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supervision and accountability (Coombs & Goodwin, 2013 ; Kemmis et al., 2014 ;
Talbot, 2016 ; Timperley, 2001 ).
Transformative Teacher Education
Moving forward to consider an expanded notion of the potential of mentoring for
ongoing teacher education requires insight into what we know about mentoring as a
means for transforming how educators change, grow and renew their practices in
response to both learners and context. It seems, however, that what exactly mentees
learn from mentoring in formal mentoring arrangements, whether good or bad,
remains a largely unanswered question (Rajuan, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2008 ). What
we do know is that mentoring can be ‘haphazard’ (Hudson, 2007 , p. 363), can be
largely variable and can even be ‘harmful’ (Hobson et al., 2009 , p. 214). Some
‘teacher-mentors themselves hold a ‘transmission perspective’ on teaching and
learning and thus focus almost exclusively on matters of ‘technical rationality’
(Hobson et al., 2009 , p. 211) that tend to reinforce the ‘mini-me’ model through
advice that encourages the mentee to unquestioningly adopt the methods of the
mentor. But before we throw our collective hands in the air and abandon mentoring
in favour of learning in isolation from one’s own experiences, let’s consider this
warning offered by Schwille: ‘... experience without guidance and reflection can
often be a fickle and misleading teacher’ ( 2008 , p. 156).
Learning in isolation presents a troubling consideration, particularly from an
equity perspective, and can be highly dependent on context. For instance, there is
often a lack of access to formal mentoring arrangements for early childhood educa-
tors in the prior to school sector due to the complexity of this sector. If mentoring is
supportive of teacher learning, then it should be available to all educators irrespec-
tive of the age group of students they teach or the educational setting, including
universities, in which they are employed. While it may occur in some very remote
locations that an educator works alone in their institution, it seems reasonable to
assume that it should be possible, with access to supportive technologies, for educa-
tors to form mentor-mentee relationships that are mutually educative.
Unfortunately, being a good classroom teacher, in whatever the educational con-
text, is not sufficient to guarantee that one will be a good mentor (Schwille, 2008 ,
p. 139). There are specific ‘pedagogical knowledge practices’ (Hudson, 2013 ,
p. 363) that include ‘broad picture strategies’ and ‘deeper, more focused strategies’
(pp. 376–377) that must be learned, implemented, reflected upon and refined over
time. Herein lies the next barrier to establishing transformative mentoring relation-
ships. Prospective mentors will need a ‘space’ in which they have opportunities to,
at the very least, audit their existing mentoring practice, read and reflect on research
concerned with both the pedagogical skills of mentoring and the development of
mentoring as an educative stance and implement and critique innovations in their
mentoring practice. Several Australian universities are currently working to develop
new approaches to mentoring courses that provide opportunities for teacher
D. Ta lbot