Objective/Research Questions  `

The hierarchical multi- relational interactions and ideas mediated in schools are shown to perpetuate and give status to particular practices (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).  Numerous mentoring studies attest to this premise, confirming the dominance of practices that focus on the novice teachers’ socio-emotional needs and socialisation into the profession (e.g.Feiman-Nemser, 2012).  Such foci positively impacts on teacher retention but does not address the learning needs of noviciates in the current educational European and global context (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011).  A context in which the exponential social, technological and cultural changes makes teachers’ work more complex and societal expectations more demanding (Zuljan & Pozarnik, 2014).  In this regard mentoring to support the transition from preservice teacher to teacher becomes important, making timely the examination of how mentors build and adapt mentoring expertise to support novice teachers’ learning in ways that meet these complex demands.

While the extant literature shows that mentoring is central to the development of new teacher, both small and large scale studies (Bullough, 2012; Strong, 2009) indicate  fewer investigations have examined what mentors learn about themselves, their intentions and practice. In this two-year research project these concerns are addressed.  Investigated was the purpose, intentions and practices of two experienced and capable teacher/mentors as they engaged in an inquiry to build mentoring expertise.  Data sources were interrogated to determine:

• What preconceptions about mentoring teachers bring to their role as mentors
• How acquired knowledge and skills were reflected in mentors’ expressed intentions and in their professional conversations with mentees
• How the school organisations in which mentoring took place related to mentors’ learning. 

The objective was to gain insight into mentors’ professional learning and their ability to adapt their practice to the situation in hand. 

Theoretical Perspective

The work of teachers and mentors within the school system is conceptualised by numerous studies as complex (e.g. Radford, 2006).  Such complexity is characterised by interactions that are non-linear and multi-layered (Haggis, 2008) and it is within these individual multifaceted and relational schools that the work of mentors is nested.  Some studies afford evidence of the complexities of mentoring that leverage the quality of teachers’ practice (e.g Stanulis & Brondyk, 2013); and shed light on the complex knowledge base that mentors  require to effectively support novices teachers (e.g. Achinstein & Davis, 2014).  Fundamental to transforming this complex mentoring knowledge base to leverage practice are the professional conversations that occur between the mentor and mentee (Hennissen, Crasborn, Brouwer, Korthagen, & Bergen, 2008; Orland-Barak & Hasin, 2010).  Yet little is known about the learning experienced and changes that mentors undergo as a consequence of these conversations and their professional roles.

To provide a framework to think about the learning that occurred for these experienced mentors I draw upon the interaction of key components of teachers’ expertise development:  assessment, needs and the context that nests learning (Alexander, Schallert, & Reynolds, 2009).  Moreover, I was interested in the balance adopted by mentors between efficiency and adaptive oriented approaches to learning.  For example, expected was that a mentor strongly oriented toward efficiency would exhibit “functionally-fixed” behaviours; but be less adaptive in their practice (Ericsson, 1996).  In contrast, the mentor oriented toward adaptive expertise would be more likely to expand their ideas and knowledge and be more open to “changing cherished ideas and belief (Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & Page, 2005, p. 49).  Further, in order to understand mentor learning we need to understand more about why some mentors transform their practice more than others.

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