Mentoring with the aim of the professional development of preservice teachers in teacher education represents complex practices. The use of tools for mentoring has the potential to enhance mentoring practices; however, research on using tools in mentoring is often focused on applying a single tool or is conducted on a piecemeal basis in teacher education (Nesje & Lejonberg, 2022). By investigating mentors and preservice teachers using research-based tools in an eight-week practicum period, this study analyses structured and holistic mentoring. The applied tools were developed to elicit preservice teachers’ diverse needs at different times throughout the practicum; the three tool-packages build on a a) simulator-based tool, b) response-based tool, and c) video-based tool. Further, the theory of practice architecture (TPA) provided a frame to understand mentoring practices with the holistic use of tools as an interplay among cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements (Kemmis, 2022). This paper presents new insight on how tools can enhance quality in mentoring illuminating the following research question guided: What characterises mentoring practices with the use of tools in a holistic approach to mentoring in practicum in teacher education?

All data provided by the tools are in the PTs’ possession and PTs decide to whom, what, and how they want to share this data, and PTs complete a course in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the decision simulator, based on Arvola, Samuelsson, Nordvall, and Ragnemalm (2018), the PT is presented with different challenging scenarios that are likely to occur in a classroom; the PTs are required to make choices whose alternative answers are connected to teacher role traits that correspond to authoritarian, authoritative, democratic, and compliant approaches, based on Baumrind (1971/1991). The choices made by the PT eventually generate an overview of the selected approaches to the teacher role that are to be elaborated upon in mentoring.

The response tool combines self-reports from the PTs and pupils’ responses through an electronic survey entered online on topics assumed to denote effective teaching. Based on Tripod’s 7Cs framework (Ferguson & Danielson, 2015; Kuhfeld, 2017; Wallace, Kelcey, & Ruzek, 2016), the PTs and pupils both report on teacher competencies: caring, conferring, captivating, clarifying, consolidating, challenging, and classroom management. Responses are aligned, visualised, and followed up on with guides for elaboration and reflection, and exploration of the tool’s outcome grounds PTs’ choice of the development goal in their teaching practice to be elaborated upon with the video tool.

The video tool consists of a video recording application that the PTs can download to ensure GDPR, as well as guides for preparing, conducting, and elaborating on practice videos individually, with peers, and with the mentor (Kang & van Es, 2019; UiO, 2020). The PTs are encouraged to use insights from the response tool to choose a development goal to enhance their teaching competencies. Guides assists PTs selection of a clip representative to their development goal to be elaborated on in mentoring.

The two investigated dyads are both characterised by the extensive use of tools. However, dyad 1 differed from dyad 2 in terms of the approach towards the usage being more in line with the suggested structure (elaborated on in the presentation of doings) and wording (elaborated on in the presentation of sayings) of the tools. In dyad 2, the suggested structure was approached more creatively and the tools appeared to inspire both structure and content; however, the components of the tools (guides for reflection and conversation) are generally adjusted and wordings rephrased. Findings is presented in accordance with the analytical categories, based on Kemmis (2022) to elaborate on the holistic approach to mentoring with tools.

The data investigated in this study was extracted from a larger corpus, consisting of 14 observed and video-recorded mentoring conversations with the use of tools and 12 follow-up interviews with 5 mentors and 7 PTs. Participants were purposefully sampled (Cohen et al., 2015). All participants were offered to try out three tool-packages. From this corpus, we selected the two dyads of mentors and PTs who used all three tool-packages consecutively during their practicum, with follow-up conversations that were observed and recorded. Thus, six mentoring conversations that followed-up on use of each of the three tools for each dyad in a total of 277 minutes of video-taped conversations became the primary data. The conversations took place in the autumn of 2021, during the PTs eight-week practicum. In addition, semi-structured interviews of 175 minutes with the two PTs and the two mentors constituted the secondary data and were integrated where pertinent in the discussion to elaborate on findings. Analysis was done step wise, inspired by thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In a first step, when familiaring ourselves with the material, we noticed how the tools appeared to influence the conversations throughout in terms of what was talked about, how it was talked about, and how actors related to each other and the artefacts in the conversations. Having gained this insight, a table of invention from the TPA was first used as a heuristic (Kemmis, 2022) to guide the analysis of the data material and second as inspiration for presenting the findings. In the next step, the categories/codes in the material were given by the TPA framework, coding the material with the notion of sayings, doings, and relatings (as presented by Kemmis, 2022) to identify the characteristics of practices in the empirical data. Next, data that highlighted the three codes were further investigated in a process where we looked for characteristics of different aspects related to the sayings, doings, and relatings evident in the practices in the material. The characteristics were then divided into sub-categories. The sub-categories were applied and consequently adjusted in a process of trying them out on the empirical material and adjusting where necessary to ensure they were representative of the data.

We investigated what characterises mentoring practices with the use of tools in a holistic approach to mentoring. The findings indicate how due to their set up and content, tools prefigure the sayings, doings, and relating of PTs and mentors in mentoring. Moreover, in the conversations, the outcome provided by the tools structure the conversations. The participants use the outcomes from the tools as input and the conversation templates to elaborate upon and follow-up on the different aspects of the interconnected tools over time; thus, mentoring with tools appears to offer a holistic approach to mentoring. Moreover, by structuring mentoring and facilitating matching the PTs conception of their own teaching with both mentors’ and pupils’ conceptions, mentoring with tools potentially provides new perspectives in practicum mentoring. Further, applying research-based tools in mentoring presents a means for research and theory to have a bearing on mentors’ practice. The tools appears to inspire going into depth—for example, by introducing theoretical concepts from the tools, encourage PTs’ reflection on different aspects of their teaching practice, and by challenging mentees on taking the pupils’ perspective. By providing such evidence, this study contributes to research on holistic approaches to mentoring with tools and what characterises such practices. Thus, tools can be a leverage to change and present new building blocks to a new architecture of mentoring practices. Furthermore, this study reveals that the use of mentoring tools can contribute to answering calls for teacher education institutions to contribute to mentor preparation and creating a stronger theoretical framework for mentoring. However, the presented evidence also indicates that using tools is time consuming. Therefore, further research could examine mentee and mentors’ experienced relevance of using tools, as well as how the different tools interplay with and build upon each other.

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