Teaching practicum constitutes a central arena for student teachers’ (STs) professional learning across European teacher education systems, where theoretical preparation intersects with the contingencies of classroom practice. Mentoring plays a decisive role in this process, shaping how STs learn to interpret, negotiate, and respond to teaching realities. While European research increasingly promotes educative, dialogic, and partnership-oriented mentoring, empirical studies continue to report persistent tensions arising from hierarchical relations, institutional accountability, and asymmetries of experience between teacher educators and STs (Hobson & Malderez, 2013; Hobson, 2016). These tensions raise questions about how mentoring is actually enacted in practice, and how teacher educators position themselves while mediating STs’ engagement with teaching reality during practicum.

This paper examines mentoring as a relational and discursive practice, focusing on how teacher educators position themselves in relation to STs and teaching reality. The study addresses two research questions:
(1) What mentoring positionings are manifested in the relations between teacher educators, student teachers, and teaching reality during practicum?
(2) How do university-based teacher educators (UBTEs) and school-based teacher educators (SBTEs) employ these positionings differently?

The objective is twofold: first, to make visible the often tacit relational work through which mentoring mediates STs’ learning to teach; second, to contribute a conceptual framework that supports reflective and ethically grounded mentoring practices within European teacher education.

The study is theoretically grounded in Positioning Theory (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999), which conceptualises social interaction as dynamically constituted through positions, speech acts, and storylines. Positioning theory foregrounds how rights, duties, and responsibilities are discursively negotiated in situated interactions, offering an analytic alternative to static notions of role (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré et al., 2009). To capture the substantive focus of mentoring, Positioning Theory is integrated with the teaching (didactic) triangle from the German Didaktik tradition (Kansanen & Meri, 1999; Friesen, 2018). When reconfigured for practicum, the triangle comprises the teacher educator, the student teacher, and teaching reality (Jyrhämä & Syrjäläinen, 2011), enabling analysis of pedagogical relations, content relations, and didactic mediation as interdependent dimensions of mentoring.

The study offers important implications for European teacher education. By conceptualising mentoring as situated positioning within a mentoring triangle, the paper provides a transferable analytic framework for examining mentoring across diverse European contexts characterised by varying degrees of professional autonomy, accountability, and partnership models. The findings underscore the need for mentor education that foregrounds relational reflexivity, ethical judgment, and awareness of shifting power dynamics, supporting teacher educators in navigating mentoring positionings self-knowingly to enhance STs’ professional learning across Europe.

Empirically, the study draws on qualitative interview data from 18 Finnish teacher educators (eight UBTEs and ten SBTEs) working across early childhood, primary, and secondary teacher education programmes. Data were generated through two rounds of semi-structured interviews, complemented by mind map–cued interviews that prompted participants to visualise STs’ challenges in relation to teaching reality and their own mentoring responses. Interviews were conducted in English, audio-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. Analysis followed a hybrid deductive–inductive thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2016), supported by MAXQDA. Deductively, mentoring interactions were coded along two relational dimensions: pedagogical orientation (transmissive–constructive) and content orientation (proactive–reactive). Inductively, teacher educators’ narrated experiences were examined to identify recurrent patterns of self-positioning, with analytic rigour enhanced through constant comparison and collaborative auditing.

The analysis identified four mentoring positionings: directive, instructional, supportive, and collegial. These positionings were not fixed attributes of individuals but fluid orientations that teacher educators shifted between in response to situational demands. Directive and instructional positionings were characterised by transmissive pedagogical relations, in which teacher educators asserted authority to structure, intervene, or correct STs’ practice, particularly when managing classroom routines, curricular alignment, or acute challenges. These positionings were more frequently articulated by SBTEs in “in-the-moment” classroom contexts, though UBTEs also adopted them when safeguarding theoretical coherence. In contrast, supportive and collegial positionings reflected constructive pedagogical relations, emphasising shared inquiry, emotional safety, and reciprocal learning. Here, teacher educators positioned STs as emerging professionals and co-thinkers, engaging teaching reality as a shared problem space rather than a fixed standard to be mastered. Collegial positioning, in particular, disrupted traditional hierarchies by framing STs as resources from whom teacher educators themselves could learn. The study demonstrates that mentoring effectiveness lies not in the adoption of a single “ideal” positioning but in teacher educators’ capacity to navigate and reflect on shifting relational demands. By integrating Positioning Theory with the mentoring triangle, the paper offers a conceptual tool for making visible the often tacit didactic work through which teacher educators mediate STs’ relations with teaching reality. The findings carry important implications for teacher education: they highlight the need for mentor preparation that foregrounds relational awareness, discursive reflexivity, and ethical judgment, enabling teacher educators to move self-knowingly among different mentoring positionings in support of STs’ professional growth.

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