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Mentoring Student Teachers inPrimary Schools: assisting studentteachers to become learnersAnne EdwardsPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Anne Edwards (1998) Mentoring Student Teachers in Primary Schools:assisting student teachers to become learners, European Journal of Teacher Education, 21:1,47-62, DOI: 10.1080/0261976980210106

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European Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 21, No. 1, 1998 47

Mentoring Student Teachers in Primary Schools:assisting student teachers to become learners

ANNE EDWARDS

SUMMARY The paper draws on recent research on student teachers' experiences of learning toteach in English primary schools. It identifies the opportunities and constraints provided by aview of mentoring which might be described as the induction of student teachers into a localcommunity of practice. The constraints are addressed by a consideration of the contribution thatthe frameworks for understanding learning offered by research into situated cognition mightmake to planning for the learning of student teachers while they are in school. The paperconcludes by examining how increased attention to the intentional and metacognitive learningof student teachers may also benefit mentors and schools.

RÉSUMÉ Cet article est basé sur des recherches récentes sur les expériences d'instituteursstagiaires apprenant à enseigner dans les écoles anglaises. L'article repère les possibilités et lescontraintes qui confrontent un aperçu de 'mentoring' qu'on pourrait décrire comme uneformation d'instituteurs stagiaires dans une communuaté locale où ils pratiquent. Les con-traintes sont étudiées en considérant la contribution possible des structures d'apprentissageoffertes par les recherches sur la 'cognition située' pendant la planification de l'apprentissage desélèves instituteurs quand ils enseignent. Pour conclure, cet article examine l'intérêt croissantpour l'apprentissage intentionel et metacognitif des instituteurs stagiaires et les avantagespotentiels pour les mentors et leurs écoles.

RÉSUMEN Este artículo está basado en investigaciones recientes sobre los estundiantes deensenanza de escuelas primarios inglesas y sus experiencias en el proceso de aprender a enseñar.En el se identifican las oportunidades y limitaciones dadas por un sistema de guía por mediode mentores. en esta sistema, los estudiantes de enseñanza se inician ejerciendo en comunidadeslocales. La identificatión de las limitaciones se hace considerando la contríbución que el marcoofrecido por investigaciones en 'situated cognition' puedan harer para planificar el aprendizajede los estudiantes de enseñanza mientras ejercen en la escuela. Como conclusión este articulomuestra que el enfatizar en el aprendizaje intencional ye metacognitivo de los estudiantes deenseñanza beneficiará tambien a los mentores y a las escuelas.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Dieser Artickel nimmt Bezug auf neuere wissenschaftliche Unter-suchungen, die Aufschluss über die Erfahrungen von Englischen Grundschulreferendariats-anwärtem in referendariatsvorbereitenden Lehrveranstaltungen geben. Dargelegt werden

0261-9768/98/1/01047-16 © 1998 Association for Teacher Education in Europe

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sowohl das Potential als auch die Beschränkungen der Sichtweise, die das Referendar-men-toriat als Einführung des/der Referendarin in die jeweilige Lehrpraxisgemeinschaft betra-chtet. Die Einschränkungen dieser Sichtweise werden durch Inbetrachtnahme des positivenBeitrages aufgezeigt, den die wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen im Bereich der situiertenKognition ermittelten Rahmenbedingungen für Lernprozesse zur Planung von Lehrver-anstaltung für Referendariatsanwärter in der Ausbildung leisten können. Abschliessendundersucht der Artikel der potentiellen Nutzen einer erhöhten Aufmerksamkeit gegenüber denintentionalen und metakognitiven Lernprozessen der Referendarinnen für Mentoren undSchulen.

Introduction

Before examining some current mentoring practices and considering ways of promotingthe professional learning of beginning teachers it is perhaps important that mentoringas a form of professional preparation is placed in its socio-political setting. The nationalcontexts which have provided such fertile ground for the development of mentoring ininitial teacher training may also constrain. In a 1986 Editorial for a special issue of theEuropean Journal of Education on Government policies for the teaching profession,Neave and Cerych observe 'the tragic inability of the teaching profession to make plainto the public exactly what it stood for'. This inability, they suggest, damaged publicconfidence in the teaching profession across most of Europe and rendered the pro-fession unable to resist the attacks directed at it.

