This case study aims to explore the professional development experiences of two fourth–year student teachers (mentees) and their two cooperative school teachers (mentors) in the practicum component of English language teacher education program in a state university. The participants of this study have been doing their internship in their last year of pre- service education. They have been working with each other for a year which is a long time to explore the relationship between the mentors and the mentees. 

The inclusion of mentoring as a formal part of the teacher education programs dates back to 1980s (Hobson et al., 2009) and since then a considerable body of research has been conducted to investigate the practice of mentoring and mentored learning to obtain information on its nature, advantages, disadvantages, failures, roles of parties etc. (McIntyre, Hagger, &Wilkin, 1994).  In order to better understand the mentoring experience, the roles of the parties should be clear. Tomlinson (1995) states that mentor teachers have two major roles; (1) the coach, challenging and stimulating students’ motivation and commitment, (2) the facilitator, supporting teaching skills, including counseling. Mentee, on the other hand, is seen as a student who is expected to demonstrate what he has learnt by cooperatively working with his mentor in a reflective, supportive and constructivist atmosphere.

Recent studies on mentorship from schools in Turkey seem to reach conclusions that the significance of mentorship in teacher education programs should be underscored and mentorship has common problems and failures as well as benefits and gains. Ekiz (2006), in his study on mentorship, for example, concluded that communication between mentor and mentee in the mentoring experience is of upmost importance. Isıkoglu, Ivrendi, and Sahin (2007) reported similar findings in their study that pre-service teachers had trouble in building professional and fruitful relationships with their mentors. Such findings are not limited to mentor teachers; dissatisfaction of pre-service teachers with their supervisors at their universities has been reported in many recent studies (Gömleksiz, Mercin, Bulut, &Atan, 2006; Kiraz and Yıldırım, 2007).

With the purpose of gaining a deep understanding of the mentorship process in the practicum for pre-service English teachers  in Turkey, this qualitative case study seeks answers to the questions below: 

1)         How do pre-service EFL teachers  and the mentor teachers in the cooperating schools view mentorship experience?

a)         What do they think about the benefits and drawbacks of this mentorship experience?

b)         In what ways do they think the mentorship contributes to their professional development?

This is a qualitative case study, which takes its merit as social constructivism.  The case and the bounded system in the study involve the practicum component of the pre-service teacher education program in a state university in Ankara. In the practicum component our special focus is on the relationship between mentees and mentors, their learning experiences and the way these learning experiences foster professional development of two sides.

For the research purposes, the multiple case study design which is holistic (single-unit of analysis) was employed. The study involves four participants working at different sites. There are two different schools (High School A, High School B) and two teachers of English mentoring two pre-service teachers . Each mentee’s and mentor’s practicum experiences are unique so that each mentee and each mentor is considered as a significant single case for this study. Since the main aim is to understand and explore the learning experiences and professional development process of each participant, this study adopts a holistic perspective across the cases. 

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