The quality of teacher education is perceived as an important factor influencing the quality of teaching and student outcomes (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Hattie, 2009; MacPhail, Ulvik, Guberman, Czerniawski, Oolbekkink-Marchand & Bain, 2018). Improving teachers' pedagogical competencies plays a key role, especially in improving the quality of teaching and learning at universities (Kaynardağ, 2017). This tendency is now also confirmed by Masaryk University, which strives to develop the quality of teaching and education. One of the tools it uses for this purpose is the development of the pedagogical competencies of university teachers. For this reason, the program Development of Pedagogical Competences of the Pedagogical Competence Development Center is established (Masaryk University, 2022). The benefits and effects of such programs are described by Butcher & Stoncel (2011) or Jawitz & Perez (2015).

The aim of my research is to obtain detailed and many source picture of what is happening in the mentoring process and what its implications are. The mentioned program consists of a total of four parts (Masaryk University, 2022), which are divided into two semesters. The second semester is focused on the cooperation with a mentor, which is a unique part of the educational program. The selection of a mentor (usually teachers choose as a mentor another university teacher) and the determination of the content of the cooperation are fully in the hands of the program participants themselves. It is a highly individualized form of cooperation, in which emphasis is placed on the specific educational needs of the participant. They collaborate during one semester, engaging in various activities such as joint discussions, joint teaching, preparation of materials for teaching and the like. During the semester, three workshops are prepared for mentors, which deal with specific mentoring skills, such as non-directive mentoring, effective feedback and giving advice. The educational program compiled in this way is based not only on a survey of similar educational programs in the Czech Republic and abroad, but also on our own research conducted at Masaryk University in the academic year 2015/2016.

The data gathering for this research is still not complete. For purposes of my study three pairs who focus on strengthening their pedagogical competencies through mentoring are involved. A wide variety of data is needed to meet the broad goal that i set out. The data will be (and already are) analyzed using ethnographic design. The main source of data is audio recordings of meetings of mentors and mentees. At the beginning and after the cooperation, semi-structured interviews take place to find out the expectations and the subsequent evaluation of the cooperation (with the mentor and the mentee separately). Another source of data are video recordings of teaching, which I verbally reflect together with the mentored teacher and I focus on change of professional vision. Each mentored teacher will provide two recordings - before and after mentoring. Last but not least I have final written feedback on mentoring from mentees. The whole process is accompanied by writing a field notes, unstructured observations at six workshops prepared for mentors and collected documents that were provided to participants during the program. The obtained data are continuously rewritten.

Preliminary analyzes of two meetings of mentoring pairs show that the mentoring interview is largely shaped by the concept of teaching individual teachers have and by their perception of their social role (the role of the teacher). In other words, how a teacher perceives his or her own teaching has an impact on what topics he or she mentions during the mentoring meeting or on which topics he or she returns. In the same sense, mentors provide advice to mentored teachers, which seems logical, as the teacher's concept of teaching is the basis for the teacher's thinking about pedagogical facts and pedagogical actions (Mareš, 1996). However, the data gathering phase has not yet been completed and these are preliminary analyzes. Research stil continues and the importance of this phenomenon is very important mainly because extensive research is still absent in Czech Republic. On the other hand, we find such studies abroad (Minett-Smith & Davis, 2019; Kálmán, Tynjälä & Skaniakos, 2019; Elken & Stensaker, 2018), thus we can state that higher education calls for reform, but there is a lack of deeper knowledge about the prerequisites necessary for the development of teaching and for the formation of pedagogical changes (Jääskelä, Häkkinen & Rasku-Puttonen, 2017).

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