The image of teachers which did get across to the public, no doubt encouraged bymedia to provide rationales for Government intervention and central direction, was thatof developing teacher autonomy (Auld, 1976; Ball, 1994). Such professional autonomymight place teachers as key agents of social reproduction; and agents who, when out ofcontrol, could be dangerous particularly when they asserted the right to constructcurricula. The control of curricula and an emphasis on guaranteeing their deliverybecame a Government priority. Teacher agency, in terms of autonomous self evaluatedprofessional decision making and action, was certainly under siege from the late 1970sonwards.

Arguably mentoring, perceived as a safe form induction into the status quo, is beingused as just the latest strategy aimed at limiting teacher agency to classroom practicecentred on achieving the curricular targets set by Government. This criticism wouldcertainly be sustained by the present context for student teacher learning in English andWelsh primary phase initial teacher training. Currently students are placed in schoolsfor 50% of a post graduate training or 25% of a 4-year undergraduate training. Whilein school they are supported in most programmes by school-based teacher mentors,leaving university tutors the role of quality assurance agents who ensure that studentsare engaging in appropriate experiences. The role of mentor consequently has consider-able pedagogic potential for the development of student teachers. However, teachermentors are operating with all the constraints of classteachers and these restrictions arereflected in the experiences available to student teachers who are being prepared toteach in the same system. An important restriction in England and Wales is that theprimary school version of the national curriculum developed between 1989 and 1995is a diluted version of that offered to secondary pupils. Consequently, what is now seenby a growing number of critics as an over-emphasis on teachers as deliverers ofcurricular knowledge to primary school pupils (Alexander, 1997; Pollard, 1997) hasshaped mentoring in English and Welsh primary teacher training programmes. The

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Mentoring Student Teachers in Primary Schools 49

shape has been sustained by clear Government directives on student teacher perform-ance and a tightly focused process of Government inspection of training provision.

In this paper, I shall start by tracing some of the dilemmas faced by primaryteacher-mentors and student teachers while student teachers are inducted into a schoolculture which is currently obliged to emphasise curricular subject knowledge. I shallthen explore the opportunities and constraints provided by a model of mentoring whichmight be described as induction into a nationally prescribed but locally createdcommunity of practice. In conclusion, I shall consider how increased attention to theintentional and metacognitive learning of student teachers may benefit mentors andschools and may indeed provide a counterweight to those forces which have limited theprofessional growth of teaching.

The Place of Pedagogy in Initial Teacher Training

The policy emphasis on the transmission of curricular subject knowledge which drivespractices in primary classrooms is paralleled in English and Welsh initial teachertraining by Government directives which emphasise student teachers' curriculumsubject knowledge (DfE, 1993). This knowledge is to be applied in classrooms whilestudents teach pupils. Importantly the emphasis on curriculum subject knowledge is atthe expense of attention to the processes of pupil learning and the development ofpupils as learners. Equally it is to the detriment of any view of teacher training whichmight suggest that such training is a phased and supported transformation of studentsas learners who are becoming teachers and not simply acquiring knowledge to be appliedwhile teaching.

The parallels between school and initial training curricula are important for at leasttwo reasons. Firstly, approaches to the teaching of both pupils in classrooms andstudents on initial training programmes are underpinned by an assumption thatteachers' curricular knowledge is the most important element in any teaching situationand is easily transmitted to pupils. Secondly, the emphasis on curriculum deliveryencourages an educational mindset which underplays pedagogy defined as assistingpupils as they learn and which similarly constrains the way we approach the learning ofstudent teachers. As Desforges observes we lack 'a theory of the learner-teacher'(Desforges, 1995).

Arguably the current underplaying of pedagogy is a problem which is particularlyfelt in England and Wales. Elementary phase curricula in the rest of Europe areless subject-driven and attention to, at least, pupil learning appears stronger else-where. Arguably by lessening reliance on pedagogy to attend to the higher statusissues of didactics, primary education in England and Wales has lost importantelements of its professional core. As so often in the last 20 years, England and Walesmay serve as a warning to other systems of education. The tension between curricularsubject knowledge and forms of pedagogy is clearly evident in the Instituts Universi-taires de Formation des Maîtres (IUFMs) recently constituted from the EcolesNormales in France for the training of elementary school teachers. Blondelcomments

... there is a regrettable tendency in France to set the academic and vocationalaspects of teacher education one against the other.... It is clear with regards tothe IUFMs that the scales are weighted too heavily towards the mechanics ofteaching.... Implementation of this (new) model is hindered not only by a

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number of vested interests, but also by the great difficulty in balancingknowledge and practical techniques. (Eggleston, 1995)

The idea that there might be a stable balance between knowledge and practicaltechniques is itself fascinating. Alternatively what may be required is a vibrant dialecticbetween curricular subject knowledge and pedagogy. But what is clear from Blondel'sview of the current French situation is that the status of professional pedagogicknowledge in the new IUFMs is threatened in ways that are similar to developments inEngland and Wales.

