School placements have increasingly become a cornerstone of European programmes of teacher education (Canea, 2014). Most of these placements opt for a triadic mentoring model designed around multiple interactions between the student teacher, cooperating teacher (or mentor) and teacher educator, all charged with the task of developing appropriate modes of collaboration. The idea is that extended school placements will allow student teachers to connect coursework to teaching practice, integrate their subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, and help them overcome the apprenticeship of observation. However, recent research has shown that the high expectations of triadic mentoring for student teachers’ learning and development are not always realized in practice. One issue that invariably comes up, is the consequences of asymmetrical power relations in mentoring practices often found in the interactions between the teacher educator and the mentor (a.o. Christie, 2014; Orland-Barak, 2016; Veal & Rikard, 1998). Student teachers often “sit in the middle” (Bullough & Draper, 2004, p. 408), trying to handle conflicting demands in order to secure manageable working relationships and a positive grade (e.g., Ben-Harush & Orland-Barak, 2019; Lillejord & Borte, 2016). While we support the call for more research into the power dynamics in/of mentoring triads, we challenge the implicit assumption in the mentoring literature (and to some extent also mentoring practice) that the absence of such power dynamics necessarily provides a stimulating learning context for student teachers. This paper seeks to uncover the (missed) opportunities to learn in triadic mentoring, starting from an extended case-study of two seemingly ‘harmonious’ triads.

Theoretically, this study starts from a discursive approach to mentoring, acknowledging that learning is mediated through participation in ongoing discursive processes that cross micro-, meso- and macro-scale social life (Anderson, 2009). Conducting analyses of learning from a discursive approach involves an analytical focus on actual mentoring practice (Bruneel & Vanassche, 2021). That is, learning in mentoring is not conceptualized as a function of the individually competent mentor or teacher educator, but as a relational accomplishment, realized at a particular moment in time, in a particular socio-structural context. We align with Greeno and Gresalfi (2008) who consider opportunities to learn as “the emerging patterns in the opportunities that an individual takes up in the context of particular activity systems and the opportunities that are created in that system” (p. 184). It supports analyses of learning in terms of the modes of participation that activities in a mentoring triad afford to a student teacher.

This discursive approach to learning is substantiated further by positioning theory. Positioning theory is ideally suited to analyse micro-level practices (i.c. lesson debriefs) as “every social group has its own implicit structure of moral orders that guides the group interaction and the dynamics between the group members” (Hirvonen, 2016, p. 2). Positioning is a discursive process in which we are continually positioning ourselves and others following attendant storylines (Davies & Harré 1990). In this case, acts of self- and other positioning determine the opportunities to learn afforded to student teachers in the triad. For instance, if a student teacher is positioned by the two other triad members as not having the rights to reflect independently, this will impact her/his opportunities to learn in the triad (Greeno & Gresalfi, 2008).         
This goal of this study is to analyse the opportunities to learn afforded to student teachers in the positioning processes occurring in harmonious triads (i.e., conflict-free triads) during lesson debriefs. This results in the following research question: which positions (i.c. rights and duties) of triad members facilitate (or hinder) student teachers’ opportunities to learn during lesson debriefs?

This case-study involves two mentoring triads (one in physical education, one in religion) from a secondary teacher education programme in a single higher education college in Flanders. Both student teachers were on their final placement in the third and last year of training. Both triads involved an experienced teacher educator and a less-experienced mentor who had not collaborated before. The primary data consisted of non-participant observations of all lesson debriefs conducted by these triads over the course of the placement. These lesson debriefs occurred immediately after the observation of a lesson and were used to explore key issues related to the lesson observed and the placement in general (Watson & Williams, 2004). These observations were complemented with three rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted with each triad member individually, aiming to capture what happened in the triad in between observations, shedding further light on the nature of their relationship. The first round of interviews was conducted before the start of the placement; the second round within one week after the observation; and the final at the very end of the placement. Informed by our discursive approach and the subsequent focus on talk in interaction (Gee, 1999), data analysis started with the observation data. The lesson debriefs form the social realm where rights and duties (i.e. positions) are negotiated and subsequent opportunities to learn are realized (or not). The first stage of the analysis focused on dividing the transcripts of the lesson debriefs into episodes or “a sequence of happenings in which human beings engage which has some principle of unity” (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999, p. 4). Episodes were distinguished based on a change in subject, a new element being introduced, a change of tone or question, etc. In a second stage, each episode was analysed to show the particular activities (e.g., ‘mentor asks open questions’) enacted during the debriefs and the implications of the ‘sayings and doings’ for the actors’ rights and duties, resulting in a list of adopted position(s) for each triad member. In a third stage, opportunities to learn were highlighted within each episode and connected to the speech acts which composed them (e.g., reflective or explorative questions, positive or negative feedback, etc.). In a fourth and last stage, these opportunities to learn were linked with the adopted positions in order to make clear which positions facilitate or hinder student teachers’ opportunities to learn.

Analysis is going, but first results suggest that the debriefs in triad 1 (physical education) connect with a storyline in which the mentor is mainly absent from the interaction, with the triad functioning as ‘a dyad plus one’. The teacher educator occupies most of the triadic interaction, positioning himself as a source and provider of knowledge which is tacitly accepted by the mentor and the student teacher. An eagerness to provide possible solutions to problems of practice is the teacher educator’s dominant mode of participation in the triad, simultaneously and inadvertently depriving the student teacher from the opportunity to participate in reflecting learning. In contrast, triad 2 (religion) is characterized by active contribution of all triad members. The lived storyline is defined by the mentor who speaks up for the student teacher. This ‘convener of relation’ position (see also Clarke et al., 2014), adopted by the mentor, affords limited opportunities to learn to the student teacher. This is but one example of how acts of self- and other positioning of triad members facilitate and/or hinder student teachers’ opportunities to learn. The goal is to create a more systematic account across both triads of the relation between positioning processes and (missed) opportunities to learn. This study challenges the common assumption in mentoring research and practice that harmonious triads necessarily create a stimulating learning context for student teachers. The self- and other-positioning of all three triad actors can hinder student teachers’ opportunities to learn, which suggests the need for a more critical perspective on the dominant model of teacher education across Europe (i.c. triadic mentoring). The paper will conclude with a discussion of future directions for mentoring research and practice.

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