Being a “Mentor”: A Study on the Contributions of Experienced Teachers to the Development of Beginning Teachers

Abstract

In this text, we address issues related to the beginning of the teaching career, exploring mentoring as an important support in this initial phase of teaching practice. Understanding the relevance of the process of initiation to the teaching profession, we seek to emphasize the relationship between experienced teachers and beginners, considering the involvement between these professionals as a valuable way to overcome the adversities of this initial moment. The research is methodologically based on narratives and multiple case studies, bringing the experiences of a group of nine teachers working in early childhood education in a city in the interior of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (a country that does not have a national professional teaching induction program and has few local initiatives of this type), and from them, we seek to reflect and dialogue with some authors who discuss the theme, among them, Marcelo, Nóvoa, and Reali et al.. In this way, we show that the relationships built between experienced and novice teachers were vital for their permanence in the profession and contributed immensely to their professional development, even in the absence of a formal and official mentoring program.

Received: 3 June 2025 | Revised: 23 October 2025| Accepted: 11 December 2025

Conflicts of Interest 
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement 
The data that support this work are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. 

Author Contribution Statement
Débora Nascimento de Lima: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Amanda Oliveira Rabelo: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.