Introduction

Novice teachers are facing various problems in their profession during their early years of teaching (Fransson & Gustafsson, 2008). This indicates that there is a gap between teacher education and practice, which could be reduced with discussions on pedagogical issues with experienced teacher at schools (see Colaric & Stapleton, 2004). On the other hand, experienced teachers often need support in order to revive their strength during their later stages of their career (Lahtinen, 2009). Recent research shows that sharing ideas and thoughts with novice teachers, who possess the recent knowledge with respect to learning and teaching, experienced teachers could find new perspectives for their profession (Lahtinen, 2009). Moreover, teachers’ collegial support could strength both experienced and novice teachers’ motivation and well-being in the school community. Despite of the note of the importance of collegial support and pedagogical discussions in teacher’s profession, school culture still highlights teachers’ individuality, and teachers are quite alone in their classrooms. Parsons and Stephenson (2005) state that schools are the best places for teachers’ professional development, and teacher collaboration could enhance learning and engagement in the teaching profession. Little is known, however, about teacher collaboration and the factors which facilitate or hinder successful collaboration between teachers (Sawyer & Rimm-Kaufman, 2007). What we know, so far, that collaboration is a demanding activity, and that collaborative partners need a support in order to collaborate successfully (Fischer et al., 2007). In this study we are focusing on developing a collaboration scenario for experienced and novice teachers to support their interaction and exchange of professional knowledge and experience and to evaluate the implementation of this collaboration scenario.

We prefer to use the term collaboration scenario instead of mentoring, due to the nature of collaboration. In the traditional sense of mentoring, the less experienced teacher are taught by more experienced teacher; there are always two roles involved, namely a mentee and a mentor (see Murray, 2001). Thus, mentoring has recently been redefined as collegial collaboration (Heikkinen et al., 2008) and terms such as collaborative or peer mentoring have been introduced (Chaliés et al., 2008; Le Cornu, 2005). In this sense, the teachers are in equal roles. The most essential difference between mentoring and collaboration is that in using collaboration scenarios, the teachers are guided to do a concrete work-related task together, not just discussing a specific issue at hand. Planning a lesson together, helping each other out in group work or assisting each other with classes or projects are examples of such work-related tasks. Accomplishing a task together can evoke more answers and also make knowledge and experiences more visible.

In this study, we are exploring in what ways the developed collaboration scenario is supporting teacher interaction and collaboration, as well as enhancing the exchange of knowledge and learning in schools.

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