Tutor System And Professional Development Of New Teachers In Colleges And Universities——A Narrative Study

Since the popularization of higher education,the quality of higher education has become a common concern in China.Quality faculties are the base for quality of higher education,thus more and more universities pay more and more attention to the professional development of faculties in the new situation.In recent years,universities have been recruiting a large number of highly educated new teachers.Newly recruited faculties are becoming a large part of universities.Consequently,their professional development is becoming an important issue for research.As an approach to teacher professional development,mentorship has been widely used and studied.However,based on literature review,the research on the use of mentorship in Colleges and universities is mostly base on theoretic review or experience reflection,lacking empirical evidence.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of mentorship on the professional development of newly recruited faculties and the factors that influence the effectiveness of mentorship.This study uses narrative research method to interview newly recruited faculties and their mentors in some universities,and selects Dr.Y as the study case.Information collected from interviews,observation and documents was turned into transcripts.Based on experiential learning theory and teacher professional development theory,an analysis framework of faculty professional development was put forward,and Dr.Y's professional development under mentorship and the factors that influence the effectiveness of mentorship were examined.It is found that the influence of the mentor on Dr.Y's teaching outweighed that on her research.Mentorship is affected by many factors in the implementation.The key factors include the establishment of mentorship relations,the professionalism and commitment of both sides,the setting of training contents,and the support of universities.Some suggestions to promote the effectiveness of the mentorship are proposed based on the research findings and the demands of the research objects.The first is to improve the form of mentorship and matching model,and to guarantee the quality of mentoring activities.The second is to ensure the professionalism of mentors and trainees,to build equality and mutually beneficial relations,so as to promote the match and effectiveness of mentoring activities and to achieve a win-win results for mentors and newly recruited faculties;The third is to clarify the responsibilities of the mentors and trainees,improve the content of teaching and training,and the explicitregulations of the university helps to clarify the implementation of the mentorship.Fourth,a stable supervision mechanism and the reward and punishment system should be established and implanted,so as to further guarantee the effectiveness of mentorship.