Inspiring, Supporting, and Propelling Urban Educators: Understanding the Effectiveness of a University-Based Induction Support Program

Abstract

This research focuses on understanding the effectiveness of a university-based induction support program (ISP) instituted to support the graduates of an urban university who completed their preparation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We framed the evaluation of our ISP as participatory action research (PAR) and chose a critical theoretical perspective of adult learning and development as our theoretical lens because of the close alignment with this perspective to our college’s conceptual framework on social justice and equity. Primary data sources consisted of individual interviews with 15 key informants identified by the ISP research team. Data analyses occurred through a recursive and generative process moving between open coding using Nvivo and reflection on the literature related to critical adult learning theory and research on effective induction and coaching models. Findings included (a) the ISP as a liberating space to engage with other educators, (b) the ISP’s role as a university-based program for urban educators, (c) the ISP program’s impact on stakeholders’ professional identity, and (d) the ISP and the concept of criticality. The study also underscored the advantages of using PAR designs for program evaluation and/or accreditation inquiries focusing on continuous improvement.

1. Introduction

Novice teachers experience challenges during their preparation, but they also continue to experience anxiety that tests their resilience, endurance, and persistence during their first years in the profession. Nearly one out of every two teachers (44%) will leave the profession within five years of teaching [1], and with high attrition comes a negative impact on student learning [2]. The initial preparation educators receive to address the challenges of the classroom, along with the experiences new teachers encounter within their first years, impacts their teaching performance, their satisfaction with the profession, and their future decisions regarding their career intentions [3,4,5,6]. Feiman-Nemser [5] notes the intensity of initial classroom experiences shapes the professional lives of novice teachers, impacting not only if new teachers remain in the classroom, but also the types of teachers they become.

The extant literature indicates that quality induction programs (a) which are inclusive of embedded professional development and individual mentoring [7,8,9,10] and (b) which incorporate safe spaces for conversations in learning communities [11,12] are instrumental in helping novice educators grapple with the tremendous demands placed upon them. Research also indicates novice educators need time and embedded support to develop agency and resilience to address and respond to significant challenges in their school contexts [13]. For several decades, the challenges beginning teachers reportedly face have remained stable and include issues related to classroom management and how to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all learners [6,14]. The complexity of designing responsive instruction for children of diverse backgrounds continues to leave new educators feeling underprepared [6,14]. Preparation to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students is not sufficient; studies indicate novice teachers need continued support and professional development on how to address cultural challenges in the classroom and on how to advocate for social justice and equity in schools [14,15,16,17].

COVID-19 drastically altered the preparation of individuals who graduated from teacher education programs in 2020–2021. At our institution, many of our completers from this time period experienced virtual rather than in-person clinical experiences in their final year of preparation. For our urban institution, which centers our programs in high-needs schools, this meant our graduates had minimal opportunities for face-to-face experiences where they learned the culture of schools and developed a repertoire of strategies for how to build a community and craft culturally responsive instruction. In addition, our institution’s continual improvement process had, for a number of years, included studies using the Critical Incident Methodology [18,19], focusing on our completers’ experiences trying to impact student learning during induction. Our findings had underscored the nature of factors which hindered and supported our novice urban teachers’ effectiveness including (a) a need for personal networks and support structures and (b) professional development tailored to specific needs. Given these issues, our college felt compelled to offer ongoing support for these graduates and we developed and launched a university-led, virtual Induction Support Program (ISP) to Inspire, Support, and Propel our graduates as they entered the profession. In designing our induction program, we envisioned a model which provided avenues for novice educators to engage individually with mentors, to share challenges and concerns with an “outsider”, and to receive ongoing support differentiated for their needs to navigate complex and ongoing problems in their contexts.

We framed the evaluation of our ISP as participatory action research and chose a critical theoretical perspective of adult learning and development [20] as our theoretical lens because of (a) the consistency of this perspective to the social justice and equity framework of our college’s educator preparation programs [21] and (b) our desire for analysis to be informed by work on adult learning and development. Brookfield [20] aligns adult learning with the task of becoming socially and politically aware of the inequities and systemic exploitation of others and posits critical adult learning tasks that work together to develop individuals’ awareness of the systems and their roles within them to bring about change. His critical learning tasks include challenging ideology, contesting hegemony, unmasking power, overcoming alienation, learning liberation, reclaiming reason, and learning democracy (see

Table 1. Brookfield’s critical adult learning tasks.

