Teacher turnover is an issue plaguing states and districts around the country, particularly among novice teachers. Research indicates that strong induction and mentoring programs can provide novice teachers with critical support and guidance as they make the transition from the pre-service environment to the professional workforce resulting in…

This descriptive phenomenological study sought to achieve two goals: to deeply understand early career teachers' (ECTs) past and present experiences and how these might impact ECTs' intentions and purposes for participation in an online community, as well as to inform the development of a new online community for ECTs. Five early career elementary…

New teachers are leaving the profession at an alarming rate. To retain them, school systems need comprehensive supports and collaborative school cultures that help teachers navigate the complexity of learning to teach. This action research study investigated the problem of new teacher turnover within a school-university partnership context. The…

This narrative inquiry involved a vibrant online knowledge community of Chinese novice teachers in colleges and universities. The teachers engaged in conversations with their me/ntor and peers, sharing life experiences and exchanging teaching puzzles. Through capturing the evolution (formation, development, sustainability) of the online knowledge…

New teacher mentoring has been a topic within general education research for decades. As general education researchers have investigated the needs of content specific new teacher support (Shores & Stokes, 2006) as well as digital environments for their professional development (Jones, 2013, January 1), music education researchers have…

Support for music teachers new to the profession is important and necessary. Some school districts use traditional mentor-mentee pairings as their primary support for novice music teachers; however, many factors in the professional lives of music teachers, such as traveling among multiple schools or a lack of subject-specific colleagues often…

High attrition rates of beginning teachers are a major challenge for schools. Online induction featuring e-mentoring is one way that teacher education programs can support new teachers. This self-study examines the processes involved in e-mentoring novice science teachers while using a university-sponsored comprehensive online induction platform.…

The development of teachers as reflective practitioners is a central concept in national guidelines for teacher preparation and induction (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education 2008). The Teacher Induction Network (TIN) supports the development of reflective practice for beginning secondary science teachers through the creation…

In this chapter, the authors draw on their experiences with working in building virtual communities of teachers and a pilot program to examine the prospects for increasing consistency in the effectiveness of new teacher support through online networks. Although not intended as a substitute for high-quality face-to-face mentoring experiences,…

New teachers of students with significant disabilities are expected to use evidence-based practices that build academic and functional skills from their first day on the job. Yet, these teachers may struggle with applying information learned in their preservice coursework to their daily instructional practices. One widely accepted means of…

This paper describes opportunities to improve the current support provided to beginning teachers in Australia. It holds that there is a need for approaches that go beyond school-based induction and support. The paper presents data from a survey of beginning teachers in Queensland, with aims to determine current access to support and perceptions…

E-mentoring--the use of technology-based communication formats in which mentors and mentees interact--is emerging as a solution for supporting novice teachers, especially when they have limited access to inbuilding support. This Brief describes the possibilities of using e-mentoring with novice special education teachers.

This research examines the feasibility and benefits of using Twitter as a support tool to enhance social interaction among teachers in their first year of service, as they participate in an online induction workshop, and as a tool to aid the workshop's moderator in monitoring the group and enhancing and supporting the early-service teachers'…

This study brings the concept of inquiry as stance to bear on current understandings of how inquiry occurs within online networks for teacher induction. The author presents a case study of an online network that allowed 36 new teachers to participate in informal, spontaneous conversations. Genre research is used to examine the on-network,…

There is a critical need to mentor novice special education teachers to meet the current and projected teacher shortages. However, due to the various skill-levels of beginning special education teachers in schools and the small number of current special educators in each school who could serve as mentors, there is difficulty finding…