This study examines the complexities of implementing a new teacher education policy in which in-service mentors act as agents of policy learning within a national initiative involving ministry, district, and school-level stakeholders in Israel’s centralized education system.

Too often, the enactment of innovative policy initiatives in teacher education, whether pre- or in-service, becomes an almost impossible mission. Scholars attribute this difficulty to two interrelated factors: the nature, scope, and readiness for change, and the implementation process itself, including organizational barriers, policy agents’ beliefs and behaviours, and the relationships among stakeholders (e.g., Rigby, Woulfin and März 2016). Previous research has mainly examined structural or individual aspects of implementation, viewing mentors as responsible for executing policy initiatives. Less attention has been paid to examining mentors' roles and practices as agents of policy learning, that is how they enact their roles in ways that shape who learns, what is learned, and how learning occurs (Hall 1993)-the focus of our study. The national initiative aimed to establish mentor professional learning communities (PLCs) as collaborative, practice-based spaces for professional development that support mentors’ collective learning and capacity building. Moving beyond traditional in-service mentoring focused on dyadic support within single schools, the policy positions mentors as agents of policy learning, fostering ecosystemic collaboration across schools (Heikkinen et al. 2025; Kemmis et al. 2012). Although designed to promote a bottom-up agenda for teacher learning, the initiative was implemented through a top-down regulatory framework embedded in a broader, institutionally regulated teacher education system (e.g., Bourke et al. 2022; Crossley 2022). This tension between bottom-up aspirations and top-down structures created a rich context for examining how mentors navigate competing institutional logics and manage their roles as policy learning agents.

The study combines institutional logics theory and sense-making theory within the structure-agency debate in policy implementation and mentoring research. We focus on how mentors interpret structural aspects, understood as the institutional and ecosystemic dimensions of the mentoring context in relation to their mandated agentic roles. Specifically, we examine how mentors perceive the interrelations between policy implementation arrangements, such as policy goals, power relations, and perspectives on professional development, and individual aspects of their agency during the enactment of the new policy initiative (e.g., Imperial 2021). We trace how mentors’ interpretations, embedded in multilevel networks of policy stakeholders (school principals, district coordinators, and ministerial decision-makers), guide their decision-making and actions as agents of policy learning to address tensions related to professional responsibility, accountability, and identity (Coburn 2016; Goffman 1974). We asked:

How do mentors make sense of their roles as agents of policy learning within the broader mentoring-induction ecosystem?

(1)    How do they interpret structure-agency interrelations and how do these understandings inform their decisions and enactments as agents of policy learning?

Our findings indicate that through sense-making, mentors construct meaning by relating new information to preexisting frameworks, exhibiting  distinctive structure-agency framing patterns (discrete, intersecting, holistic) which serve as cognitive lenses through which they interpret interactions between institutional structures and their own agency, shaping how they navigate tensions within stakeholder networks (Chen-Zimerman and Orland-Barak 2025).

The three major framing patterns allowed for identifying different types of mentors-as- policy learning agents. These insights can inform mentor training and novice teacher induction, highlighting a conception of mentoring as an ecosystem of policy learning networks embedded within the broader institutional policy ecology. They also raise questions about novice teachers’ roles as agents of change in complex educational systems.

Research Design The qualitative study examined in-service mentors’ policy learning agency during a national initiative involving ministry-, district-, and local-level stakeholders. The Israeli education system was treated as a bounded case for policy learning. Implementation was traced over two years (2020-2022), beginning with policy formulation, followed by a preparatory phase in which mentors were inducted into the initiative’s concepts through formal training. The initiative was then implemented in four regional PLCs, using a multi-case design (Yin 2017), we focused on two PLCs in different regions, purposefully selected as information-rich contexts, representing diverse mentor backgrounds, and based on mentors’ consent to provide access. Participants included 12 mentors (six per PLC) and 10 policy stakeholders, including ministry-level decision-makers, district-level professional induction coordinators, and local school principals. Data Collection Participants were interviewed twice, yielding 32 semi-structured interviews for communicative validation. Additionally, 33 non-participant observations and two focus groups with 12 mentors (six each) were conducted. Data were mainly collected via Zoom, supported by in-person sessions, all of which were recorded and transcribed. Relevant documents, including policy declarations, syllabi, and pedagogical materials, were collected to refine mentors’ interpretations. Data Analysis Analysis proceeded iteratively using deductive and inductive approaches aligned with constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2000). Mentors’ decisions and actions were traced across sources for triangulation (Cohen et al. 2007). Stage One: Guided by studies on structure-agency relations, hermeneutic readings focused on (1) key structural aspects from Institutional Logics Theory, institutional orientations, power relations and loci of control, and professional development perspectives; and (2) mentors’ and stakeholders’ accounts of power, top-down decrees, and professional development, attending to tensions and their management. Stage Two: Following Ligita et al. (2022), transcripts were reviewed to construct visual cognitive maps showing how structural aspects guided participants’ decisions as policy learning agents. Excerpts were open-coded for umbrella themes. Structure-agency framings that emerged from the analysis we recreated through visual analysis via geometric symbols. Iterative refinement identified 17 patterns of structure-agency interactions. Stage Three: Comparative analysis identified similarities and differences, distinguishing two clusters based on whether participants perceived the three aspects as interconnected or independent. Visual analysis yielded three clusters consolidated into categories: Discrete (6), Intersecting (5), and Holistic (6). These will be shared during the presentation. The study underwent formal ethical approval by the University Committee.

In-service Mentors as Agents of Policy Learning By combining sense-making (micro) and institutional logics (macro) perspectives, our analysis links what is learned about a new policy initiative with how it is learned, through participants’ framings of interrelations between institutional structures and their agency roles. Findings suggest that in-service mentors’ framings of the interplay between structure and agency, to large extent, shape their decisions and enactments as policy learning agents, including how they interpret tensions, the actions they undertake, and the resulting learning outcomes. The study suggests that focusing on mentors’ sense-making is insufficient for understanding the process of policy learning within the dynamics of the mentoring-induction ecosystem. It is also essential to consider how other stakeholders within the mentoring-induction network (principals, district officials, ministry) frame structure-agency connections. Mentors' agentic space within the mentoring-induction ecosystem The framing patterns identified can also be discussed in relation to the notion of ‘agentic space’, as the scope for maneuvering action and decision-making (Nagel 2023). We suggest examining how mentors perceive their agentic space when implementing new initiatives. Our findings support Vanassche’s (2023, p.10) claim that reforms shape teacher education structures and normative discourses, highlighting the need to sustain a discourse that recognizes in-service mentors as policy learning agents. New characterizations of mentors' agentic roles Based on our findings, we propose a framework for understanding how mentors navigate their complex roles as agents of policy learning. This framework provides an additional lens for examining how mentors manage the tensions they encounter to fulfil their agentic roles across diverse school and institutional contexts. This will be elaborated and discussed in our presentation.

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