‘We felt transformed’: a mentoring program for university English teachers in China

ABSTRACT This article explores a mentoring program for English language teachers at a university in China. At the end of the program, the teachers and mentor reported feeling transformed and set out to investigate what was transformative about their experiences by writing final reflections. Then, the teachers and mentor became the researchers, and using a case study approach, examined the reflections for mentions of change, noting themes that emerged. They also drew on other data sources in order to understand and describe these transformative elements. Four elements identified in the literature, reflection, ownership, collaboration, and personalization, emerged in a way that was customized to the group. Two additional elements also emerged, empowering encouragement and bridging the gap between theory and practice. Both the tweaking and adding of elements led to some lessons for teachers and mentors and the observation that the form of professional development is not as important as its transformative style.