Learning Task	Description
Challenging Ideology	Focuses on adult learners identifying ideologies and then acknowledging their presence in the choices, decisions, interpretations, and judgments made daily [20].
Contesting Hegemony	Focuses on thinking critically about power and control, learning how to recognize ones’ class position, and true political interests [20].
Unmasking Power	Unmasking power occurs when adults recognize they are agents of power, constantly channeling disciplinary power as described by Foucault [22], but they also possess the capacity to undermine dominant power relations [20].
Overcoming Alienation	Works to support individuals in becoming more aware of themselves (their role) by being able to see how their decisions are framed and influenced by broader social structures and economic forces [20].
Learning Liberation	The adult learning task of learning liberation calls for a change in the way individuals experience the world through thought, language, and art [20].
Reclaiming Reason	This learning task focuses on how adult learners can overcome the three crises outlined by Habermas [23] (decline of the public sphere, threat to civil society, and invasion of the lifeworld) to reclaim reason lost by experiencing these crises [20].
Learning Democracy	This learning task calls for adult learners to be open to new perspectives and willing to suspend their own convictions to have communicative action [20,23].

). These learning tasks served as touchstones for the questions we asked as we reflected on the effectiveness of our program.

Our research indicated that university-based induction support programs can be uniquely situated to provide a liberating space for educators to engage with others and to develop educators’ professional identity and criticality. The participatory action research design provided opportunities to counter hegemony by disrupting power relationships between administrators typically responsible for program evaluation and the director/mentors directly involved in such programs and by creating an atmosphere for collaborative learning for both mentors and mentees.

2. Materials and Methods

Our urban university prepares candidates for high-need schools focusing on learners from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Most of our graduates took jobs teaching underserved student populations in our metropolitan area. Our ISP program model included four key components: (a) mentor-led whole-group professional learning, (b) small-group Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) connecting novices and mentors, (c) individual mentoring with an assigned program mentor, and (d) an online repository of resources. All large and small group program activities were facilitated by program leaders in a virtual setting using the Zoom online platform. ISP leaders also utilized the Group Me digital tool for ongoing communication with all stakeholders.

ISP leaders included a faculty sponsor and ten doctoral students from diverse programs in college. One of the doctoral students served as program director and the others assumed the role of mentors to groups of 6–7 mentees. All graduates of our 2020–2021 initial teacher preparation, counseling and school psychology programs were invited to participate as mentees. Recruitment began with an initial email invitation in summer and then repeated invitations were issued on a monthly basis during the year. Seventy graduates registered for the program and forty-five novice educators maintained active participation. Mentor/mentee groups were formed so that, whenever possible, mentors had specialized knowledge in their mentees’ disciplines [8,11].

As part of our continuous improvement model at our institution, we are regularly involved in program evaluation research of our educator preparation initiatives. This particular study is designed as a participatory action research (PAR) project [24] and is being conducted by stakeholders involved in the ISP. Participatory action research was chosen as a framework based on our belief that those most impacted by the research (the current and future program leaders) should have a leadership role in determining the questions, design, methods, and data which might be most useful in understanding program effectiveness and potential change. The ISP research team is comprised of seven individuals with emic and etic perspectives [25]. Team members with direct involvement and insider perspectives (emic) were four doctoral students, including the current and future program directors and current and future mentors. The etic members had indirect involvement and outside perspectives and included two college assistant/associate deans (one of whom became the faculty sponsor) and the assessment director. The etic members of the team were responsible for conceptualizing the 2020–2021 ISP program, securing funding, and assessing educator preparation program effectiveness for the college accreditation process.

The ISP research team members were involved in the vision and implementation of the initial year of the ISP program and have no competing interests with the outcomes of this research. Collectively, at the end of year one, the team determined the design of this PAR would include the following steps: (1) determine questions to be addressed based on the status quo in the year one of the ISP; (2) research, analyze, and critique factors contributing to the status quo in light of the research questions; (3) plan and implement action items with the intent of improving effectiveness, agency, and equity; and (4) research, analyze, and critique results of actions implemented in the second year of the ISP. This paper focuses on steps one and two of the PAR project.

Primary data sources consisted of individual interviews with 15 key informants identified by the ISP Team. These key informants included the faculty sponsor, the program director, nine mentors, and four mentees. Additional mentees were recruited for interviews but were not available during the summer data collection. Secondary data sources included (a) feedback from mentees on the beginning of the year needs assessment, data from the mid-year mentee check-in, end-of-year surveys and (b) mentor notes from whole group professional learning, mentor logs of one-on-one mentoring and small group meetings, and end of the year mentor surveys. Because of the nature of participatory action research, research team meetings were also recorded and served as an additional data source.

