Peer-mentoring in Teacher Support Teams

A suitable method for teachers’ professional development in education at university level?

Abstract

This article reports on the experiences with Teacher Support Teams (TSTs) as a means for professional qualification among teachers in professional programs for nurses and teachers in a Norwegian university. It has a qualitative and explorative design and is based on data from four focus group interviews with sixteen participants working on two different faculties. The research questions are:

• What challenges and themes are addressed within the TST`s?
• What learning outcomes do the participants report?

 The results reveal that TSTs have a strong potential to contribute to collective learning and to reduce the experience of professional isolation. The participants report positive learning outcomes, and it is interesting to note that the teams with members across the two faculties report particularly positively about their experiences. The results also reveals a possibility for TST mentoring to be a suitable method for teachers’ professional development and quality in education on university level. TSTs can be a counterbalance against an individual culture, which often characterize teachers’ work in higher education.