NEED OF MENTORING TO ENHANCE THE TEACHING SKILLS OF NEWLY INDUCTED TEACHERS AT PRIMARY LEVEL IN DISTRICT SWAT

The study undertaken is descriptive in nature. The study attempts to clarify the concept of mentor in the system of education and explores the modus-operandi of this system with a view to promote awareness among teachers. The objectives of the study were: to define the term mentoring and introduce it in education system; to bring out the attributes of Mentors with regards to their professional responsibilities; to develop professional skills of prospective and newly recruited teachers with the help to proposed strategy; to convince teachers to adopt best practices of teaching; and to give suggestions and recommendations for the improvement of the study. The key questions of the study were: what is the current status of mentoring in district Swat?; what‘s the importance and benefit of mentoring in local as well as global prospective?; what implementable strategy does the study propose for introducing mentoring in teacher education at primary level?; and what recommendations does the study make for implementation of the proposed strategy? The study found out that there was a dire need to introduce mentoring mechanism in main stream of education at primary level in district Swat Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Many gaps were found which included lack of proper mentoring system, need of professional support to the several prospective teachers, poor performance of supervisors in the field and lack of opportunity to explore career. There was no formal system of mentoring in vogue in primary system of education at Government level. Similarly, in response to the second question, the importance of mentoring in education system was brought home to the stakeholders on the basis of review of literature in local and global perspective.