Mentoring has sometimes been described as ‘a practice which is ill-defined, poorly conceptualized and weakly theorized’ (Colley, 2003). There seem to be various understandings of (1) the relevant concepts, (2) the activities and actions involved as well as (3) the relationships between the people and organisations involved with new teachers. To understand the particularities of the different models of mentoring in an international context, we will analyse teacher induction through a conceptual framework of theory of practice architetures (Kemmis & Grootenboer 2008). The main presumption of this framework is that all practices are composed in three dimensions: (1) the semantic dimension (in which it is possible to say things and be understood), (2) the dimension of physical space-time (in which it is possible to do relevant activities), and (3) the social-political dimension (in which it is possible to relate appropriately to others in the practice). In other words, we will study the (1) language (‘sayings’), (2) activities, actions and set-ups (‘doings’) and (3) social relations (‘relatings’) of induction and continuing professional development.