107Our focus is on the lived experience and day-to-day realities of praxis, as it plays
out for preservice teachers, teachers and teacher educators, within our framing of
mentoring as ‘learning to be’. In the series of vignettes presented here, we illustrate
how ‘mentoring’ might be usefully explained by an analysis of the professional
experience setting as a communicative space and through a discussion of the men-
tor/mentee relationship as communicative action.
Professional Experience and Learning to Be: Pedagogical
Nuances
Learning to teach is a social practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009 ; Kemmis et al.,
2014 ). It is demanding in terms of personal learning (Bahr & Mellor, 2016 ; Le
Cornu, 2009 ). Habermas (in Kemmis & Wilkinson, 1998 p. 29) notes there is ‘no
individuation without socialisation, and no socialisation without individuation’.
Professional experience entails the concurrent interrelatedness of individual or
‘inner’ learning in the context of ‘learning to be’ in a specific social setting. Learning
is both social and individual, it is system and lifeworld, and it draws on what we
know and come to know (epistemology) as well as who we are and are ‘learning to
be’ (ontology) (Dall’Alba, 2009 ). In this way, learning, particularly professional
learning, is about knowing, acting and being (Dall’Alba, 2009 ).
In the context of the professional experience setting, preservice teachers are
expected to demonstrate professional knowledge and practice-based competencies,
as well as positive personal attributes considered important to teaching, such as
kindness, fairness, humour and open-mindedness (Bahr & Mellor, 2016 ). A praxis
perspective highlights how this process of learning requires significant situated and
intrapersonal work on the part of the preservice teacher (mentee). That is to say,
praxis is considered a process of becoming, which involves consideration of ‘char-
acter, conduct and consequences’ of action for self and others (Kemmis et al., 2014 ).
It also assumes informed and willing pedagogical empathy on the part of the super-
vising teacher (mentor) and teacher educators. From the practice theory perspective,
the professional experience can be framed as a recursive, socially mediated learning
experience that is iteratively personal and professional. That is, the professional
experience requires the preservice teacher to concurrently demonstrate emergent
professional practice and knowledge as a focus for analysis and critique. A praxis
perspective assumes that the mentor teacher/teacher educator role is to facilitate a
collegial, collaborative analysis of the preservice teacher’s actions and then scaffold
the reformulation of pedagogical thinking in relation to future actions. As Dall’Alba
( 2009 ) reminds us, this facilitation should take account of the ontological as well as
the epistemological and therefore include consideration of the personal, individual
dimensions of mentees.
In this way, learning in the professional experience can be likened to critical,
participatory action research that has its theoretical roots in communicative action
7 Reconsidering the Communicative Space: Learning to Be