159Background Literature
Professional Conversations
Preservice teacher programs, research and policy, situate school-based learning as
essential to the development of classroom-ready teachers (Darling-Hammond &
Bransford, 2005 ). As preservice teachers spend significant time in schools, the rela-
tionships between them and their mentor teachers are crucial. Mentor teachers can
fulfil many roles including that of supporter, role model, collaborator, coach and
assessor (Ambrosetti & Dekkers, 2010 ). Commonly, mentor teachers’ practices
include guiding preservice teachers’ planning, observing them teach and providing
feedback. The nature of this feedback and preservice teachers’ engagement in pro-
fessional conversations, and how this might encourage critical reflection, varies.
Developing teacher expertise is enhanced when teachers have opportunities to dis-
cuss their practice (Timperley & Alton-Lee, 2008 ; van Kruiningen, 2013 ) and this
correspondingly applies to preservice teachers. Quality conversations are vital and
are characterised by a focus on student learning, attending to evidence and making
reasoning transparent (Kim & Silver, 2016 ; Timperley, 2015 ).
In this study, one of these characteristics – classroom evidence – forms the basis
for the professional conversations between preservice teachers and their mentor
teachers. Access to a range of evidence provides preservice teachers with opportuni-
ties to rethink their beliefs and to adjust their practice in new and different ways
(Clarke, 1995 ; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009 ; Earl & Timperley, 2009 ; Kriewaldt &
Turnidge, 2013 ; McLean Davies et al., 2013 ; Timperley, 2001 ). When fostering
reflective practice in preservice teachers, the role of mentor teachers is ‘not so much
in providing a list of issues for the students to reflect upon but rather in providing a
variety of perspectives from which students might examine their practice’ (Clarke,
1995 , p. 258) through dialogue. This notion of mentoring dialogues is aligned with
principles of ‘educative mentoring’ in which preservice teachers learn from their
practice supported by their mentor who guides learning opportunities and is a co-
inquirer (Feiman-Nemser, 1998 , 2001 ; Schwille, 2008 ). Educative mentoring is
used to distinguish mentoring that is founded on reciprocal and trusting relation-
ships (Trevethan, 2017 ) and underpins the conversations reported in this study.
Research advocates the benefits of joint observation and tripartite dialogue in
developing ‘horizontal expertise in and for teacher education’ (Mtika, Robson, &
Fitzpatrick, 2014 , p. 67), with professional conversations involving multiple actors
playing important roles in the development of professional identities and positions
(van Kruiningen, 2013 ). Such ‘educational meetings’ assist preservice teachers to
‘navigate between the hierarchical relationships of course-owner/non-owner,
advice-giver/advice-receiver, expert/lay person and those of equal colleagues within
a team’ (van Kruiningen, 2013 , p. 119). The positioning of preservice teachers as
equals who collaborate with mentors from both school and university contexts in
the process of giving and receiving feedback is critical to this project. Dialogue or
professional conversations between preservice teachers and more experienced
10 Fostering Professional Learning Through Evidence-Informed Mentoring Dialogues...