These analyses of relative emphases on curriculum and pedagogy are particularlyrelevant to the work of mentors in primary schools where professional identity is basedmore on pedagogic strengths such as classroom organisation than a sense of self assubject expert: a situation which is reversed among secondary school teacher-mentors(Edwards & Collison, 1996a).

In exploring some of the dilemmas facing student teachers and their mentors asstudents learn to teach in primary schools I shall draw mainly upon data from a studyof the experience of 80 student teachers in two consecutive year cohorts as theyprogressed through a degree programme for intending teachers. The programme wasbased on a training partnership between one Institute of Higher Education (THE) andlocal primary schools. Data were collected over 3 years through semi-structuredobservations; interviews with mentors, students and head teachers; questionnaires; andtaped recordings of conversations between mentors and students before and afterteaching sessions (Edwards & Collison, 1996b). A number of dilemmas emerged whichhave implications for how we might develop our understanding of the potential forsupporting student learning that is afforded by mentoring. The dilemmas formedaround the public nature of student teacher learning; an emphasis on the delivery of thenational curriculum; and ambiguity in the role of mentor. I shall briefly examine eachin turn.

The Public Nature of Student Learning

Learning is a risky business. If learning is to last it involves the destabilising of existingways of understanding events; the incorporation of new insights and action which teststhose insights; and perhaps the discarding of current ways of constructing experience.These processes, commonly associated with deep processing (Chinn & Brewer, 1993),are particularly risky while attempting to manage a classroom of young and activelearners. Yet the learning from experience which appears to be the rationale forextensive placement of student teachers in schools demands that student teachersnotice events which are discrepant with their previously held frameworks for under-standing teaching and subsequently and appropriately adjust their practices. Againstthat expectation needs to be placed the evidence available to us that the volatility ofclassrooms is continuously kept in check by a process of normalising and underplayingthe discrepant (Doyle, 1986); and that even experienced teachers are most likely toreact to unusual events by imposing previous forms of normality (Brown & Mclntyre,1992). No-one is likely to be more aware of the incipient chaos of classroom life thanstudent teachers.

Our data suggested that mentors were also sensitive to the students' desire to slipseamlessly into existing rhythms of classroom life and to present smooth performancesas teachers. There was evidence that mentors colluded with students in what Doyle has

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described, when talking about pupils, as a process of bidding down the demands ofclassroom tasks (Doyle, 1986). The bidding down meant that students producedlearning tasks for pupils in which there was a low risk of failure for both students andpupils (Collison & Edwards, 1994).

We analysed 5 hours of tape recorded talk between 11 mentors and 22 students overone year of the degree programme. Detailed content analysis was based on thecategorisation of 'meaning units' of talk. For example, 'You need to give them thelanguage when you show them the picture' was identified as one meaning unit. Theunits were subsequently allocated to data-driven categories to reveal the content ofmentor talk to student teachers while they either planned or evaluated sessions taughtby the students [see Edwards & Collison (1995) for one element of the analysis ofmentor talk]. Twenty two percent of talk was not classified as it was, for example,simple responses for clarification 'yes it's in the cupboard'. Thirty four percent ofmentor talk focused on the resourcing of tasks and particularly on the setting out of theclassroom for the activities to be undertaken by students, 26% related to the students'own progress mainly in terms of identifying how future activities might meet thedemands of the initial training programme and 7% of talk provided specific informationabout pupils in response to students' questions about children they were profiling.Implicit discussion of discipline and values accounted for 3% of mentor talk. Theremaining 8% of talk related to students' management of pupil learning.

One way of summarising the data would be to suggest that the mentors werecarefully launching the students into classroom practices so that they might sail throughthe teaching session avoiding the most obvious obstacles. The image of a launch ishelpful as our observation data made it clear that students were expected to operateindependently once they had started to teach a session. Team teaching was rarelyobserved and although mentors did at times intervene to alleviate impending chaos theydid so relatively unobtrusively in order to avoid undermining student performance(Edwards & Collison, 1996b, ch. 4).