2.1. Step 1 of the PAR Process

The ISP research team began with a review of secondary sources of data from the 2021–2022 ISP to understand personal and contextual factors shaping the effectiveness of the program, the agency of stakeholders within the program, and the issues of equity and inequity that emerged across the year. The team’s collaborative analysis led to the following research questions: (1) What unique role can an urban university-based Induction Support Program (ISP) play for novice teachers in high-needs urban schools? (2) How did an ISP influence stakeholders’ engagement, learning and development, criticality and agency, and professional identity?

2.2. Step 2 of the PAR Process

In step 2 of our PAR cycle, we focused on collecting and analyzing data from our key informants in light of our research questions. Key informants included four mentees, nine mentors, the director of the program, and the faculty sponsor. An interview protocol was created by the ISP research team in light of the research questions and elements related to the status quo of specific program components in year one. Interviews with key informants lasted approximately 45–60 min. Follow-up interviews of approximately 5–7 min or email correspondence provided opportunities for member checking.

Data analyses at this stage was a recursive and generative process moving between open coding using NVivo and reflection on the literature related to critical adult learning theory [20] and research on effective induction and coaching models [26]. Team members worked in pairs to analyze specific codes. ISP team meetings provided opportunities for codes to be collapsed and consolidated. Axial coding was utilized to examine relationships among codes and to identify patterns in the data as framed by Brookfield’s adult learning tasks [20].

3. Results and Discussion

Our urban induction support program was conceptualized as a flexible support system that was responsive to our graduates’ needs. On an initial needs’ assessment of the program’s participants, 90% of the teachers surveyed identified focusing on effective teaching strategies as beneficial/very beneficial, and 81% of the teachers surveyed identified focusing on teacher wellness as beneficial/very beneficial. The focus and design of the program’s model, therefore, centered around both components.

The findings indicate our ISP scaffolded opportunities for collaboration among various role groups (mentors and mentees) and provided structures for sharing resources and for developing professional learning communities and networks. The benefits of one-on-one outreach were enhanced by the purposeful matching of certification and content knowledge between mentors and mentees. Collaborative networks facilitated the exchange of ideas and allowed mentees to seek resolution to sensitive issues that might be harder to seek input from their school colleagues/personnel. Needs-based professional development, safe spaces for conversations, and opportunities for collaboration [11,12] were effective facets of the ISP. In the sections below, we address the major themes from our research: (a) the ISP as a liberating space to engage with other educators, (b) the ISP’s role as a university-based program for urban educators, (c) the ISP program’s impact on stakeholders’ professional identity, and (d) the ISP and the concept of criticality. Direct connections between our themes and concepts from Brookfield’s [20] critical adult learning tasks are italicized in these results.

3.1. The ISP as a Liberating Space to Engage with Other Educators

One of the most critical factors for the engagement of mentees in the ISP program was their relationship with their mentors and proactive mentor outreach. Mentor engagement was directly influenced by their relationship with the program director. Out of all the types of engagement opportunities that were available in the ISP program (i.e., individual mentoring, small-group PLCs, whole-group PLCs, and the resource bank), whole-group PLCs and one-on-one mentoring garnered the most participation. Brookfield [20] lists overcoming alienation as a critical adult learning task where individuals become more aware of themselves (their role) by being able to see how their decisions are framed and influenced by broader social structures and economic forces. The engagement of mentors and mentees in the ISP program reflected this awareness. As one mentor reflected on the program, she noted the following:

I think the benefit is having the broader connections [to educators outside your school]. So I think there’s benefits to having a mentor that knows your school system because obviously they know how to navigate certain things, but I think that there’s a certain safety net and being outside of that perspective, of where you feel comfortable asking questions, and if things… if you’re in a situation where there could be other people involved, who knows so and so and I don’t want [what I say] to get back to them.

(ID 107)

3.1.1. Factors Enhancing Participant Engagement

Possible factors that impacted participant engagement were intrinsic (renewed sense of pride in the profession as a whole, feeling a part of a community, and one-on-one support that met individual needs) and extrinsic motivators (financial component for mentors and director oversight of mentor progress). The mentor–mentee relationship was a result of careful matching between the content area and expertise of both participants. In some cases, the mentor had been the university supervisor of the novice teachers during student teaching, so the mentor and mentee already had an established relationship and trust. As part of the induction support program setting, however, ISP mentors were not district supervisors or evaluators of the mentees, which facilitated the mentors’ ability to establish safe spaces to share concerns and address mentee specific issues. The faculty advisor explained the following:

[Mentors] come from an outside point of view, right, they’re not within the work environment. And so, I think the mentees are freer to share their real concerns. They’re also not being evaluated. And that helps to that always helps when there’s not an evaluation component or you’re not being graded on your performance, because you’re able to provide a different kind of support…[Mentor] was someone that they can just trust, to vent about maybe things that are of a more sensitive nature.

