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Mentoring Blended with Coaching:

A Recipe for Teacher Growth

By Amanda Steiner, Julie Bell, and Chris Wilcoxen

Coaching and mentoring are often thought of as separate practices, yet these approaches can
overlap. Through the use of vignettes, the authors highlight their personal experiences in these
roles and argue the best support comes from those who have the skills to both coach and
mentor simultaneously. Moreover, they assert it is the combination of the two approaches that
is ultimately powerful in helping beginning teachers find success in their practice and develop
as reflective practitioners. Furthermore, the authors assert that investments must be made in
providing coaches and mentors with tools and opportunities for professional learning to support
their growth in applying a blend of these practices with teachers.

he authors have been mentors, coaches, or both throughout our time as teachers
Tand teacher educators. Each author has been trained using different models;
however, together we have identified that our work overlaps in how we support
teachers’ growth. Based on this realization, we argue people can be both mentors and
coaches simultaneously. Both educative mentoring and various coaching practices
(e.g., instructional, cognitive, student-centered) are powerful, but they are only
effective if mentors and coaches know when and how to use them. With the right
training and tools, individuals can blend educative mentoring and various coaching
practices to help beginning teachers find success in their practice and help established
teachers develop as leaders.
We define the terms mentoring and coaching in light of vignettes that highlight
our personal experiences to suggest ways to blend educative mentoring and various
coaching practices to support beginning teachers. We also address the challenges
that educative mentors and coaches often face in furthering their own understanding
of how best to use mentoring and coaching practices and offer ideas to support
professional learning for mentors/coaches and the teachers with whom they work.

Defining Mentoring and Coaching
Mentoring
The term mentor first appeared in Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey in the form of
a character named Mentor, who advised Telemachus while his father, Odysseus, was
away (Little, 1990). Since then, people have typically understood mentors as people
with knowledge in a particular field who share their expertise with someone who has
less knowledge in the field (Roberts, 2000). This traditional type of expert-novice
mentoring took hold in education in the 1980s for both inservice and preservice
teachers (Feiman-Nemser, 1996). As Augustine-Shaw and Reilly (2017) cautioned,
traditional mentoring “consist[s] of buddy-like relationships” that “focus on the nuts
and bolts of the new role but lack robust components that have meaningful impact on
long-term development” (p. 53). These practices include acclimating to the school
culture and providing guidance in finding resources within the building (Langdon &
Ward, 2015; Wang et al., 2008).
Traditional mentoring may have some benefits for both mentors and mentees;
however, educative mentoring increases the chances that both parties will benefit from

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