Who mentors the mentors? Early childhood music educators as mentors and the professional learning and development of generalist practitioners

The majority of early childhood practitioners in England receive little or no initial training in how to work in music with young children. To remedy this deficit, mentoring schemes place expert early childhood music educators to work alongside generalist practitioners. A review of literature revealed that little attention has been given to the processes of mentoring in early childhood music education. We invited a team of specialist music educators who had been involved in mentoring to participate in focus group discussions and found that, while they recognised the importance of interpersonal skills for music mentoring, they were less able to elucidate the content and processes of mentoring.