How could the Match the Mentor platform contribute to breaking the isolation that many teachers feel in their schools, despite being surrounded by teachers?  

Time and full schedules, plus meetings and administrative work, prevent teachers from exchanging views, helping each other, organising themselves, discussing and exploring innovative methodologies in teaching in order to contribute to better student learning and performance.  

One of the most common ways in which they come into contact with the latest, tested and recognised innovative strategies and methodologies is through attending training courses, which they often do because of career requirements rather than deliberate initiative.  

This article will attempt to consider whether networks, when developing collaborative professional development activities, are more effective than more traditional models.OECD’s report finds that involvement in a “professional development network” ranks high as regards the perceived impact on teachers’ professional development (OECD, 2009). Moreover, the same study points out that “informal dialogue to improve teaching” is mentioned as the most common activity for professional development (participation rate of over 90%) and teachers report that it has a moderate or high level of impact on their professional development. 

The following question is: what if we go further in what are teacher networks and involve them in a social network, where the teacher looks for a mentor and the mentor is available to interact with the teacher? 

Casa do Professor presented at the 3rd Panhellenic Scientix EU Conference, which was held on the 23rd, 24th and 25th of September, in Greece the video that briefly explain how the pilot platform works.  The conference was organized by the Ελεύθερο Λογισμικό / Λογισμικό Ανοιχτού Κώδικα and European Schoolnet (a consortium of thirty ministries of education based in Brussels) and is under the auspices of the Ministry of Education & Religion. The goal of the conference is to provide an opportunity for educators, students and professionals who support STEM to interact and share their experience and knowledge of implementing innovative educational practices for STEM education.  

Let’s look at the pilot platform created by the LOOP Project Consortium and the other videos created by Casa the Professor as well with the guidelines how to register on the platform as a teacher and as a mentor. 

Match the Mentor – Teachers helping teachers 

What are the advantages?  

It enables the creation of new synergies that can be developed in a community that is created between mentors and mentees, enabling cooperation, mutual help and the easy and convenient sharing of content. 

But what are the risks? 

We will listen to some teachers from the LOOP community by organising two Unconferences, before the lauching of the Plataform Match the Mentor:  

• LOOP Tea Talks, 1st edition by Casa do Professor (held on 26/10/2022). 
• LOOP Tea Talks, 2nd edition by Aspeso Colégio João Paulo II (scheduled for November 2023) 

First analyse of this results in december 2022: 

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After the official launch of the Match the Mentor platform, and after a 3-month period of preparation and implementation of the piloting of the platform in the LOOP project partner schools, there will be two more unconferences, the 3rd and 4th edition of the LOOP Tea Talks, in which it will be possible to discuss the results of the piloting and the suggestions for improvement made by the teachers.  

Finally, after improving the functionalities and enriching the platform with regard to resources and the training programme for mentors and its implementation, all the participants of the previous sessions will be involved in two final sessions. Do not forget that this group of teachers (mentors and less experienced) will have privileged access to the private community of the Match the Mentor platform so that they can follow all the work, having an external, impartial and unbiased look at the resources created by the consortium.  

Finally, it is worth mentioning that there will be space at the International Conference for sharing this external teacher’s vision at the various editions of the LOOP Tea Talks.