Mentoring Challenges for the Development of Beginning Principals in Abia State School System

Abstract

This paper examined the challenge to the successful mentoring as a tool for the professional development of beginning principals. Two research questions were raised and one hypothesis was tested in the course identifying the challenges to successful mentoring in Abia schools. An 18-item instrument was used to collect data for the study. 601 mentors and mentees selected from a population of 1202 mentors and mentees constituted the sample for the study. Weighted mean was used to find answers to the research questions while z-test was used to test the hypothesis at a 0.05 level of confidence. Findings include mentors not having enough time to devote to mentoring, high mentor-mentee ratio constituted challenges to successful mentoring. No significant difference was found between mentors and mentees in their perception of challenges to successful mentoring. Recommendations include that mentors workload should be reduced to allow them have more time for mentoring, reduction of high mentor-mentee ratio by distributing mentees evenly to mentors.

Key Words: Mentoring, Principals, School System