99interactions as a powerful tool for mentoring relationships that have the capacity to
transform practice is illustrated in the following vignette.
A Dialogic Space for Mentoring
The vignette of mentoring practice reported on here comes from one case (Talbot,
Denney & Henderson, under review), part of a pilot study for a much larger and
continuing research project. Various components included in the case study condi-
tions had existed historically in a variety of forms, but several have recently been
reimagined and reconfigured. Over a number of years, the academics responsible
for professional experience placements at this university had worked to establish
‘professional partnerships’ with schools for the purpose of enhancing the quality of
placement experiences for preservice teachers. More recently a focus on profes-
sional learning about mentoring had been introduced not only to further this pur-
pose but also to expand on this university’s growing focus on teacher education
‘writ large’. The initiative sought to bring all actors involved in teacher education –
academics, supervising teachers, preservice teachers and tertiary mentors – into a
learning experience that would assist each actor to better respond to the needs of
learners and the context in which the learning was situated. The transformative
learning that occurred for each of the actors in this case was complex and occurred
as a result of the genuine commitment to, and persistence with, dialogic attempts to
make new meaning in the inter-individual territory between shifting relationships of
mentor and mentee.
The space in which the mentoring practice discussed here occurs spans a large
metropolitan university and a comprehensive high school located some 30 km from
the university. The three actors in this space and case are Sarah, a preservice teacher
completing her internship as her final professional experience placement; Jane, an
experienced teacher and school-based teacher educator also responsible for the
overall coordination of professional learning in her school; and Debra, a university-
based teacher educator who took on a number of roles in this vignette including
teaching a mentoring course to in-service teachers at the school, tertiary mentor for
the preservice teacher interns placed at the school and action research project semi-
nar leader for Sarah back at the university.
Sarah was completing her internship as the final professional experience of her
two-year Master of Teaching degree. At the same time, she was also required to com-
plete an action research project inquiring into an aspect of her own teaching practice.
Sarah was dissatisfied with her success at engaging her Year 10 Science class
in their learning. Both Jane and Debra had been present in the classroom to observe
Sarah teaching this class and were well aware of the challenges she faced. It should
be noted here that normally an intern would be teaching independently by this stage
but Sarah had invited both Jane and Debra into her dilemma with Year 10 Science.
Often, in the course of a lesson that Sarah was responsible for, Jane and Debra
would make independent observations of individual student’s work and later discuss
6 Distinguishing Spaces of Mentoring: Mentoring as Praxis