The use of mentoring in education and a new model proposal to train school administrators

The term `mentor? can be translated into Turkish as `danışman, rehber, usta, akıl hocası?. The term `mentoring? means a process in which an experienced colleague helps an inexperienced colleague for both professional and personal development. Mentoring process is frequently used in business world, especially in large companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Dow Jones, S.C. Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Douglas Aircraft, Federal Express, General Motors, IBM, Apple Computer, Procter &Gamble. The process may be used to train both manager candidates and new employees who are in the first years of their professional life.The use of mentoring in educational area generally focuses on supplying professional and personal assistance for new teachers and school principals. The process is carried out successfully in the United States, England, Singapore and many European countries. According to the researches the school principals and teachers who were trained through mentoring process pointed out that they have got great benefits from mentoring process.It is felt that there is some insufficient points in the methods used to train school principals. Pre-service and in-service education activities which school principal candidates have to take are full of theoretical knowledge and they hardly ever contain practice. Through the process of mentoring new school principals receive support from a good model and experienced principal in the most troubled period of their professional life. This assistance is in the form of peer support and practice. It takes place in a real school environment. By this way the most problematic period of time in the profession is easily circumvented and some professional secrets which cannot be learned through pre-service and in-service training can be learned.In our country, mentoring model can be employed to train new school principals. A council called `Training Board of Directors for Educational Institutions? can be established in Personnel Department of Ministry of National Education. This council creates a mentoring program to train new school principals. By means of 'Mentor Board of Directors' in provincials and districts mentor principals are identified for new principals. Thus, more effective counseling and vocational guidance services may be provided for new school principals. As a result, implementation of mentoring model the effective, successful principals who are sought by today?s schools can be trained.Key Words: Mentor, Mentoring, A Mentoring Model For School Principals