(ID 101)

Similarly, a mentee discussed her appreciation for the support she experienced, saying the following:

I got to see that I was not by myself and to have someone there who understood what I was going through and was trying to help me and assist me with my situation, because I had gotten to the point where I felt like I was burning out.

(ID 202)

The component that mentees found most rewarding was the one-on-one mentoring. Mentors reached out informally to mentees on a regular basis, sending emails or texts and making phone calls. The director checked in regularly with mentors, encouraging them to reach out to mentees and reading their weekly logs. While the virtual nature of the program may have made it more challenging to build relationships, for those who did bond, the individual mentoring helped to overcome the feeling of being alone. The faculty advisor shared the following:

I think individual mentoring was viewed as most preferred. Because they were able to talk to somebody one on one individually about things that came up for them, issues that they were navigating at their school sites that they may not have brought to their district mentor or induction program representatives. Because some of those issues were of a sensitive nature. And they felt like having an outsider’s point of view, somebody not connected to their work environment would be helpful. And I think to just being able to talk privately with somebody about personal concerns was really something they found supportive.

(ID 101)

3.1.2. Factors Limiting Participant Engagement

At the beginning of the school year, 70 novice teachers had signed up to become mentees within the ISP. According to the mentors, the overwhelming nature of school life and responsibilities eventually resulted in many of the teachers prioritizing other tasks over the professional development support offered through ISP. As the year progressed, 45 mentees remained active across the year, with the majority of these participating primarily in the one-on-one mentoring. One mentor reflected on the fact that, despite several attempts to establish contact with the mentees, engagement by the mentees she was assigned remained low:

[I] felt a bit defeated and like disappointed when you don’t get the level of participation they hoped for. One would get a text message back, “Hey, thanks so much, I will get back to you”. There’s a couple of people that I wouldn’t hear anything back and I kind of was wondering like, is this the right number? …so I would also do like email—I kind of copy and paste. What I would do in an email into the text message or vice versa, just to make sure I’m accessing them whichever way.

(ID 107)

Some mentors felt the online nature of the program might have impacted engagement in a negative way. Meeting mentees virtually may have limited the ability of mentors to build relationships, establish trust, and offer support to mentees. The director reflected on this perspective, sharing the following:

I think [there is a] limitation to only virtual interactions. Whereas maybe if it was a hybrid model, where face to face, is an option, I think that would have impacted better too, I think that would just have a better effect. And we might have seen more participation, more accountability, because back then goes back to access, I think that would have created a more open space for accessibility to mentee and mentor, because then the mentor would have been able to maybe go to the school, meet them at school, have a relationship with the principal, the administration.

(ID 102)

In some cases, where mentees had a prior relationship with the mentors as university supervisors, the engagement was maximized. Mentors who did not have this relationship with their mentees, however, regretted not having the opportunity to be physically in the classroom and to be able to meet with their mentees. One mentor explained it as follows:

I was like, ‘How can I try to make this better?’ And it’s like, when you’re a teacher in the classroom, the beginning weeks, even of school, you’re just focusing on being present with students, building relationships. And I didn’t, I felt like how do we make that time to do that with these teachers to be able to support them? So, I did feel that disconnect, like even physically being in person together, I kept finding myself being like, I think I could make more of a connection, if I could go to their classroom if I could go meet up with them individually. So, I think that that was like the initial barrier, that later on, I felt like, am I not giving enough support? Are they feeling supported? Are they participating? All of those things, I think came from not having that initial relationship building. And it’s hard. It’s hard, like with text and just being on the phone. I’m just some imaginary person to them.

