Technological innovations in higher education institutions are changing the conception of the traditional face-to-face teacher education and mentoring relations. E-mentoring is a one such approach. Even though online mentoring has some clear benefits in its flexibility and capacity to reach across geographic contexts, there are also limitations to the level of support that can be provided. Group mentoring is another approach that transforms the traditional one-on-one mentoring relationship. The purpose of this study is to explore the integration of content area reading instruction with domain knowledge in social studies education within an Online Mentoring Model. The platform used for the delivery of the e-mentoring program is an open source course management system and a web based portal developed by the department of Educational Technology at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Hermeneutic Phenomenology has been employed as the researchers have examined the roles of the mentors and mentees, the nature of communication between the mentors and mentees, and ways of content area strategies exchanged via the online environment. Instructors from literacy education and social studies education mentored a pair of preservice and inservice elementary school social studies teachers in an online supported content area literacy course. Within the study's multilevel mentoring design, the inservice social studies teacher also mentored the preservice partner in a series of seven social studies lessons that required integrating research-based literacy strategies with subject matter content. Habermas’ concept of communicative action and Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital have been employed throughout the data analysis. Habermas identifies communicative action as “a circular process in which the actor is two things in one: an initiator, who masters situations through actions for which he is accountable, and a product of the transitions surrounding him, of groups whose cohesion is based on solidarity to which he belongs, and of processes of socialization in which he is reared” (p.135). Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital refers broadly to resources that are gained by individuals through formal or informal educational experiences. These two concepts has been used to answer to the following main research question: How did an online mentoring model both facilitate and limit participants’ attempts to integrate strategies from content area literacy instruction with the understanding of the domain knowledge of social studies education?

The use of language in the process of interpretive inquiry is best explored through a combination of the two modes of inquiry. The modes are merged into what Van Manen (1990) calls "hermeneutic phenomenology" (p. 6). Hermeneutic phenomenology is a philosophy of the individual pursuing understanding through language, fundamentally writing (Van Manen, 1990). The language provides personal insight, and personal insight raises wise thinking and tact (Van Manen, 1990). Beginning data analysis was directly influenced by the main research question, since the phenomenological inquiry tends to response to the research questions and data at hand. Data were thematized through the common qualitative practice of coding in order to attach relevant labels to segments of the data sources. Both deductive and inductive coding occurred as fieldnotes, transcripts and documents were reviewed and labeled with both codes relating to focus of the research questions and codes that emerged from the data.

The dynamic and communicative nature of the social field of an online course in content area literacy instruction transforms the relations between mentors and mentees and sometimes develops misrecognitions in preservive and inservice teachers understanding of content area strategies. These findings in turn suggest implications for teacher educators and content area reading instructors who endeavor to integrate the cultural capital of literacy instruction into a range of disciplinary capitals. The way these capitals are valued and communicated in educational social fields is consequential for teaching and teacher education. By examining the forms of communication and capital and how they are valued in the social fields of classrooms, both real and virtual, we see potential for understanding and more effectively aligning capitals made available to preservice teachers. By exploring the way courses are established as social fields and how actions communicate, we can design courses that support capitals more effectively.