Better approaches to teacher training and professional development, especially for younger ECEC practitioners, are in significant demand due to the increased need for a larger ECEC workforce and the fact that members of this workforce are relatively young. We examined the mentoring process in a kindergarten that has succeeded in developing and retaining its teachers. We used a mentoring framework proposed by K.E. Kram to perform a qualitative analysis of a “reflection note,” a tool by which a mentor and her protege communicate daily. We identified five mentoring functions, “Exposure-and-visibility,” “Protection,” “Challenging assignments,” “Role modeling,” and “Acceptance-and-confirmation,” and found that each function comprised several sub-functions. We also found indications of interactions among the mentoring functions.
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