Mentorship in Early Years Education: Meaning, Function and Challenge——Experiences and Implications from Europe and America

Mentoring is a unique method of teacher induction which requires emotional commitment from both parties. Mentor, the experienced teacher, not only offer suggestions but also provide emotional support to the mentee and the new teacher. This relationship is full of trust and also pushes the mentor to learn, reflect and transform to educational leader. Due to its significance, now mentoring has been widely implemented in a lot of western countries to support early childhood educators. Meanwhile, people also have explored some new models of mentoring including peer-group mentoring, internet-based mentoring and so on. Since, in China, the new early childhood educators also face a lot of challenges including inadequate experience or a lack of social support, it is meaningful to see mentoring as a potential tool, and hence, learning from the western experience might bring people some inspiration.