E-mentoring of rural teacher leaders in Indonesia: Psycho-social support and the paradox of accessibility

Teacher leadership has emerged as a key strategy for accelerating school quality improvement. Scholars in this field are calling for more structured professional development and mentoring opportunities to enhance teacher leadership development. In Indonesia, the Pendidikan Guru Penggerak (PGP) initiative was established in 2021 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (MoECRT) to prepare teachers for leadership roles. The PGP includes a six-month online course, workshops, experiential activities, and e-mentoring to shape teachers into teacher leaders in their respective schools. While the online modality is accessible for teachers in urban areas, those in rural schools face significant geographical and infrastructure barriers which restrict their participation. These barriers to mentorship of rural teacher leaders, however, have remained under-explored. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, this study explored the experiences of a mentor and three rural mentees during their participation in the e-mentoring phase of PGP. Two-phased semi-structured interviews and a written prompt were employed to obtain understanding of the experience. The data was analysed using thematic analysis, resulting in four interconnected themes: 1) leading peers is quite demanding, but e-mentoring helps; 2) safe and practice-oriented interactions in digital space; 3) frequent yet flexible communications amidst conflicting schedules; and 4) navigating access inequity in rural schools. From these findings, it is evident that e-mentoring in leadership prioritises fulfilling mentees’ psycho-social needs and that the flexibility of e-mentoring presents improved accessibility while paradoxically poses challenges to mentoring practice and rural teacher leaders’ work-family balance. Theoretically, this study contributes to the largely unexplored field of e-mentoring in leadership and in rural contexts by illuminating the way in which teacher leaders are externally supported through e-mentoring. Practically, this study provides an important perspective on sustained online professional development of underserved educators which may prove to be beneficial for future leadership development practice.