(ID 109)

3.2. The ISP as a University-Based Program for Urban Educators

New teachers often face challenges posed by the disconnect between their preparation and their work context. Data indicated our urban institution’s ISP was helpful in reinforcing graduates’ commitment to be educators who teach for social justice and equity and contest hegemony [20]. Mentors assisted mentees with how to “stay within school system guidelines, but still teaching in ways or make those … incremental changes that would have an impact on learners”. One mentee who wanted to connect with her students mentioned how the mentor helped her come up with effective approaches for being culturally responsive:

So, like one amazing idea I got from [my mentor] that I still do. When we talk about classification. It’s a, it’s very hard for the students to, you know, get into that, because, like, who cares. But she helped me come up with an activity, where they classify their neighborhoods. So pretty much like the entire student body lives off of Buford Highway. So, they’re very familiar with all the shops and stores on Buford highway. So, I went, she told me, you know, go online, get some pictures. So, I got pictures of all the different shops, and then, you know, they could classify them into Oh, look, those are restaurants, Oh, those are, you know, car shops, those are grocery stores. And, you know, some would even get more specific, it’s Asian restaurants, it’s Hispanic restaurants. Sure, certain types of grocery stores. So that was like a very good activity that helped them get into it and understand it. So that’s, that’s one example that I can think of off the top of my head.

(ID 202)

The ISP also addressed other novice teacher issues such as classroom management, creating an inclusive environment for ESOL and special needs students, and coming up with interactive lesson plans as this mentee mentioned.

So, I know, we had talked about how to do classroom management stuff. So, she gave me a cool activity, where you do kind of scenarios the first day to come up with your own classroom charter …I’m hoping to maybe try it next semester. It’s a little bit hard to figure out, like how to make things work for ESOL students, because they don’t like to talk.

(ID 202)

Another mentee mentioned how she received help from her mentor to build a classroom environment that would support a child with emotional needs.

So, I teach multi age. So, I taught him last year, and it helped last year, but this year, he needs different strategies, which is fine, but I feel more equipped to deal with that now. But the strategy was definitely was definitely helpful. She was talking about like implementing, like a safe space in the class, which I didn’t have at that point. So, I had the safe space. I planned with the child. And we had like a code word to where if he felt like his body was getting out of control, he could say the code word and go to the safe space without having to do the back and forth.

(ID 204)

Overall, the ISP program impacted learning and development in ways that served to liberate the teaching practices of the novice educators and the mentors as well. This was evident in the focus that emerged across program components on how to personalize the art of teaching within the constraints of the school or curriculum. Whole-group conversations sparked ideas for how to enact culturally responsive lessons and were accompanied by one-on-one scaffolded lesson planning, where mentors assisted mentees in utilizing restorative justice, differentiation, or strategies for multilingual learners in their classrooms. Often, these resources from the ISP were timely and more personalized in addressing the specific needs of mentees than the typical professional support offered through the districts.

3.3. The ISP Program’s Impact on Stakeholders’ Professional Identity

The ISP program also impacted mentors’ and mentees’ professional identities by promoting a holistic view of the self as a teacher and reducing alienation from others. Conversations between educators illustrated ways their professional identities were being reconceptualized in terms of how emotions, wellness, and collaborative networking plays a role in their service to the profession. How individuals define their identities based on roles and expectations can vary in their view of social norms [27]. The ISP program embraced the importance of self-care and outreach and the resulting community shaped the professional identities of the participants.

Participants interpreted their professional identity through how it related to their role as a teacher and to the profession itself. While one mentor (ID 103), who became the director of the ISP program in its second year, described that she already had “a fairly solid professional identity”, most participants reflected on how their professional identity developed as a result of being involved in the program. The participants reflected that their identity was to be professional, consistent, proficient, and make a difference in the profession. Even when there were circumstances in their practice where participants found themselves in challenging and life-altering events, some participants felt they had to have a certain decorum regardless. For example, the project director commented:

So, our responsibility is to implement these tactics to reach out, to remain tactful, to remain professional, to be consistent. They weren’t intimidated by their administration. But they felt that the mentor helped them develop competence so that they can competently and professionally speak with their administrator in a comfortable tone.

(ID 102)

During the ISP program, a few first-year mentee teachers believed their role was to know all the responsibilities of their professions as teachers once they started. Additionally, a few mentors also commented that their mentees believed that educators should have a solid definition of their professional identity when they enter the profession. Many stakeholders saw the program, however, as helping participants experience a shift in their understanding of their professional identity. Reflecting on growth over time, one mentor (ID107) commented:

Your professional identity doesn’t have to be spotless; you don’t have to go in knowing all the questions. I mean, no [you do] not answer all the questions, … your pedagogy and your skill set, knowledge base builds over time. Being able to evolve with education reaffirms that your professional identity is adaptable to what’s going on around you.

