olve reforming teaching and teacher education. Feiman-Nemser reports that research conducted during this period had consistently shown that the rate of attrition during the first three years of teaching was high and climbing; and mentoring was perceived as a means of providing the kind of on-site support and assistance new teachers needed in order to become efficient and effective instructors.
Little (1990) stated that early findings on the effects of mentoring programs as they related to attrition were quite positive, leading to the rapid spread of mentoring (over 30 states currently mandate some form of mentored support for beginning teachers). Moreover, Little informs that mentoring programs have been extended to the preservice level and that proposals for the redesign of teacher preparation candidates call for teacher candidates to work closely with experienced teachers in internship sites and restructured school settings.
In more recent times, one of the major concerns regarding mentoring has been a call for more clearly defined goals and objectives with respect to mentoring programs as well as additional empirical research. In this regard, Feiman-Nemser (1996) reports that:
Enthusiasm for mentoring has not been matched by clarity about the purposes of mentoring. Nor have claims about mentoring been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny. The education community understands that mentors have a positive affect on teacher retention, but that leaves open the question of what mentors should do, what they actually do, and what novices learn as a result. (p. 1)
The foregoing point is important in that there has been some research showing striking differences in the way mentor teachers conceived of and carried out their work with novices (See: Little, 1990). These differences have been linked to differences between mentors in terms of role expectations, working conditions, program orientations, and degree of preparat...