Research Questions

A mentoring dyad is regarded as one of the most common and influential forms of interaction in teacher education, both pre and in-service (Bullough, 2005). The purpose of the dyadic interaction is to promote a learning process, primarily that of the mentee (Orland-Barak & Klein, 2005). The vast body of research on learning in mentoring dyads in teacher education has focused on the mentor's side. The current study took a different perspective, hardly accounted for to date, that of the mentees. Drawing on the premise that positioning processes constitute an important aspect of learning from more experienced individuals (Dennen, 2007), we examined mentees' positioning processes and their relations to other aspects of learning in a mentoring dyad. The study question was two fold. We examinedhow student teachers position themselves and their mentor while learning from the mentor; and what other aspects of learning that pertain to the mentor-student teachers' interactions are related to these positioning processes and how.

Theoretical Framework

Positioning Processes - Defining the Term 'Positioning'

The concept of positioning refers to ways in which people assign parts for themselves or for others during social interactions (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999). In an attempt to provide a pragmatic definition of the term positioning, we drew on the model of positioning triad (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999). According to positioning theory, positioning processes can be understood as a triad between three interconnected elements: positions, speech acts, and storylines.In our study, we identified positions by the metaphors (Allen & Wiles, 2013) that student teachers used when they were referring to themselves and the mentor. We identified speech acts as patterns of utterances (Austin, 1962) (the student teachers' and the mentor's) that expressed or constructed student teachers' positions during mentoring conversations. We also considered body language as non-verbal social forces that might express or construct positions (Harre & Van Langenhove, 1999). We identified storylines as typical narratives (Allen & Wiles, 2013) of student teachers about mentor-mentee relationships, themselves as teachers, and mentoring. We also attended to the duties and rights that we assumed would be conferred by each of the three elements and reflect differences in power and authority (Bullough, 2005; Harre & Van Langenhove, 1999).

Mentoring Dyads

The few studies that have related to dyadic learning of student teachers from their side have suggested, for example, that student teachers' responses to the mentors and their initiations of topics for conversation influence the outcomes of mentoring conversations (Strong & Baron, 2004). Other studies have suggested that student teachers' views of mentoring impact the ways in which student teachers relate to their learning from the mentors (Hobson, 2002). Studies which have related to novice teachers' learning from mentors have suggested that the extent to which mentoring can promote such learning is largely determined by the expectations of both the mentor and the novice teachers, as well as by novices' conceptions of selves-as-teachers (Bullough, 2005).

Such studies have related to what we might refer to as fragmented parts of a broader positioning process that, to the best of our knowledge, has not yet been given appropriate attention. By fragmented we mean that, for example, in positioning terms, student teachers' views of mentoring constitute part of  mentees' storyline, and mentees' responses during mentoring conversations constitute part of their speech acts; it is yet to be investigated how they are related to other aspects of positioning, and what other aspects of learning are related to positioning processes. Our study probed into these questions by investigating student teachers' positioning of selves and their mentor in the process of their learning from the mentor. 

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