Another mentor (ID106) expressed a similar sentiment, saying that they “realize that it’s okay not to know everything. It’s okay to lean on your colleagues, mentors, and peers, especially those first couple of years”.

Participants also reflected on how their role as a teacher reflected part of their identity as a person. Past research has noted that teachers’ identities can range according to internal and external factors, both individually and socially [28]. According to Beijaard et al., professional identity is an “ongoing process, a process of interpreting oneself as a certain kind of person and being recognized as such in a given context” [29] (p. 108). The following statement by one mentor (ID 103) helps capture how professional identities shifted during the ISP program: “I think it (ISP program) helped us establish the identities of figuring out what it means for them (mentees) to be a teacher, especially how this shift and how in her practice, and how she thinks about learning”.

Another mentor (ID 111) discerned that the program supported shifting the “voice” of their mentee and how their mentee fit into the teaching profession as the instructor of record for the classroom. For example, she commented:

Because their identity in the sense of where they fit, you know, in this system, and the way that it works, now that they’re there, you know, in real time, and not just coming in and out during a couple of hours a day or a few days a week. They’re like; they’re the ones who are ultimately responsible for the entire classroom.

Teacher identities can be shaped and reshaped when teachers are a part of a professional learning community [30]. Participants expressed how their professional identities were developed through involvement in the ISP. Professional identity was part of collaborative relationships with coworkers and participants in the program, as participants created new relationships, engaged in conversations, and had the opportunity to work with others, even though the program essentially took place online. One mentee (ID 204) described the fact that interaction was beneficial, even though in the program, the conversations may have taken place in the chat. Despite the virtual context, the mentors and mentees were able to create an effective, trusting network where educators had someone to reach out to. One mentor (ID 108) reflected on the importance of the personal and responsive support that was part of the program, saying, “relationships are the greatest asset we have. No industry is going to replace the teacher. Absolutely. And so, because they’re so important, my job is to make sure that in their roles and in their job, they feel like there’s somebody in your corner”.

3.4. The ISP and the Concept of Criticality

Guided by our theoretical framework, the data analysis also focused on the concept of criticality, a concept that is hard to pinpoint within adult education [31]. For this study, we have identified criticality as the actions of examining assumptions, pushing back on harmful practices, and working towards the abolishment of oppression between the individual and societal systems [20]. This was seen when one mentor relayed an experience a mentee had during the school year:

…her department was talking about equality, but she was focused on the equity. And this is something that you know, she encountered and learned from our program, but she was having a really hard time and acting it because of the constraints of the system that she was in. And so she decided that she was going to change how she taught. She’s like, okay, I can’t change how I’m assessing them, because it’s set forth by the department. So, I’m going to change the way I teach. And so instead of being lecture based, and here’s, I’m going to lecture one day, you’re going to do the lab the next day, … she tried to make it much more student centered.

(ID 103)

When approaching criticality in this way, adult learners must tap into their sense of agency in order to work towards change [32]. Stakeholders in the ISP experienced agency through developing goals towards transformation, reiterating their commitment to their ideals when faced with opposition or even failure, and exchanging support with like-minded individuals from various contexts. These experiences enabled stakeholders to question assumptions that govern systems and stand up against harmful practices. As the faculty advisor for the program pointed out, mentees were able to employ criticality when engaging in agency:

I learned that the mentors really helped them to become more agentic, right, and to use their voice in professional ways to try to, you know, navigate the challenges they had in their schools. And so, they gave them advice, and helped them go back to speak to perhaps administrators or other colleagues on grade level, you know, in professional ways about how to solve the problems that were coming up for them.

(ID 101)

Mentors also supported mentee agency by facilitating conversations that helped them challenge ideologies and act to support their ideologies or contest hegemony, two of Brookfield’s [20] critical adult learning tasks. One mentee explained, “Because I did have, I did have two students who are dyslexic. And I felt like especially I wasn’t serving them through the reading curriculum I had…” (ID 204). She went on to say the following:

Because I’m having like a mentor, someone much more experienced than me to talk about concerns I had. It gave me the confidence and also the knowledge and the—it just helped me have agency at my school and in changing the curriculum, or not changing but like adding things to the curriculum. And yeah, we do still like thinking back to reading, we still do use Lucy [Calkins]. But we also have more like phonemic awareness type stuff. So, I would say that it did help me to be an agent of change, because I was able to change some of the curriculum.

