The purpose of this research project, a three-year study funded by the Swedish Research Council (2022-2024), is to investigate how the mentoring of student teachers can contribute to the professional development of the mentor teachers themselves. Professional development in this study refers to teachers´ perceived experiences of growth in professional knowledge, skills and dispositions in connection to the mentorship activities they carry out with student teachers.

We conducted a large-scale survey study, through a questionnaire design based on the previous literature on mentoring, explorative interviews with mentors, and the thematic areas proposed in Activity Theory (Engeström, 1999). The participants include a nationwide sample of teachers who mentor student teachers enrolled in teacher education programs at the primary school level (Grades 4-6) in Sweden. Through the analysis of the data, we have built a model that demonstrates how mentoring activities and mentor teachers´ characteristics can be potential predictors of their professional development.

We conducted a number of analyses of the survey data:

1. We investigated the individual and contextual factors determining mentor teachers´ self-efficacy (SE) beliefs in their role mentoring role. Self-efficacy as a concept is derived from Social Cognitive Theory and is defined as “beliefs in one´s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997). There is much research on teacher SE, yet SE in mentoring is little researched. High SE is found to be predictive for educators’ increased sense of identity, shared perspectives and job satisfaction (Andreasen et. al., 2019). However, because the determinants that contribute to higher mentoring self-efficacy beliefs remain unclear the data could provide us with some insights specifically about the SE of those who take on the role of mentoring.
2. Drawing on concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT- Maton, 2014) which is concerned with how mentor teachers respond to the relations between who one is (being a mentor) and what one knows (having certain knowledge). LCT has provided insights into the dichotomy of tacit and explicit knowledge (or knowledge for-in-on practice).
3. We have identified mentors that have received formal training in mentoring and compared different variables to see how and what aspects of training has enhanced mentor perceptions of their own professional development.
4. Model development and testing – Our model was built drawing upon aspects of activity theory which enabled us to test our hypotheses in the data. Our model includes: independent variables such as mentoring activities, mentoring resources (i.e., tools such as curriculum documents, observation forms, discussion with university teachers); and, dependent variables such as professional development, school improvement and student development.  Correlational and regression analysis were carried out to test the size and significance of the relations among these variables.

The preliminary phase of this study involved two parts: a) an extensive review of the mentoring literature with a focus on the mentoring of pre-service teachers, and b) exploratory interviews with 6 teachers who were either currently mentoring student teachers or have done so within the six months that preceded data collection. The findings from the interview phase, together with a review of the mentoring in education literature, and the thematic areas posited in Activity Theory (Engström, 1999) guided the construction of the (pilot and final) questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed to identify the relations between concepts related to the mentoring context, activities, processes, and the possible professional knowledge developed as an outcome. A valid and reliable measurement of the key concepts primarily depends on development of a conceptual framework that has both content and construct validity, and so we used the conceptual elements of Engeström´s (1999) Activity theory, (i.e., tools, rules, contexts/conditions, community and division of labour), to represent the central components of mentoring.

Findings The presentation will share the overall findings of the project which are related to: mentoring self efficacy, mentor knowledge and attributes, mentor training, professional development, reasons for starting to mentor student teachers, challenges mentors face, and various background factors (eg. gender, school type, location, no of mentees, hours of mentoring)

Andreasen, J., Bjørndal, C., & Kovač, V. (2019). Being a teacher and teacher educator: The antecedents of teacher educator identity among mentor teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 85, 281-291. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. Freeman, NY. Engeström, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engeström, R. Miettinen, & R. Punämaki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lopez‐Real, F., & Kwan, T. (2005). Mentors' perceptions of their own professional development during mentoring, Journal of Education for Teaching, 31(1), 15-24. Maton, K., (2014). Knowledge and knowers. Towards a realist sociology of education. Routledge.