Developing pre-service teachers' professional knowledge of teaching: The influence of mentoring

This study was situated in a Primary Teacher Education program in the Netherlands. The participants (N=16) comprised four each of: Pre-Service Teachers (PST); Mentor Teachers; School-Based Teacher Educators; and University-Based Teacher Educators. Video-recordings of four mentoring conversations for each PST which transcribed and translated for analysis. A mixed methodology was applied with analysis based on examining mentoring conversations in relation to the MERID-model through turn-taking analysis and Propositional Discourse Analysis. The study illustrates that mentors tend to use a more directive mentoring approach and that they dominate dialogue suggesting that there is aneed for reconsideration of the mentor-PST learning relationship and how it is understood in teacher education.