The purpose of this presentation is to provide a theorising of the teacher induction policies and practices, and the situation of mentoring for new teachers in the Nordic countries and Estonia that has been presented in the previous presentations. Using the theory of practice architectures, the presentation identifies what mentoring and induction practices are enabled and constrained in the Nordics. The theory of practice architectures (TPA) suggests that what an individual is able to, and can in actuality, do is shaped by a wide variety of things including specific discourses, social and political relationships, and the resources or materials available (Kemmis et al., 2014ab). In other words, the TPA is a theoretical resource that allows us to identify the conditions of possibility (Kemmis, 2023) in educational settings. The theory of practice architectures posits that the enactment of practices is prefigured but not predetermined by the varied arrangements in the intersubjective space in a particular site (Kemmis et al., 2014). As the NTI network has mapped and compared mentoring and induction practices for newly qualified teachers across the Nordic region, the cultural-discursive, material–economic and social–political arrangements (Kemmis et al., 2012; Kemmis et al., 2014ab) that hold practices of mentoring and induction in place and are revealed.

Kemmis, S. & Heikkinen, H. (2012). Future perspectives: Peer-Group Mentoring and international practices for teacher development. In: H. Heikkinen, H. Jokinen & P. Tynjälä (Eds.) Peer-Group Mentoring for Teacher Development. Abingdon: Routledge, 144-170. Kemmis, S. (2023). Education for Living Well in a World Worth Living in. In K. E. Reimer, M. Kaukko, S. Windsor, K. Mahon, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Living Well in a World Worth Living in for All: Volume 1: Current Practices of Social Justice, Sustainability and Wellbeing (pp. 13-26). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7985-9_1 Kemmis, S., Heikkinen, H., Aspfors, J., Fransson, G. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014a). Mentoring as Contested Practice: Support, Supervision and Collaborative Self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education 43, 154-164. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014b). Changing practices, changing education. Springer Science & Business Media. Olsen, K.R., Bjerkholt, E., & Heikkinen, H.(Eds.). (2020). New teachers in Nordic countries - Ecologies of induction and mentoring Cappelen. Damm Akademisk. https://doi.org/10.23865/noasp.105 License: CC BY 4.0.