Hean, Lim Lee. (2005). Leadership Mentoring in Education: The Singapore Practice. Reviewed by Ruth Rees, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Hean, Lim Lee. (2005). Leadership Mentoring in Education: The Singapore Practice. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Academic. Pp. xv + 109 ISBN 981 210 4-1 1 Reviewed by Ruth Rees Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada April 2, 2006 This short book reveals what 41 secondary school principals in Singapore have learned about educational management through their compulsory mentoring experiences with practicing principals while on their school-based practicum. In Singapore, vice-principals who have been identified as future principals must attend a one-year Diploma in Educational Administration (DEA) program at Nanyang Technological Institute’s National Institute of Education (NIE). Part of that program is for the candidates to do an eight-week practicum, observing and learning from their mentor, the on-site principal. Forty-one principals who went through the program from one to twelve years prior were selected for the study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with these principals, and their responses comprise the major part of this book. Five research questions guided the research, and are quoted from page 5 of the text: What aspects of school management are perceived by the protégés to have been learned through mentoring and are put into practice? What aspects of school management are perceived by the protégés to have been learned through mentoring but are not put into practice? What are the other sources from which the protégés gain their learning? What aspects of school management are perceived by the protégés to have been learned outside mentoring and are put into practice? What aspects of school management are perceived by the protégés to have been learned outside mentoring but are not put into practice? In response to the first question, the protégés indicated that they learned about five different categories: about the practice of leading, the practice of monitoring, the practice of training and developing staff, the practice of planning and organizing administrative tasks, and the practice of relating to the external environment. Regarding the practice of leading, they learned about: relating with (or to?) people, providing direction and setting expectations, consulting and developing ownership of decisions, trusting and empowering, and acting visibly. Regarding the practice of monitoring, a term that was not defined in the text, the participants recognized two types of monitoring: monitoring by exception and monitoring informally. From their mentors, the protégés learned how to train staff and particularly the department heads through professional development activities, and learned how to plan and organize administrative tasks, such as finances. Finally, they learned how to relate to people outside the school – the general public, church leaders, the press, and, of course, parents. Fewer responses came from participants about the management practices they learned as protégés through mentoring but that they have not put into practice. The author has identified three main categories: abusing authority, organizing in order to meet specific needs, and using religion to provide some direction. The first category, abusing authority, was described by mentors being insensitive, monitoring insufficiently, being dictatorial, not developing their staff sufficiently, and projecting an unprofessional image. The second category, organizing in order to meet specific needs, was broken down into principals implementing extra programs and organizing context-specific administrative procedures. Interesting, this second question generated both negative (abuse of authority) and non-routine responses, while the first research question led to only positive responses. The participants acknowledged that they did learn from sources outside mentoring. They indicated that they learned from their colleagues mainly (either in the same university cohort or other principals), from past experiences in schools where they had positions of responsibility, from their on-the-job experiences when they were practicing principals, from courses (inclusive of workshops, conferences, seminars, briefings and training sessions), from the professional literature, and few from their immediate supervisor (either the inspectors of schools, or the schools’ reporting officers). In response to research question four, outside mentoring the participants learned about the practice of seeking information or advice, and some planning from their colleagues. From past experiences and on-the-job experiences, they indicated that they learned similar aspects to that which they learned from research question one. Two new responses came from on-the-job learning: one person reported that s/he learned how to win over a reluctant staff member, and another person indicated learning about staff performance appraisal. Surprisingly, only as few as seven of the participants indicated their Diploma in Educational Administration program as a source from which they learned from. These seven responded that from this program/course, they had learned about networking, planning, and managing change. Through other courses and professional literature, fourteen, double the previous responses, mentioned that they were continually developing themselves in order to maintain their currency and avoid problems. The four who commented that they learned from supervisors said they learned about managing by exception. Slightly more than half (28) of the respondents indicated that they learned some management practices from outside the mentoring which they had not put into practice. More than half of these indicated some form of abuse of authority: acting