Mentoring or Managing?

Mentoring early career teachers improves retention -- but only when the model is right. This article examines why supervision-based mentoring fails, and what Australian school leaders can do differently.

6/13/20267 min read

Management or Mentoring?

Rethinking Mentoring for Early Career Teachers

Across Australia, 20 per cent of the teacher workforce is in what is called the Early Career (ECT) or Graduate Stage of their professional life (AITSL, 2025). This phase is highly influential in a teacher's decision to stay in the career (Sullivan & Morrison, 2014). With approximately half indicating they will leave the profession within their first five years, identifying the causes of attrition and enacting the conditions that support professional growth and identity is no longer optional.

There is broad consensus that mentoring supports teacher retention and professional development. The main concerns cited by teachers who leave the profession -- workload, classroom management, the burden of non-teaching tasks, and navigating professional identity within institutional culture (Nguyen & Barbieri, 2025; Maras et al., 2025). These are precisely the areas a well-designed mentoring relationship is positioned to address. Added to this is the reality that early career teachers are frequently placed in precarious employment or geographically isolated contexts where policy does not allow for a gradual release of responsibility. From day one, the ECT assumes the same professional role as a colleague with a decade of experience.

This article examines the current mentoring landscape for early career teachers in Australia, the evidence on what works and what does not, and what school leaders can do differently.

The model we default to

Across Australia, mentoring for early career teachers takes several forms: structured induction programs, professional networks, peer coaching, and formal mentoring arrangements. Neilsen, Barry and Addison (2006, cited in Long et al., 2012) define induction as the process of adjusting to the roles and responsibilities of teaching, and mentoring as an experienced teacher working alongside an ECT to ease into the full-time responsibilities of the role. In practice, the consistency of either is dependent on site, sector, state, and employment mode.

Teaching is one of the only professions where full professional accountability is assumed from day one (Bonfiglio-Pavisich, 2021). A graduate teacher in most cases does not receive a reduced caseload, a supervised transition period, or a gradual release of responsibility. Induction as a transition to employment is therefore critical (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011; AITSL, 2025). Effective induction should address socialisation into the workplace, industrial and legal responsibilities, network establishment, and the navigation of professional identity. Whilst there are no mandated national induction guidelines, most state, independent, and Catholic sectors have some form of induction or mentoring initiative in place. These range from structured programs to professional ECT networks. However, they vary greatly in application and tend to focus primarily on school and sector policies rather than the developmental needs of the teacher (Bonfiglio-Pavisich, 2021; Sullivan & Morrison, 2014).

While induction processes influence career longevity (Sullivan & Morrison, 2014), formal developmental mentoring programs are far less established. Much of the existing research focuses on Initial Teacher Education mentoring models, which are heavily influenced by a supervisory or managerial approach.

Why supervision fails the teachers we most need to keep

The research on supervisory mentoring models is striking. Where a mentor holds a dual function, supporting an ECT while also assessing or reporting on their performance, the relationship produces something specific and damaging: conformity and silence.

When asking for help is perceived as admitting failure, early career teachers do not ask, they perform competence instead. Research by Colognesi et al. (2020) found that supervisory mentoring led ECTs to fabricate evidence of their practice, not out of dishonesty, but out of self-protection. Silence and avoidance became strategies for appearing to cope. Similarly, where a supervisor-mentor holds assessment authority, ECTs tend to conform to the mentor's professional identity and knowledge rather than develop their own (Nguyen & Barbieri, 2025).

This matters for school leaders because it means the feedback loop breaks down entirely. A mentor who is also an evaluator does not hear the real problems. The school does not see what is actually happening, and the ECT, quietly struggling, stays quiet until they leave.

When ECTs are asked directly, 36 per cent report wanting a structured mentoring program with an assigned mentor (Stanulis & Bell, 2017, cited in Bonfiglio-Pavisich, 2021). But the detail matters. They are not asking for observation and feedback cycles. They are asking for trusted relationships with someone who knows their context, supports their growth, and is not in a position to judge their performance.

The distinction is not subtle. It is the difference between a developmental model and a managerial one. And most schools, through no deliberate choice, have built the latter.

The structural barriers that compound the problem

Even where goodwill exists, three structural conditions undermine mentoring in Australian schools.

Volunteerism without support.

Most mentoring programs rely on the goodwill of mid-career teachers who are themselves approaching burnout. Without release time, training, or reduced load, mentoring becomes one more task added to an already unsustainable workload. Programs that rely on volunteer mentors, however well-intentioned, place the weight of a systemic problem on individuals (Stanulis & Bell, 2017, cited in Bonfiglio-Pavisich, 2021).

Mentors who are not trained to mentor.

