This research — of a constructive-collaborative nature — seeks to answer the question: What is the contribuition of the development of teaching and learning experiences (TLEs) to the professional development of the participants (novice teachers and their mentors’) of the On-line Mentoring Program (OMP) at the Teachers Portal of the Federal University of São Carlos (www.portaldosprofessores.ufscar.br), Brazil? Its research goals are: 1.To describe and analyze the TLEs characteristics, contents, procedures and outcomes as a formative and investigative tool considering the professional development of novice and mentors participants of an OMP; 2. To understand how the TLEs, as structured situations planned by the mentors with each of their novices and implemented by the latter from themes suggested by them, contribute to the novices’ learning, construction of new knowledge and autonomy. This analysis may assist in planning formative and investigative tools to novice teachers’ career development in association with experienced teachers (mentors). The mentoring program in question is an on-line program aimed at elementary school teachers at the first grades with up to 5 years of experience. It was carried out by ten mentors coaching 42 novice teachers during 6 to 28 months. Its theoretical framework includes literature on teacher learning and professional development (Shulman 1986, 1987, Ball & Cohen 1999, Borko 2004), the first years of teaching (Grossman, Thompson & Valencia 2001, Van Zanten & Grospiron 2001), mentoring processes (Weiss & Weiss 1999, Wang & Odell 2002), reflection on pedagogical action (Hatton and Smith, 1995; Rodgers, 2002;El-Dib, 2007) and distance education (Marcelo 2002). We consider teacher learning and professional socialization as being founded on experiences lived by teachers and their modes of knowing, and are influenced by affective, ethical and performance factors. These are lifelong processes. The professional learning also occurs within the context of practice if one considers the dynamic nature of classrooms. It contributes to a knowledge base composed of a set of understandings, knowledge, skills and dispositions – needed for effective practice in specific teaching and learning situations of different types – that support teachers’ decision-making processes (Shulman, 1986, 1987). The continued teacher education programs - as mentorship - should be adapted to teachers’ specific needs and their teaching contexts. These programs characteristics entail collaboration, mutual understanding, consensus-building, democratic decision-making and common actions (Clark et al., 1996, 1998) and consenting to the coexistence of multiple ideas when signifying and building solutions to identified problems.

The research design adopted in this investigation can be characterized as action-research founded on constructive-collaborative strategies (Cole& Knowles, 1993). Its chief sources of data were: written communications between mentors and novice teachers, mentors’ and novice teachers’ reflexive journals, and reports on observations at weekly meetings between mentors and researchers. As it was assumed that this data comprised a set of narratives about the promoted processes, some analytical routines had to be established. Its investigation steps, data collection tools and analysis were defined by the researchers alone; the OMP activities were defined by the researchers and mentors whereas the TLEs by mentors and the novice teachers they supervise. The intervention was constructed jointly between researchers and mentors.

Results indicate that some novices worked more intensely with one TLE whereas others worked with more than one. The TLEs typifies a circumscribed process derived from real teaching problems lived by the novice teachers, implies actions of different natures on the part of both the mentors and novices, and can involve the latter’s students. Through TLEs it is possible to the novice teachers, to apprehend and expound their beliefs and carry out practical actions about diverse teaching aspects. They promote the development of individual and shared reflective processes (the novices alone, the novices and mentors, and the mentors and researchers). The TLEs work as an intervention and research tool because they allow the establishment of relations between theory and practice, the configuration and detailing of processes of professional development and reflection on the part of the mentors and novices as well as the production of conceptions about these processes.