MENTORING, COACHING AND INDUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS: A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE TRAINING MODELS FOR NEW TEACHERS

The concepts of teacher mentoring, coaching and induction are very important to the development of every professional teacher who takes up teaching as a profession and also to the students who would benefit from the years of training given to the teacher. Induction and mentoring programs can run for some number of years and then incorporated into a comprehensive and sustained professional development process for teachers. This paper focuses on building a model that could guide leaders of higher education institutions to prepare new teachers for their work in schools. Educational providers in higher education institutions often tend to believe that lecturers do not need a comprehensive training programme before commencing teaching in the Lecture Halls. In many Higher Education Institutions, when new lecturers are employed, they are only introduced to the students and made to commence work without proper induction processes. The design of a comprehensive mentoring and induction guide could help higher education institutions run programmes for beginning teachers who may not have taught in any institution prior to their appointement as instructors. The design takes into account the basic features of a comprehensive training model which take new entrants through the essentials of teaching and learning and instruction delivery.