Leader Developers: Perspectives of Mentor Principals in an Administrator Preparation Program

Principal preparation programs use various components to develop candidates, including course work, core assessments, and field-based internships or practicums. The internship represents an exceptionally high leverage learning opportunity (Lochmiller, 2014). The success of the internship depends highly on the abilities of a mentor via informal instructional supervision. Mette (2020) explains that supervision has a potential transformational quality. As a result, in a time when most principals are overwhelmed and many are signaling their departure from the principalship (“NASSP Study Signals,” 2021), it is imperative to develop a practice, drawn from theory, that transforms aspiring school leaders into knowledgeable and skillful leaders. Moreover, we posit that this transformational practice should be located in the mentors who serve as instructional supervisors for aspiring leaders. For the purposes of this study, we align with Glanz’ (2018) conceptualization of supervision as collaborative, democratic and specifically targeted to assist teachers in improving teaching and learning practices. Our study explores mentorships in a university principal preparation program through the mentor’s perspective. We interviewed a sample of mentors nominated as effective by peer and program informants. Our study offers insights into how reputable principal mentors conceive of their role in the mentorship process. We learned that mentors were deliberate in developing three specific skills -metacognitive ability, developmental efficacy, and learning-oriented goal setting. Mentor principals described these three elements as paramount to master before becoming a principal. We discuss implications for principal preparation programs to use mentors as informal instructional supervisors and develop highly effective school principals.