Our study addresses the enactments of teacher education policies in the field of mentoring. The empirical base of this paper represents ongoing research, exploring pedagogical discourses in the pre-service teacher practicum in Norway. The study draws on video material consisting of cooperating teachers’ feedback conversations and their collegial assessment dialogues (n 35), as well as questionnaires from cooperating teachers and pre-service teachers (n 400). Our theoretical base elaborates and regenerates Bernstein’s conceptual framework of recontextualisation, applying ‘refraction’ and ‘diffraction’ (Stray, 2017, p.19 & 162). ‘Diffraction’, in this study, points to “shadow practices” generated by a conflict of interests (e.g. discursive) between central policies and local cultures and contexts, or teachers’ professional beliefs and deliberate courses of action (agencies). Diffraction obscures transparency between the level of policy and practice. Unlike diffractive “waves” of policy, ‘refraction’ expresses an effort on local levels to implement central policies, but within the limits of the local cultural and historical context, and in accordance with teachers’ professional beliefs and autonomy. Refraction is characterised by a larger degree of openness between policy and practice. This particular reconceptualisation provides us with a more nuanced view and a stronger emphasis on agency and policy enactments in the empirical analysis (opening up to e.g. poststructural and posthumanist perspectives). Studies have shown discordance between academic discourses found in teacher education and discourses present in pre-service teacher practicum. The latter appears more influenced by trainability-, therapy- and self-development philosophy (Jensen, 2016; Svanes & Skagen, 2017). In this paper, we question: “How are formal policies of teacher education enacted in the assessment and feedback of cooperating teachers in pre-service teacher practicum?” In line with former studies (Jensen, 2016, Skagen 2017) our data illuminates a therapeutic, trainability discourse interwoven in the mentoring of pre-service teachers. In cases where the therapeutic trainability rhetoric appears to be strong, we find that academic aspects of students’ performances are more or less shadowed by the cooperate teachers’ assessments discourses – diffracting the formal policies into a periphery position of attention (Bernstein, 2001). A different pattern of enactment is however seen in cases where the cooperating teachers explicitly apply the formal requirement-policies of teacher education, as a guiding framework for assessment. Here, the therapeutic discourses gain lesser ground – illuminating a process of refraction rather than diffraction of the formal policies – making the position of the academic discourses and therapeutic discourses more equally balanced.

Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Bernstein, B. (2001). From Pedagogies to Knowledges. In A. Morais, I. Neves, B. Davies, & H. Daniels (Eds.), Towards A Sociology of Pedagogy. The Contribution of Basil Bernstein to Research. New York: Peter Lang. Jensen, A. R. (2016). Veiledningsritualet: en dialektisk studie av formaliserte veiledningssamtaler i lærerutdanningens praksisperiode. Universitetet i Agder, Fakultet for humaniora og pedagogikk, Institutt for pedagogikk, Kristiansand. Ministry of Education and Research. (2018, April 24). Teacher Education 2025.National Strategy for Quality and Cooperation in Teacher Education. [Plan]. Retrieved January 25, 2019, from https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/larerutdanningene-2025.-nasjonal-strategi-for-kvalitet-og-samarbeid-i-larerutdanningene/id2555622/ Stray, I. E. (2017). Teachers’ ways in times of fluidity; Idiosyncratic cultural responses to global educational reform movements. University of Agder. Retrieved from https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/handle/11250/2473529 Svanes, I. K., & Skagen, K. (2017). Connecting feedback, classroom research and Didaktik perspectives. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(3), 334–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2016.1140810