Wellbeing and Mentoring

Project overview

Research informs us that teachers’ psychological wellbeing is associated with greater job satisfaction, intent to remain in teaching, and the quality of teaching (Harrison et al., 2023; Maricuțoiu et al., 2023). It is therefore crucial to provide systems and processes that support the wellbeing of teachers at their start of their career, particularly early-career teachers (ECTs).

The mentoring support received by ECTs is an integral aspect of their professional experience that plays a significant role in their wellbeing (Dreer, 2021). However, one common critique of ECT mentoring approaches and programmes, is that they sometimes focus heavily on the assessment and judgment aspects of mentoring, at the expense of pastoral aspects (Hardman et al., 2020).

In a recent evaluation of the Early Career Framework programme in England, key areas identified as needing improvement included the support available for ECTs’ wellbeing, and mentors’ confidence in providing this support (Institute for Employment Studies and BMG Research, 2025). Given that mentors have very limited capacity for additional workload, expecting them to provide additional wellbeing support could be unrealistic unless the programme itself were changed to allow this capacity.

At NIoT we are trialling some adaptations to our ECT Year 1 mentoring programme, with a view to answering the following questions:

1. How do Year 1 ECTs rate their levels of wellbeing, teaching satisfaction, and mentoring support at three timepoints during the academic year?
2. Does a period of focusing mentoring away from assessment and judgment—and instead toward wellbeing and the mentor/mentee relationship—benefit ECTs’ perceptions of their wellbeing, teaching satisfaction, workload, and mentoring effectiveness?
3. Does a period of focusing mentoring away from assessment and judgment—and instead toward wellbeing and the mentor/mentee relationship—benefit mentors’ perceptions of workload, and mentoring effectiveness?
4. How do ECTs subjectively experience and appraise such an intervention?

Project Advisory Groups [PAGs] involve independent stakeholders offering expert guidance and strategic input for the study. Members have been selected to reflect a range of expertise relevant to the project focus. If you are interested in more information on the role or formation of PAGs, or feel you have relevant expertise to participate in one in the future, please get in touch with us at [email protected].

Project Advisory Group

• Prof Qing Gu OBE, Professor of Leadership in Education and Director of UCL Centre for Educational Leadership, UCL Institute of Education
• Dr Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, Senior Lecturer (Psychology & Neuroscience Education Hub), University of Glasgow
• Rebecca Lillington, Director of PLI and South Birmingham SCITT, Summit Learning Trust
• Roisin McEvoy, Head of Training and National Programmes, Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
• Simon Parton, Associate Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University
• Richard Sutton, ECT Mentor and Head of Geography, Hitchin Girls’ School

Project team

• Dr. Clare Copper, Research Fellow, NIoT
• Martin Dickens, ECF Faculty Manager, NIoT
• Rosie Jonas, Content Designer, NIoT
• Yamini Almal, Research Assistant, NIoT
• Sophie Duckworth, Content Designer, NIoT
• Dr. Rob Nash, Head of Psychological Research, NIoT