Attitudes towards staff mentoring by senior leaders of a College of Education in Ghana

ABSTRACT Ten interviews of senior leaders gave a clear picture about what they considered mentoring should be in a College of Education in Ghana – a coaching model of directive instruction and a hierarchical transfer of skills and knowledge. While mentoring was viewed as a central part of a training teacher’s course, funds, attitudes and workload did not allow for in-house mentoring of staff. These findings are discussed with observations of how gender and religious cultural expectation affected the responses of the senior leaders and how the management structure at the college may be inhibiting it from implementing a system of mentoring. This paper was written as a collaboration between educational lecturers in Ghana and the UK and brings a global perspective on the situation. It concludes with recommendations to managers of educational institutions to implement a mentoring structure and widen the definition of what it means to be a mentor.