What knowledge, understanding and skills does a mentor of beginning physical education teachers need?

This chapter aims to support mentor to identify and develop some aspects of knowledge, understanding and skills in order to provide a beginning physical education teacher with the support, direction and guidance they need. It looks specifically at reflective practice and at working with a beginning teacher as a learner. In developing reflective practice, mentors are asked to reflect on both their teaching and their mentoring in order to develop their own ability to reflect and to be able to support a beginning teacher to reflect. The chapter considers the importance of different approaches to mentoring in enabling mentor to effectively support a beginning teacher. The work of van Ginkel identifies two approaches to mentoring: 'bifocal' and 'instrumental'. In bifocal mentoring, the focus is on beginning teacher learning development. In instrumental mentoring, the focus is on effectiveness and is more criterion based, suggesting that the mentor takes a more didactic approach.