Triadic mentoring as discursive practice: Complexities, opportunities, and perspectives

Mentoring is a favored practice in teacher education. Research is, however, focused narrowly on the technical dimension of mentoring ('what works'), failing to account for the complexity of mentoring student teachers in the context of initial teacher education. This complexity results from the interaction of three key actors (mentors, student teachers, teacher educators), at the crossroad of two different institutional contexts (teacher education programme and placement school). This dissertation aims to unravel this complexity and turns to a discursive approach to mentoring which gives actual mentoring practices centre stage. This immediately brings to bear the relationships with student teachers, mentors, and teacher educators, as well as the broader socio-cultural context in which these operate. Drawing on recent insights from positioning theory and frame analysis, this dissertation aims to contribute an empirically-validated understanding of the complexity of triadic mentoring. It also proposes a novel theoretical and methodological approach which offers a strong basis for future research. Chapter 1 situates this research interest in the international literature on mentoring in teacher education and gives an overview of the different studies.             
Chapter 2 presents the results of the first study of this dissertation which develops a novel conceptual model offering the theoretical and methodological resources to better comprehend how mentoring practices operate. This model highlights actual mentoring practices and includes the voices and experiences of all three triad actors. Grounded in a discursive approach to mentoring, this conceptual model integrates concepts of positioning theory and frame analysis. This integrated use of processes of framing and positioning supports an enacted view on mentoring and helps to understand the dynamic relations in triadic mentoring. Such an operationalisation of the discursive approach allows to map and understand the social effects of what is (not) said and (not) done during mentoring practices. That is, the positioning triangle (i.e., storyline, speech act, position) gives insight into the rights and duties an actor discursively attributes to themselves and all actors involved. The concepts of knowledge schema and interactive frame from frame analysis shed further light on how actors interpret the situation they find themselves in. Joined together, both deliver the necessary conceptual tools to explain how mentoring triads exactly operate. After introducing the model, we explore its empirical viability by drawing on a single case study of one triad from an English university.          
Building upon the insights from this single case study, the study presented in Chapter 3 seeks to map the operating frames and positions in mentoring practices in order to deepen our understanding of how mentoring practices exactly operate. Therefore, a multiple case study is conducted in which the relational dynamics of 10 triads from one English university are explored. Data are derived from non-participant observations of lesson debriefs and teacher education team meetings, in-depth interviews with the teacher educators, brief phone interviews with all actors involved, and a document analysis of curriculum materials and lesson evaluation forms. Results reveal four different frames being maintained in the observed triads: the quality assurance frame, the school-university partnership frame, the socialisation frame, and the expert teacher frame. Each frame opens up particular positions but simultaneously closes off other positions. Moreover, the complexity of triads arises from combining different (conflicting) frames. However, tensions during lesson debriefs are avoided as triad members refrain from enacting their own ideas on mentoring. Based on these results, it is argued that the interplay of frames and positions enhances our understanding of the complexity of triadic mentoring.   
Given the discursive approach to mentoring in this dissertation, Chapter 4 delves deeper into the use of language in lesson debriefs and the social effects it produces. Hence, this study explicitly zooms in on positioning theory to explore the extent to which the discursive nature of triadic lesson debriefs – and the storylines, positions and speech acts that constitute this discursive nature – gives direction to student teachers’ professional learning. Data come from two triads from one higher education institution in Flanders and consist of non-participant observations of all lesson debriefs and a document analysis of relevant artefacts (e.g., lesson evaluation forms, lesson preparation forms). Additionally, individual in-depth interviews were conducted with all three actors before the start of the placement, after the first lesson debrief, and after the placement. Results indicate that triadic lesson debriefs are characterised by monological discourse performed by teacher educators. They mainly provide feedback, supported through open-ended suggestions and targeted advice. Processes of positioning reveal the dominant position of the teacher educator, demonstrating what is ‘effective’ in classrooms and what can be improved for future lessons. This dominant position is accepted by all triad actors. The conversational moves that unfold during lesson debriefs illustrate the extent to which processes of positioning shape the nature of interactions in lesson debriefs, and also indirectly student teachers’ professional learning.        
Finally, Chapter 5 concludes this dissertation with a general discussion. This last chapter brings together the insights of these three studies and returns to the research ambitions this dissertation started from.