Likewise, a second mentor stated that her mentee was having difficulty adhering to the school lesson plan template as it did not allow for any flexibility with the curriculum: “I mean, some of it was also even just I would have her share what her lesson plan ideas were, and how could we navigate sort of template she had to follow and still stay true to some of those ideas that she wanted to incorporate” (ID 106). Another mentee had an issue with the school grading policy, one in which she felt was not equitable. She explained:

I had graded some students and, and I had been going back and forth with the parents and the administration and counselors about the student not performing. And the student was failing. And I had been telling them that the student was failing. So, I was I’m trying to be as transparent as I could with the parents and administration. But when it came down to give him the grades, the administration thought that I should just give them grades. And I was like, No, they did not earn the grades, but they kept pushing back, I prefer that you just change the grades. And I was like, ‘No’.

(ID 202)

Mentors were agentic by becoming owners of the ISP, calling for mentees to think differently and to act on their own convictions focused on equity. The adult learning task of learning liberation calls for this type of individual change [20]. For example, one mentor challenged mentees to use their voice professionally with their colleagues:

And then, as far as their voice, like I said, having voice is definitely part of who they are as, as teachers and their identity, because, you know, they, they would be afraid to speak out, or when they would speak out, they would clash, or just constantly be, you know, disagreeing with some of their colleagues. With maybe, you know, the way a lesson plan should be implemented or the way the students were being disciplined for, you know, like small incidents and just really just having the confidence of maybe like a more veteran teacher even though they were newer and I think that we helped bring that out of them.

(ID 111)

Another mentor discussed empowering moments with her mentees in support of their students, saying the following:

And it was like a very empowering moment if you have a voice and you can, you know, you’re there for your students. And we were kind of working around like, yes, you do have to do X, Y, and Z with like, you know, teaching standards. However, you know, you have the ability and the voice to do it this way to support your students. And so I felt that, again, that was so great. There were a few times that I saw that.

(ID 109)

Considering the value of the mentors’ support, the faculty sponsor commented on impact the program had on the mentees:

So, I think they became more confident. And they started to view themselves as members of the profession who could be advocates for themselves and for the profession. And to really use their own autonomy, while sometimes they felt like they didn’t have any autonomy. But they recognized that they just had to initiate you know, they had to be the initiators in order to exert more autonomy in their positions and try to make a difference in those areas that they felt were creating havoc for them.

(ID 101)

An aspect of the ISP that positioned mentors as knowledge holders was the freedom to develop their own protocol for engaging with their mentees. This was at the center of the program’s development. The ISP model was described by a mentor as “a bit self-directed, so to speak. Yet, we still met as a group. So, it was kind of like a mixed model of almost like self-direction, but slightly cohort-ish” (ID 102). By building the ISP model this way, all stakeholders could participate in the adult learning task of “learning democracy”.

Brookfield (2005) draws on Habermas’ work to define democracy as an individual’s ability to relate to others so that power is within and multiplied. This was demonstrated by the expectation that mentors would facilitate whole-group meetings, which, as noted by a mentor, “added a sense of accountability and a sense of involvement and ownership of the process” (ID 102). Mentors found leading and attending the group sessions empowering. One mentor shared the following:

These whole group sessions were so beneficial to me, even as a mentor, because I would kind of come in feeling a little defeated, like, I’m not a good mentor, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m not getting feedback. And so, … but then the chat was so lively with feedback from Mentees and mentors. And every single session, we had, I would see mentees check in, putting in the chat like, this enthusiasm too, and saying like, ‘this is helpful’. And I saw, like, people were asking questions that I hadn’t thought about. And so, it was so funny to me sometimes, like, oh, the first-year teachers are making me think of things in a new way too. And so, and that’s just that’s one of the reasons why I love this too, is because you’re always learning. And you’re always you have to keep an open mind because someone’s going to see something differently.

(ID 109)

Mentors and mentees also discussed how they supported and/or were supported in the ISP to question and use their own reasoning/mindset toward social justice, as had been emphasized in their programs. Brookfield [20] describes the learning task as “reclaiming reason”. The mentors—all doctoral students who had been in the “game” longer—challenged their mentees to question, leading to shifts in their mindset to acting for social justice. One mentee questioned a district’s sole focus on communication (i.e., grammar) to teach world languages, expressing concern about the omission of instruction for supporting learner intercultural competence, saying the following:

…we have the actual five C’s. Communication is one of the C’s, the rest are centered around communities, comparisons, I’m sorry, connections, culture, you know, all of these other things that help create an interculturally competent human being, right? That’s what we want, intercultural competence. The instructional calendar is simply based on communication. So, it’s grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar…

(ID 203)

The mentee went on to express additional concern about the assessments that do not capture performance aligned to all areas (i.e., the five Cs), commenting, “and the assessments that we’re forced to give are multiple choice. They’re not, you know, performance-based assessments” (ID 203).