The emphasis on competent performance which is at the centre of the assessmentof student teachers in England and Wales appeared to connect with the students' ownimpatience to be and be seen as teachers already documented (Lortie, 1975; Zeichner& Gore, 1990). Consequently students appeared obliged to succeed in their interpreta-tions of classroom events and in their responses to them. Their dilemma was that theywere learners but could not appear to be seen to be so in the classrooms in which theywere acting as teachers. Discrepant data which might have provided a cue for learning,and in Doyle's terms have increased the cognitive demand of the student teachers' owntasks, appeared to be discarded unused. We shall see this more clearly when consider-ing the difficulties faced by students when attempting to deliver the national curriculumin ways which accorded with the learning needs of young children.

The emphasis on the delivery of the national curriculum

In order to discover how students were coping with the delivery of the nationalcurriculum we observed them teaching by using an adaptation of the target childmethod of observation developed by Sylva and her colleagues (Sylva, Roy & Painter1980). The 34 hours of minute by minute observations of students over 3 years focusedon their interactions with groups of pupils as the children worked on curriculumoriented classroom tasks. In addition to the observation data we asked students andmentors to identify the curriculum focus of the tasks to be undertaken by the children.

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Data analysis involved working with expert judges in order to establish the curriculumfocus of the tasks as they were experienced by the pupils.

Three categories of task emerged. There were those which offered pupils experienceof the intended subject focus and sustained their engagement with the discourse of thesubject. Another group of tasks engaged with the intended subject but were lesscognitively demanding than was intended and so allowed distortion of intendedlearning outcomes. Finally there were those which in their execution became trans-formed to focus on a subject other than that intended. The analysis revealed quitestriking mismatches between curricular intentions and the tasks as experienced bypupils in science where only 17% of the activities as they were observed in classroomswere categorised as sustained science tasks by expert judges. Other areas of majormismatch were religious and moral education with a 41% of tasks sustaining theirintended focus and geography where 48% of tasks achieved their objective of carryingthrough the curricular intentions. Mathematics fared little better with a 51% match.History and English teaching appeared more able to maintain their curriculum intentionwith 67 and 65% of tasks achieving their intended focus (Edwards & Collison, 1996c).

An interesting aspect of the analysis was the number of tasks which fell into thesecond category and managed to keep broadly to the curriculum subject area but whichdid not maintain the precise curricular goals intended. Here students initially attemptedto address the intended learning outcomes of the task but subsequently allowed thenarrow focus to be distorted to cover other aspects of the same curriculum area withwhich the children were more familiar. For example, a mathematics estimation taskbecame a simple counting exercise. In the third category, where the curriculum focuswas lost rather than distorted the teaching shifted from attention the target area of thecurriculum to an entirely different and less challenging area of activity. For example ascience session started with a clear introduction to the principles of light and shade butbecame rapidly changed into a craft activity which focused on the mechanics of makingpaper silhouettes in order to ensure that the activity which should have carried thecurriculum goals was completed. Maynard has similarly observed how students' activ-ities easily became superficial and trivial (Maynard, 1996).

Closer attention to what was happening when sound curriculum planning becamedistorted or lost when taken into action revealed that two processes appeared to be atwork. Firstly, it appeared that the current emphasis on the assessment of studentcompetence performance intensified the students' need to be seen as teachers in thepublic arena of a classroom. Students were aiming at pupil task completion as proof oftheir competence as deliverers of the curriculum. We know from our observation datathat, except when mentors were overtly undertaking a formal observation session, ifthey remained in classrooms with student teachers they worked with groups of childrenand, unless team teaching, only intervened to avert a loss of classroom control. Thequality of student curriculum delivery was therefore observed infrequently and taskcompletion became a major source of students' evidence to their mentors that they werecoping.

The second process appeared to compound the first. Distortion or loss of focusmost often appeared to be a result of inappropriate match between the task designed bythe students for the pupils and the capacity of pupils to respond. For example the pupilslacked appropriate reading abilities or were confused over aspects of the language beingused. Those students who allowed distortion or loss of their original intentions ap-peared to aim nonetheless at task completion, for example the creation of the silhou-ettes to be placed on the classroom window. They did not adjust their teaching to

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Mentoring Student Teachers in Primary Schools 53

accommodate the discrepant information they received about the pupils as learners anddid not abandon the activities they had planned in order to focus more appropriatelyon the intended pupil learning outcomes they were aiming at. They appeared to believethat, with the current emphasis on students' competent performance, they would notbe rewarded for failing to work through the activity script they had planned.

