providing feedback to novice teachers, while also providing trusted support, increases the likelihood they will choose to remain in the profession. Many challenges exist that prevent this kind of quality mentoring of novice teachers; one of the primary challenges is time, including time for mentors to observe and provide feedback, time for novice teachers to observe experienced teachers, and time to collaborate.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, the Covid-19 pandemic presented a number of challenges to mentors having a physical presence in classrooms. Thankfully, digital technologies made remote observation and mentorship possible, and it proved to be beneficial for several reasons. Mentors were able to complete more observations and to observe their mentees more frequently than they could have in person. We will describe some important guidelines which help in the successful implementation of remote observations.

In addition to more frequent observations by their mentors, remote observation technologies allowed for enhanced professional growth. Novice teachers were able to record themselves, giving them an opportunity to watch themselves teach and to reflect on their practice on a regular basis. As we show later in the chapter, our preliminary data reveal those who recorded themselves more often earned higher evaluation scores.

Some districts have been hesitant to use digital technologies because of concerns about compliance issues and student privacy. We provide solutions and recommendations to address those concerns.

In short, this chapter will:

• 1.

  Provide background regarding novice teacher induction, including the traditional approach to mentoring, feedback, and support

• 2.

  Define traditional methods for mentorship and support of novice teachers

• 3.

  Identify barriers to in-person mentorship

• 4.

  Describe best practices for remote observation

• 5.

  Provide evidence to support a digital approach to novice teacher induction

• 6.

  Offer solutions and recommendations for compliance concerns

Background

At a time when there is already a teacher shortage, an astonishing 40-50% of teachers leave the profession within 5 years (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; McDonald, et al., 2010) costing the U.S. school system an estimated 2.2 billion dollars (Haynes, 2014) with higher turnover being in high-poverty schools (Simon & Johnson, 2015).

There are many factors that contribute to teacher attrition including low self-efficacy. Bandura (1977) introduced the term self-efficacy as a belief in one’s abilities to accomplish a goal or task. Many researchers have examined how self-efficacy affects teacher performance in the classroom (Richter, et al., 2013; Perera & John, 2020). It has been suggested that novice teachers start their teaching careers with moderate to high self-efficacy in teaching but experience a rapid decrease during their first year in the classroom (Feng et al., 2019). Contributing factors affecting novice teachers’ self-efficacy include school culture, administrative support, limited opportunities for professional development, instructional support, and emotional support (Zee & Koomen, 2016; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007). Those who experience low self-efficacy are prime candidates for job burnout and attrition (Kim & Buric, 2019). On the flip side, teachers that possess high self-efficacy have been shown to have higher levels of work satisfaction and higher student achievement (Perera & John, 2020).