Relationship between Mentor Teachers’ Mentoring Functions and Beginning Teachers’ Subjective Happiness

Abstract

According to the Turkish Ministry of National Education Teacher Appointment and Substitution regulation,beginning teachers are subjected to a training period for the first six months of their recruitment. This newlylaunched program aims to train beginning teachers through a master–apprentice relationship, which can bedefined as a mentoring program. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the level ofsubjective happiness of beginning teachers working at state schools and the mentoring functions their advisersperform with regard to various variables. Quantitative analysis was used, and the data were gathered throughthe Mentoring Functions scale, which was developed by Noe (1988) and the Subjective Happiness scale, developedby Lyubomirsky & Lepper (1999). The sample of the study included 171 beginning teachers from threedistricts of I stanbul province. Correlation and regression analysis revealed that there is a moderate, positive andsignificant relationship between the level of subjective happiness of trainee teachers and the level of mentoringfunctions their advisors perform. The mentoring functions the advisor teachers performed were found to be asignificant predictor of the level of subjective happiness of trainee teachers. For this reason, mentor selection,mentor–mentee match and other mentoring processes should be well structured.