Designing a Mentoring Pattern for School Principals in Tehran Province

Mentoring in educational environments including schools can improve educational performance. As a result, the present research was conducted with the aim of designing a mentoring pattern for school principals in Tehran province. 

The present research in terms of purpose and implementation method was applied and cross-sectional from type of quantitative, respectively. The research population was school principals in Tehran province in the academic years of 2021-2, which according to the structural equation modeling method, the sample size was considered 320 people. The samples were selected by multi-stage cluster random sampling method and answered the 81questions of research-made questionnaire of mentoring for school principals. The data obtained from the implementation of the researcher-made questionnaire of mentoring for school principals were analyzed with the methods of exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in SPSS version 23 and Lisrel version 8.8. 

In this study a number of 4 questionnaires were left out due to defects and analyzes were done for 316 people. The findings of exploratory factor analysis showed that mentoring for school principals in Tehran province had 81 items in the 16 components and 2 dimensions. The dimensions were included of mentoring for school principals (with 9 components of knowledge, attitude, skills, participation-oriented, focus, organization, support, educational leadership and educational communication) and the consequences of mentoring (with 7 components of developing intrinsic skills, developing technical skills, developing communication skills, developing environmental skills, innovative performance, competitive performance and educational performance). Also, the factor loading of the components of mentoring for school principals was higher than 0.40 and their reliability with the combined method was calculated higher than 0.80. The results of structural equation modeling showed that mentoring pattern for school principals in Tehran province had a good fit and mentoring for school principals had a direct and significant impact on all 7 mentoring outcomes, including the developing intrinsic skills, developing technical skills, developing communication skills, developing environmental skills, innovative performance, competitive performance and educational performance (P<0.05). 

The mentoring pattern of the present study for school principals in Tehran province has many practical Implications for the officials and involved in the education system, and they based on the mentioned model can take important and effective steps through the identified dimensions and components to improve the mentoring of school principals.