4. Conclusions

This program evaluation, using a PAR approach, provided a frame for improving our induction program and stakeholder engagement, and supported the second year of implementation. The study identified important points for consideration with respect to both (a) the potential of university-based induction programs for supporting social justice educators and (b) the advantages of using PAR designs for program evaluation and/or accreditation inquiries focusing on continuous improvement.

The ISP played an important role in supporting graduates as they worked to apply what they had learned in teacher preparation at our urban institution. Specifically, the issues that seem to pose a challenge for many of our novice teachers focused on being culturally responsive, addressing emotional needs among students, differentiating instruction, increasing parent engagement, and dealing with school administration, while advocating for equitable approaches. The ISP addressed and reinforced effective strategies in a way that helped novice teachers’ ability to challenge ideologies that shape decision making and to professionally contest hegemony in terms of unmasking power relationships at work in schools [20]. These findings also provide evidence of the importance of mentor–mentee interactions that are reflective of Aguilar’s description of the transformational models of coaching [26]. Transformational coaching/mentoring approaches entail going beyond a focus on changing behaviors (e.g., knowledge and instructional practices) that push a mentee to new learning. Rather, a transformational mentor supports the mentee’s overall being and ability to question their beliefs about themselves, their learners, and the systems that create inequities. Transformational mentors assist mentees so that they can act in ways that disrupt harmful practices and dismantle oppressive systems. Transformational approaches consider systems of thinking at the highest levels of mentee reflection focused on moral and ethical principles [33], moving past, and using a mixture of directive (i.e., solution-oriented and strategy-focused) and facilitative (i.e., collaborative) approaches that promote mentee cognitive thinking. By identifying the unique, transformative role that can be played by university-based induction programs, we believe this research offers important recommendations for how university programs can provide the support network novice urban educators need as they enter the field and work to dismantle inequities inside and outside the classroom [26].

We arrived at the decision to design this research using a participatory action research approach [24], because of our desire to ensure the theoretical values and beliefs of stakeholders involved in designing and implementing the program were reflected in the study, and their vision for what role a university-led induction program might entail could be used as a touchstone and enhanced by the inquiry. Whereas a program evaluation is often described as a scientific process which should not entail subjectivity and which should be undertaken by program evaluation experts [34], PAR promotes the grounding of knowledge in human agency and has been accepted into the evaluation community under the term participatory evaluation [35]. The nature of the PAR process we used with our team ensured the voices of the doctoral students, who were in charge of implementing the program and mentoring the novice teachers in year one, would have a direct input into decision making regarding the theoretical framework, the research questions, and the action items that would be implemented as a result of the data analysis. As outlined by McIntyre [24], the framework allowed for a co-mingling of the researcher–participant relationship, the codeveloping of the research process, and the positioning of consciousness raising which affected growth and change for the team and the project. The resulting research allowed us to better understand the impact of the program on not only the novice teachers who were mentees, but also the impact of the program on the doctoral students who were mentors as well. In addition, the growth of professional identity was a liberatory learning experience [20] for the ISP research team members as well. The collaborative learning context allowed us to learn from and with each other as we worked to consider the effectiveness of our ISP program as a site for critical adult learning for all involved. Moving from a conventional model of program evaluation to PAR allowed us to draw on the same critical adult learning tasks as a research team that we were striving to support in our Induction Support Program. Previous research suggests that when people are engaged in the evaluation of a program in which they are involved, their experience in the program is more nuanced, with more positive self-reflection and learning [34].

By joining together the emic and etic members of the research team, we, ourselves, sought to epitomize Brookfield’s [20] theory by employing criticality when engaging in agency. We disrupted the traditional power relationships of outside researchers/administrators and created a team where doctoral student program leaders co-researched with faculty/administrators, effectively prompting us to think differently and to act on our convictions regarding equity in academia. By positioning our doctoral students as collaborators on the team, we continued with the ISP approach of positioning mentors as knowledge holders and the multitude of voices on our team helped us to question and use our own reasoning/mindset for social justice, not only through the theoretical focus guiding our analysis, but in the way the theoretical lens informed our processes. We believe both the PAR design and critical adult learning theory has promise for other educator preparation programs to consider as valuable tools for engaging stakeholders in equitable ways as they focus on continuous improvement in educational programs.