This qualitative case study contributes to insights on innovative learning methods in teacher education by exploring mentoring conversations with use of research-based tools in teacher education. Using thematic analysis to approach 14 mentoring conversations between school-based mentors and preservice teachers (PTs) in practicum, we investigated how combined digital and discursive tools can relate to mentoring conversation characteristics. The findings indicate how the use of tools can prompt and make visible different mentee roles in conversations. The identified mentee roles differ from being active to reactive, and from explorative to less explorative. By introducing the notion of the mentee roles “initiator, explorer, responder and receiver” we contribute to the knowledge about how tools can afford mentoring conversations.

Practicum is a crucial component of teacher education (TE) programmes and mentoring is a pivotal part of how to qualify preservice teachers (PTs) for the teaching profession (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017). However, mentoring is a complex practice, encompassing several practices and processes that might have contrasting outcomes. Mentoring quality varies (Hobson et al., 2009; Hobson & Malderez, 2013), and a successful mentoring relationship can be the difference between failure and success for PTs. Regarding possible obstacles to maximizing mentoring, researchers have noted issues such as asymmetrical relations, mentors’ assessment responsibilities and mentors’ limited repertoire (Hobson & Malderez, 2013). Research often flags collaborative and dialogic relationships (Ellis et al., 2020) and reciprocal relationships between mentors and mentees (Haggard et al., 2011). However, researchers have also illustrated how mentoring relationships can be more hierarchical than what is advocated in research (Hobson& Malderez, 2013; Merket, 2022).

Engaging mentees in reflection and investigation of teaching practice is a crucial and demanding goal (Garza et al., 2019; Hobson et al., 2009). How mentoring conversations play out in practicum has been extensively studied (Garza et al., 2019). The same applies to mentor roles (Crasborn et al., 2011; Hennissen et al.,2008). Less research has focused on mentee roles, and the importance of defining mentee roles has been highlighted (Merket, 2022). The current study addresses this research need by investigating how tools can affect mentoring conversations by zooming in on the mentee role.

Based on Nesje and Lejonberg (2022), we understand tools as artefacts with potential to aid mentees’ professional development by providing structure and content in mentoring. To support and structure practicum mentoring, we introduce mentors and mentees to tools that are developed “to ground mentoring in 1) research-based knowledge, 2) student teachers’ individual needs, and 3) mentors’ professional judgment” to “facilitate novel interactions” between mentors and mentees to enhance professional development” (Lejonberg et al., 2024, p.170).

The three tools applied in this study are: a decision simulator, where PTs encounter classroom management–related challenges; a feedback tool, where PTs report on their own teaching and get feedback from their pupils; and a video tool, where PTs record their own teaching. All tools comprise several components and involve a digital data collection and preparation stage and a follow-up stage through mentoring conversations supported by conversation templates. By focusing on identifying mentee roles, we embrace the mentee perspective to illuminate how the introduction of tools can afford mentoring. We base this empirical investigation on the research question: What mentee roles are enabled when mentors and mentees apply tools in school-based mentoring conversations? By investigating this we add to a broader and more complex picture of mentoring conversations.

Our research was designed as a qualitative single case study as case studies are pertinent to research complex phenomenon, like mentoring with tools. We invited mentors and mentees to try out tools in mentoring conversations in practicum. The mentors (eight) who participated were purposefully sampled from partner schools cooperating with the University of Oslo, and nine PTs were recruited from two different TE programmes. The participants were observed within their natural settings. Conversations were recorded and transcribed. The data in the study and the unit of analysis are 14 recordings of mentoring conversations, following up on use of the different tool packages as described above. The recordings of the conversations were transcribed verbatim and subjected to a thematic analysis based on Braun and Clarke (2022). In the first phase we noticed the broad spectrum that seemed to characterize mentee roles in the conversations, ranging from what seems quite submissive to clearly managerial actions. In the next face, we categorized the data into initial codes focusing on use of the tools and characterisations of mentee roles, inspired by research on roles and paradigms in mentoring (Clutterbuck, 2004; Crasborn et al., 2011; Garza et al., 2019; Hennissen et al., 2008; Merket, 2022). We then searched for themes reflecting similarities across the conversations relating to the use of the tools and attempted to identify the positioning of roles. In further analysis we constructed theoretically informed codes of mentees’ contributions in the conversations and searched for similarities across conversations related to the mentee role. In this step we adapted preexisting categories based on dimensions identified by Hennissen et al. (2008) related to the degree to which mentees’ enactment were characterized by being active, taking initiative and steering the conversation. We also built on Garza et al. (2019) to illuminate mentee contribution to joint inquiry and reciprocity through exploration and by challenging their own and other’s practices in the conversations. We went back and forth between the literature and the data to develop codes and examine whether the categories fitted the coded excerpts (Braun and Clarke, 2022). As a result, four different mentee roles were developed to present findings.

Four different mentee roles inspired by categorizations and conceptualizations from Clutterbuck (2004) and Hennissen et al., (2008), were used to present findings: the explorer, responder, receiver and initiator. Ellis et al. (2020) argued there has been a conceptual change in what constitutes a good mentor: from the traditional concept of a mentor as a knowledgeable elder sharing wisdom with a less experienced younger person, to a more collaborative approach, and more “recent definitions of mentoring thereby suggest a reciprocal relationship where both mentor and mentee benefit and learn” (p. 3). Based on our findings we argue that active mentee roles and joint exploration can be prompted by mentoring tools. We also contribute by identifying how the four mentee roles, and mentor response can be understood in light of mentoring paradigms. These insights can both inform teacher educators at campus, and mentees and mentors of how interaction in mentoring conversations (with tools) can play out. Thus, mentees can benefit from training to participate in mentoring in the same ways as mentors can benefit from training to mentor. Moreover, teacher educators at campus with knowledge of mentoring processes can encourage active mentees roles in practicum. Mentors can likewise be encouraged to transform and challenge how they practice their mentoring and reflect on how to enact and respond to different mentee roles. More informed and research-based mentoring approaches might enhance the quality of mentoring conversations in TE. In further research the given tools could be compared with mentoring with other kinds of tools or mentoring without the use of tools to investigate how the four mentee roles can play out in different school-based mentoring setting. Also, mentors’ roles in response to the four identified mentee roles in different contexts would be of interest.

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