The effects of pedagogical mentoring and coaching on primary school teachers’ professional development practices and students’ learning engagements in classrooms in Oromia regional state: implications for professionalism

The study examined the effects of pedagogical mentoring and coaching on teachers’ professional development practices and students’ learning engagements in classrooms. The study employed mixed approach with concurrent triangulation design. The researcher selected samples of the study using availability, stratified and simple random sampling techniques. The researcher collected data using questionnaires, interviews, observation and document examination, and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, and narration. The mentoring practices improved teachers’ basic professional competencies (R2 =.2437 at p >.05). This contributed to students’ learning engagements (R2 =.1101 at p >.05). The coaching practices improved specific competency development (R2 =.1851 at p >.05). This contributed to students’ learning engagements (R2 =.0971 at p >.05). Mentoring and coaching practices occurred against plan-do-study-act-evaluation paths. These practices partially improved newly deployed teachers’ emotional safety, wellbeing and innovative pedagogical competencies of experienced teachers. Therefore, the qualities of mentoring and coaching should be enhanced through face-to-face interactions and E-leaning strategies. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.