There is much more to be said about this topic as it reveals a great deal aboutclassrooms as places where work is completed rather than where pupils learn (Bereiter,1990) and where teachers' knowledge can best be described as a form of pedagogicalbricolage which allows them to cope (Huberman, 1995). Arguably the conditions ofclassrooms just alluded to reduce the dilemma faced by student teachers when consid-ering whether to drive on to visible task completion or to respond more interactively tothe learning needs of the pupils with whom they are working and it is thereforeunsurprising that distortion or loss of focus occurred. As a consequence, however, weperhaps do need ask ourselves not only about how students are learning in classroomsbut also about what they are learning. Our data seem to suggest that they are learninglittle about pupil learning. We shall turn more directly to student learning when weexamine briefly the role of mentors.

Ambiguity in the Role of Mentors

The mentors in the first year of our study revealed in interview and questionnaire datathat they all saw themselves as carers of student teachers; some were in additionperceiving themselves as guides who helped students to navigate the difficulties ofschool and classroom life; and very few regarded their role to be that of challenging thestudents (Collison & Edwards, 1994). These self-perceptions were borne out moregenerally by the analysis of mentor talk with students already presented. Interviews alsorevealed that mentors believed that their major role was to provide safe sites for the trialand error learning of pupils. However, the dilemma for mentors centred on their primeresponsibility to the pupils in their classrooms. They had to do all they could to preventstudent teachers' errors. Again two processes seemed to be at work. Firstly, mentorsendeavoured to guide students towards activities which were relatively low risk and theyprovided students with advance scaffolding by way of advice on appropriate languageand use of resources. Secondly, they tried to encourage students to consider how theirteaching might be improved. We have already seen that forms of advance scaffoldingwhich appear to launch students into independent action does not always ensureappropriate action in the intensely interactive context of primary school teaching. Theencouragement of students' critical evaluation was equally difficult to achieve. Weanalysed students' talk in mentoring conversation using meaning units as the unit ofanalysis and allocated meaning units to data-driven categories (Edwards, 1997). 62%of student talk, was concerned with planning and 26% with evaluation (12% was notclassified)—48% was related to the planning the implementation of tasks for pupils, 8%focused on students' own curricular needs, 3% related to pupil learning in the contextof task implementation and 2% was questions about the schools' longer term curricu-lum planning. Discussion of student teachers' own performance accounted for 8% ofunits and 5% of talk focused on modifications of the tasks they had implemented. Tenper cent drew on observations of children on task related to modification of the tasksand 2% related to pupil learning. Fewer than 1% of units were comments on teacherperformance and any overt evidence of students indicating in the conversations thatthey had, there and then, learnt anything new was found in fewer than 1% of units.

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When we analysed how students talked to their mentors we found that studentswere positioning themselves as fellow practitioners and not as learners in their conver-sations with their mentors. Using the idea of addressivity which comes from the workof Bakhtin and his collaborators (Morris, 1994) we identified the style of interactionselected by students when addressing their mentors in mentoring conversations. Thestyle was one of polite guest in their mentors' classrooms. For example they usedtentative modes of introducing ideas for tasks: "Well actually we've both (two students)had an idea haven't we? A torch or something with different colours of cellophane ...'.

At times they offered expertise they had gained elsewhere: 'I did a bit of work onthat over the summer ...'. This style of interaction simultaneously positioned theirmentors as polite hosts who would be obliged to accept the 'gifts', i.e. activities forpupil, that the students were bringing into their classroom. As polite hosts they werenot well-placed to refuse or criticise extensively the gifts offered by the students: at mostthey could guide their deployment (Edwards, 1997).

' The style of interaction was selected from a fairly limited set of possibilities availablebetween adults who are working in the same teaching space. The students were clearlynot voluntary helpers or classroom assistants who could be directed by the teachersresponsible for the classrooms. But neither were they qualified colleagues who were inclassrooms simply to teach children. Given their need to appear competent, theyselected the style that might be used by a fellow teacher. It was clear from our study thatwhat was required in the classrooms we examined was a third option for students: thatof student as learner. But as Desforges has indicated (Desforges, 1995) we have yet toconceptualise what a learner-teacher actually is.

It is therefore perhaps timely that we consider what some current understandings oflearning in complex settings might be able to tell us about how we might promote thelearning of student teachers as they work in schools. As we do so we may be able toabandon any implied criticism of teachers mentors as poor replacements for universitytutors while students are in school and instead consider what school-based mentoringmight provide and how we might make best use of what is offered. We may also findsome benefits in a parallel notion of mentor as learner.

