Mentoring practices and projected images of the processes: two case studies

Abstract

This exploratory research focuses on the work of two beginning mentors - experienced teachers - and highlights their mentoring practices, the projected images of the performed processes and their relationships.  We understand those practices as intentional actions directed to their demands - derived from continuous interpretation and decision-making processes - that aims to promote the mentees’ teacher professional learning.  We analyzed the mentors' practices over 19 months as the interactions they established with the beginning teachers they mentored. It was observed that each mentor is constructing a mentoring personal style.  In this process, they interpret themselves inserted in a certain context and to face the situations they develop a proper response.  Their mentoring behaviors and practices reveal how much they rely on their teaching practices as they also demonstrate their decisions, acts, and the recognition of themselves as mentors, making it clear that they are building a framework for mentoring. The construction of a proper way of seeing oneself as a mentor and acting as such reveals patterns of mentoring, the characteristics of social, teaching and cognitive presences and the specificities of each interaction and, in a way, the learning of teachers experienced in this process.