‘Join IATEFL Research SIG webinar: 

In this presentation, we describe the development of an innovative approach to mentoring for teacher-research, termed ‘enhancement mentoring’, which we collaboratively developed online during lockdown and have since then been trialling successfully with international groups of mentors and teachers. We characterize this as a 'hopeful' response to Covid-19 because, rather than focusing added attention on problems – with attendant dangers of exacerbating perceptions of difficulty – we were concerned to meet the crisis by supporting teachers to identify and explore further the pedagogic successes they had resourcefully achieved, as a basis for charting pathways forward. Whereas teacher-research tends to begin with a problem or puzzle, we felt that the idea of building research on understanding success – as an outgrowth of an overall 'enhancement approach' (Smith, Padwad & Bullock 2016) – deserved to be developed further, for the sake of teachers' wellbeing. The feasibility and potential value of mentoring and peer-coaching according to this model have been confirmed by the cycles of research and development we have been engaged in. In this webinar, we introduce the practical set of questions we have developed, presenting this as a toolkit to help others – including teacher-researchers themselves, as well as mentors of teacher-research, teacher educators, leaders of teacher associations, and so on – to derive value from and chart a path through and beyond the pandemic experience.’

Registration: https://www.iatefl.org/events/179