Education sciences

Mentoring for school staff members

"Within three years, some 40% of the 70,000 teachers in primary and secondary schools will have retired, taking a rich store of knowledge with them,” notes Philippe Dupuis. According to the director of the Centre for Research into Administration of Educational Institutions (CRAOE), the coming years will be crucial. We must find a way to keep the experience these teachers possess in the schools in order to support the new generation. This dual challenge occupies all his thoughts as he seeks a way for schools to draw on the growing pool of retirees across Québec.

Mr. Dupuis has developed a specially designed mentoring system for the 4,000 schools in the province. Mentoring is defined as a process whereby a person who is known for his expertise enters into contact with another person just starting his working career. “This system has the advantage of catering to the needs of young teachers and administrators who want to know if they are going in the right direction,” Mr. Dupuis adds. “So far, based on studies done at the CRAOE, a dozen or so school boards have shown an interest.”

In a career that spanned more than 40 years, Mr Dupuis has been a primary and secondary school teacher, a school principal, and then researcher and professor in the Université de Montréal Department of Education Administration and Foundations, a department he helped create at the end of the 1960s. He also worked on a number of research contracts for national and international clients. His work led him to focus on teachers and administrators aged 35 to 55 years. More specifically, he is concerned with mid-life, when people encounter what psychologists call “mid-life crisis.” “Mid-life is like the last hour of an examination. You stop counting the time that has elapsed and start counting the time that remains. You ask yourself what you have done, and especially, what remains to be done,” the specialists tells us.

While mentoring can help novices to improve their confidence and develop skills, it also brings a lot to the mentor. Through work he has done based on psychologists Erik Erikson's and Daniel Levinson's theories of human development, Mr. Dupuis has been able to identify the specific needs of people going through mid-life. “These men and women are at the peak of their careers, have a lot of experience, and feel a need to convey their knowledge so that their expertise will be recognized,” he points out. This need for recognition is especially present in teachers, since “it happens that with time school administrators have a tendency to take their staff for granted, even though people still have a need to be told their work is appreciated.”