Peer Mentoring: Key to New Music Teacher Educator Success

Abstract

Abstract Research and practice in mentoring preservice music teachers and music teachers during their induction years has flourished in the past 10 years. Mentoring is also essential to the success of new music teacher educators; however, there is little extant research on mentoring of "preservice" and early career music teacher educators. Though not new members of the profession, new music teacher educators often face challenges similar to those of first-year music teachers. Mentoring can take many forms for new music teacher educators, one of which is peer mentoring. Peer mentoring can serve as an effective means to help new music teacher educators both cope with and succeed in their new professional environment. This article documents our peermentoring relationship from its genesis in doctoral studies through its evolution as we, two assistant professors, begin our careers as tenure-track faculty at two major research institutions. Keywords peer mentoring, music teacher educator Mentoring goes far beyond the instinctual, habitual, repetitive, reinforcement, or pedagogical steps that comprise training. It is the sum of all of these steps. A high-order communication and learning process, mentoring is built on the analysis of professionalenvironment experiences, a learning cycle that includes observing, analyzing, and comparing known experiences and situations and applying them in new situations. - Conway (2003, p. vii