101action’ between all three actors as they deconstructed and reflected on these
moments of mentoring in the action. The ‘struggle’ over a shared meaning of events
that had occurred during lessons and responses that might be made in future lessons
encompassed consideration of each other’s philosophy of teaching and learning. It
required genuine engagement with the notion that there was no one right answer.
There is no doubt that the combination of actors in the mentoring space described
above was somewhat serendipitous. From the university’s point of view, it is not
easy to organise that the same academic teaches the mentoring course in schools
and the action research project at university is also the tertiary mentor who visits
students on their internship professional experience. Not to mention the difficulties
associated with making this combination work, as in Sarah’s case, for more than one
student at a time. The research project arising from this case’s combination of
unlikely events seeks to investigate ways in which elements of the dialogic interac-
tions that so clearly supported transformative learning for those involved can be
offered by additional actors working across the school-university space in the inter-
est of ongoing teacher education.
Mentoring as Praxis
The ‘space’ of mentoring, then, is very much a communicative space in which men-
tor and mentee might learn together in ways that incorporate considerations of
praxis rather than practice. Stephen Kemmis has written extensively on how a praxis
view of learning about teaching, and teaching for learning, involves consideration of
a philosophical aim of living well ( 2009 , 2010 ). Kemmis defines praxis as ‘morally
committed action oriented and informed by traditions of thought’ and draws on
Dunne ( 1993 ) to comment that ‘praxis is always as much a process of self- formation
as it is a matter of achieving an external goal or satisfaction’ ( 2009 , p. 465). In the
vignette described above, Debra, Jane and Sarah were each engaged in a process of
self-formation as they supported both their own and each other’s learning. This self-
formation through learning went well beyond the pragmatic goal of Sarah passing
her internship, Jane working towards accreditation against professional teaching
standards and Debra fulfilling the requirements of her varied roles in this space.
Kemmis explains that engaging in praxis is not only a way of conducting education
work, consistent with an Aristotelian interpretation, but also a means of guiding
‘history-making’ changes to educational work, in a post-Marxist sense (2010,
pp. 9–10). The description of the dialogic space for mentoring is offered in the spirit
of supporting a vision of mentoring as mutually educative (Feiman-Nemser, 2001 )
and democratic (Kemmis et al., 2014 ). I hope that it may contribute to changing
mentoring practice in ways that see such practice actively engage with the knowl-
edge, understanding and values of all actors in the space, thus contributing to the
development of mentoring as praxis.
6 Distinguishing Spaces of Mentoring: Mentoring as Praxis