insensitively, being dictatorial, and avoiding problem solving. One other said that a principal tried to impose his/her religion on others. Inspiring principals learn both positive and negative attributes about being a principal, and from within and outside of a mentoring program. While these findings are interesting and somewhat informative, particularly for the Singapore context, much remains unanswered. One, specifics of the candidates and their mentors are scarce. For example, how many candidates have gone through the one-year program in the last fifteen years since the program’s inception? How many are women and men? How many are now practicing secondary principals? How were the practicum placements chosen? What were the experiences of the mentors to qualify them to act as mentors? Was it to prepare them for their work with these in-service candidates? How much involvement did the faculty members from NIE have during the eight-week practicum? What were the genders of the mentors, and how did this matching take place? What preparation/instruction were the candidates given prior to their practicum regarding the role of their mentors? Moreover, from the included bibliography, the mentoring component as part of the DEA program in Singapore is reasonably well documented. Yet little description was provided by the author. Accordingly, there is no context for much of the comments, with the result that this is more of an in-house document than a self-contained research document. A few paragraphs about the principals’ program (the DEA program) and how the practicum fitted into that program would enhance the writing considerably, in my opinion. From my knowledge of the DEA program, learning about change and the management of change was a major component of that program. Yet, in the responses to research question four, why then would only seven (of the possible 41) mention that change component? I am surprised that the bibliography was so dated. Indeed, the majority of the references are from the mid-nineties. Very few (I counted two) references not including statistics from Singapore, are from the 21st century. This would lead me to surmise that the literature review was undertaken some time ago, or based upon some earlier work. I’d suggest that the literature be reviewed and updated to reflect some of the more current practices on mentoring. Another concern that I have is that the interview guide is referred to throughout the writing, yet it was not included in the book. How were the questions developed? Were they field-tested? Even, how long did the interviews take? Where did the interviews occur? Chapter three, the typical methodology chapter of any research document, is surprisingly sparse. I am surprised that so little information is available in the methodology chapter. Moreover, while the findings relate to the five research questions, it is impossible to determine how many of the questions in the interview guideline addressed each of the questions. Furthermore, while I like the dichotomy of learning through and outside mentoring, I am puzzled by how or if that distinction can be clearly made. Presumably, the researcher is seeking answers to strictly the formal mentoring that these 38 now principals were involved protégés several years before. I am somewhat surprised that they, being very busy and often-times stressed individuals, could even remember the details of their practicum to that degree. Could not these participants have been involved in multiple mentoring experiences, both as protégés and as mentors, during the intervening years, and in both formal and informal relationships? How might these situations have contaminated the data in some way? The protégés reported that they learned things inside the mentoring program that were not necessarily positive or even appropriate for a school principal. Yet how were these individuals chosen as mentors in the first place? Could they be mentors year after year and hence impact potentially more than one of the participants? Was any caution taken to ensure that of the 38 participants, they were referring to 38 unique mentors? How could this finding impact upon the mentor-protégé program? I found it difficult to tease out the number of responses to each research question and to the different categories of responses. I’d suggest that every research question be summarized by a table, so that the number of responses is explicit. If, for example, half of these ‘findings’ are from individual responses, the findings may be considered less meaningful and demand a much larger sample for a follow up investigation. Hence, I end with a query that I raised earlier on in this review: how many people have gone through the DEA program who are now (from one to fifteen years later) principals in Singaporean schools? Moreover, how many enter the program each year? Even these "simple" questions deserve responses, and a research report such as this one should have been forthcoming with such data. To be more useful, however, the text should have included the interview schedule. About the Reviewer Ruth Rees, PhD Professor of Education Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada Dr. Ruth Rees is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. She is a research-practitioner, carrying out research in educational leadership in order to contribute to more effective leadership practices. She teaches in both the BEd and graduate programs in Education, and is the Director of the Principals' Qualifications Program that is provincially mandated for those educators whose goal is to be a vice-principal or principal in a public school in Ontario. She is also working with three Institutes of Education in the People's Republic of China to assist in the development of leaders of schools there. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.