Professional experience, mentoring and transformative spaces in initial teacher education: a praxis perspective

This symposium examines the praxis of mentoring and the potential of professional experience as praxis. A series of four papers present four distinctive but interrelated themes of consequence that together explore what Zeichner (2010) refers to as the third space in teacher education. The aim of the symposium is to reframe existing views of professional experience learning and mentoring by drawing from a suite of vignettes to portray the contextual, relational and mutually formative space that this space entails.

In this symposium we draw on relevant research and a number of vignettes of recent innovations in mentoring practices to move discussion on from an historical focus on definitions of the roles of mentors and mentees, in what might be considered as largely ‘supervisory arrangements’. The vignettes are taken from four different Australian university professional experience programs. The actual doings of those involved in the mentoring relationships presented in the vignettes are considered through a number of theoretical lenses. Through a nuanced description and analysis of mentoring practices we aim to trouble existing paradigms of mentoring and thus contribute to a conceptualisation of mentoring as praxis that is mutually educative. In addition, this collaborative work seeks to offer a justification of why we believe it is necessary for initial and ongoing teacher education to trouble the existing paradigm and enactments of mentoring that continue in many institutions.