First Year Florida Music Educator Experiences with District Sponsored Mentoring Programs

The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence and perceived effectiveness of mentoring for first year music teachers in the state of Florida. Specifically, the researcher sought to discover what percentage of new music teachers were assigned mentors through their schools or counties, whether or not these mentors were like-content, and how these teachers rated both the support received and overall efficacy of these mentors. Participants (N = 28) were first year music teachers in the state of Florida for the 2018-2019 school year who were asked to complete an online survey created by the researcher. Participants were asked whether or not they had been assigned a mentor through their school or county and were then asked a series of questions designed to describe the nature of their mentor-mentee relationships. At the end of the survey, participants were asked to respond to two open-ended questions regarding the most positive and negative aspects of their relationships with their mentors. Results from the surveys showed that roughly 80% of participants had been assigned a mentor by either their school or county, and of the group who had been assigned a mentor, roughly 64% had mentors who were also music teachers. Teachers in the current study rated their mentors highly with regard to perceptions of support received, with the exception of teachers with non like-content mentors, who rated some issues related to support and efficacy significantly lower. Similarly, the teachers in this study without like-content mentors rated the overall effectiveness of their mentors significantly lower than teachers with like-content mentors. Overall, teachers indicated that they viewed their mentors as sources of experience whom they could turn to for advice on many topics, but wished that in general they had more interaction time with their mentors.