Subject expertise and years of classroom experience do not automatically produce mentoring skill. The capacity to support adult professional learning, build trust, ask generative questions, and navigate a colleague's developing identity is distinct from teaching children and largely untaught. When selecting mentors, it is rarely driven by mentor expertise, rather those that have available time or those that provide the dual function of manager and mentor.

Geography Matters

Early career teachers in rural, regional, and remote schools frequently have no mentor available at all. The inconsistency this creates is not just inequitable -- it compounds the isolation that drives attrition in those communities most dependent on teacher retention.

So is there a model that works?

Some education systems have made a different structural choice entirely. In Japan, widely regarded as international best practice in teacher induction, attrition is low and the design of mentoring is not incidental to that outcome. The Japanese model operates across two dedicated streams: in-school training two days per week under the guidance of a designated mentor teacher, and out-of-school training one day per week at prefectural education centres. Guiding teachers work alongside novice teachers for a minimum of 60 days per year. They receive no financial bonus for this role, but their own teaching load is formally reduced to make it possible. Where no subject specialist exists within the school, the system arranges one from another school in the district. The mentor and principal co-design a year-long induction plan built around regional and local guidelines. Mentoring here is not goodwill. It is architecture (Luchenko et al., 2024).

The evidence is not only international. St Columba College in Andrews Farm, a northern Adelaide independent school where a third of its teaching staff were in their first five years, recorded a 20 per cent increase in teacher retention in a single year after introducing a structured mentoring program that assigned every new teacher a dedicated mentor meeting fortnightly (Baltutis, 2025). Retention climbed from 68 per cent to 87 per cent. Year 12 median ATAR scores rose from 53 to 69 in the same period. What changed was not the teachers. What changed was the structure around them.

What this asks of leaders

The research is clear and local evidence is growing. When mentoring is treated as a structural priority rather than an informal gesture, teachers stay. When they stay, students benefit.

Developmental mentoring asks three things of school leaders. First, that the mentor role be separated from assessment and evaluation. Second, that mentors be given genuine time and, where possible, training for the work. Assigning a mentor without resourcing the role is not mentoring. Third, that early career teachers be treated as professionals in formation rather than employees on probation. The professional identity an ECT builds in their first five years is the foundation of the practitioner they will become or the reason they will not stay long enough to become one.

For schools where a trained, developmental mentor is not available on staff and for early career teachers navigating systems that were not designed with their growth in mind, external mentoring offers a practical bridge. Programs like Teaching Futures provide structured, developmental mentoring from a practitioner with HAT-level credentials, explicitly separated from any assessment or evaluative function. The ECT gets a trusted relationship with someone whose only role is their growth. That separation is not incidental. It is the point.

Australia cannot afford to keep losing teachers at the rate it currently does. The evidence on what works is not new. What is needed now, is the institutional will to act on it.

References

Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. (2025). ATWD national trends: Teacher workforce (June 2025 ed., 2019-2023). https://www.aitsl.edu.au/research/australian-teacher-workforce-data/atwd-reports/national-trends-teacher-workforce-jun2025/

Baltutis, S. (2025, August 20). St Columba College in Andrews Farm records massive increases in ATAR scores, teacher retention. The Advertiser.

Bonfiglio-Pavisich, N. (2021). The mentoring experience of early career teachers in Australia. The University of Notre Dame Australia.

Colognesi, S., Van Nieuwenhoven, C., & Beausaert, S. (2020). Supporting newly-qualified teachers' professional development and perseverance in secondary education: On the role of informal learning. European Journal of Teacher Education, 43(2), 258-276. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1681963

Ingersoll, R. M., & Strong, M. (2011). The impact of induction and mentoring programs for beginning teachers: A critical review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 201-233. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311403323

Long, J. S., McKenzie-Robblee, S., Schaefer, L., Steeves, P., Wnuk, S., Pinnegar, E., & Clandinin, D. J. (2012). Literature review on induction and mentoring related to early career teacher attrition and retention. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 20(1), 7-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2012.645598

Luchenko, O., Chervinko, Y., & Doronina, O. (2024). Teacher induction in Japan, the UK and the USA. ISBN 978-80-223-5865-1.

Maras, K., Cumming, T. M., & Lee, H. M. (2025). Supporting early-career teachers with external mentoring: A scoping review. Teachers and Teaching, 31(7), 1180-1200. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2024.2382785

Nguyen, N. N., & Barbieri, W. (2025). Mentorship in the age of generative AI: ChatGPT to support self-regulated learning of pre-service teachers before and during placements. Education Sciences, 15(6), 642. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/6/642

Sullivan, A. M., & Morrison, C. (2014). Enacting policy: The capacity of school leaders to support early career teachers through policy work. The Australian Educational Researcher, 41(5), 603-620. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-014-0155-y

"The question for every school leader is not whether mentoring matters; It is whether what currently exists in your school deserves the name."