Mentoring as Assisted Becoming

Mentors in England and Wales have been set an impossible task if what we require ofthem is that they replace the previous functions of higher education tutors by providingstudents with broad principles in the expectation that the principles will be applied inpractice. Alternatively we should perhaps seize the opportunity provided by enhancedschool-based training to rethink the role of those teachers who support the learning ofstudent teachers. A radical rethink may prevent mentoring being caught in a historicalculture trap which prevents it from achieving some aspects of its potential for thepromotion of students' learning. Currently three complementary perspectives on learn-ing in context offer insights into how we might maximise the learning support role ofteacher mentors. All three fall broadly under the general heading of situated cognition.

Learning Through Participation in a Community of Practice

Recent work on situated learning as increasingly active participation in a community ofpractice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Chaiklin & Lave, 1993) encourages us to see howparticipation in a field of practice alongside more expert practitioners can assist the

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transformation of the novice into someone who shares the ways of seeing and respond-ing to events most commonly employed in that field or community of practice:someone who in terms of teaching becomes a teacher.

Lave and Wenger's associated notion of legitimate peripheral participation in acommunity while one becomes familiar with its meanings and values suggests thatmuch may be gained by relatively slow progress towards participation as fully function-ing members. In addition learning as transformation of learners and not simply theacquisition of skills to be applied is complemented by a transactional view of knowledgewhich emphasises a relationship between knowledge, action and learning.

Situated cognition, they argue, reveals

the relational character of knowledge and learning ... the negotiated characterof meaning and the concerned (engaged, dilemma-driven) nature of thelearning activity for the people involved ... (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 33)

Legitimate peripheral participation and the notion of the co-construction of knowledgeas a result of engagement in practice are useful concepts for at least three reasons.Firstly the legitimisation of observing and questioning events may inhibit the race topublic performance we observed among the student teachers in our three year study.Secondly, an emphasis on the importance of observation and the consideration ofpossible reactions undermines the idea that pedagogy might be reduced to a set ofroutines guaranteed to deliver a teacher's curricular knowledge. Finally the relationalcharacter of knowledge and learning and the importance of the negotiation of meaningsmay help us extend the notion of teachers as learners to the mentors themselves.

The idea of the learner-mentor involved in revisiting and renegotiating interpreta-tions of classroom events would put paid to, what for some is, a fundamental flaw inmentoring when it is conceived as simply the identification of general principles whichare to be applied by students. The problem with the latter view of mentoring lies in theexplicating of the mentors' tacit professional knowledge so that it might be passed onto students and applied by them when required (Edwards & Collison, 1995). Heresituated cognition takes a particularly innovative line which is entirely dependent on itsfocus on learning as becoming through participation in activities rather than a view oflearning only as knowledge to be acquired and then deployed in contexts.

Situated cognition demands that we move the level of analysis of learning from anindividual's internal processing to the systems in which the individual participates(Greeno, 1997). We need to look at learning from the outside in. As a consequenceproblems of transfer of knowledge, for example, are translated into attention to whatGreeno describes as a 'generality of knowing' through our capacity to read systems andseek the familiar in them. In mentoring it means that we do not require mentorsto dissect classroom events in order to reveal broad principles of, for example, pupillearning. Alternatively it suggests that mentors might help students to see pupils incontext and to anticipate possible pupil responses to ways contexts have been struc-tured.

But how do we enable student teachers' classroom experiences to generate agenerality of knowing? We have already observed that it does not easily happen simplythrough participation in an activity. For example while acting in the risky contexts ofprimary classrooms student teachers may dismiss discrepant information and loseopportunities for learning. Rather we have to create opportunities for discussion ofclassroom events in which meanings might be negotiated and engaged or dilemma-driven nature of learning be recognised. Emphases on competent student performance

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are of little help here. Instead we need to stress the conversational nature of knowledgeconstruction. Primary school teachers are usually the first to assert the interactionistbasis to their own classroom teaching. It is time perhaps for that understanding to bemore generally brought into play.

Mentoring conversations within a situated cognition model will sometimes bedifficult to manage. Conversations will have to be seen, at least with less knowingstudent teachers, as contrived situations aimed at promoting the learning of students(Edwards & Collison, 1996b). As Desforges reminds us, we should not underestimatethe effort required to assist the restructuring of knowledge in the light of experience(Desforges, 1995). But perhaps there has also been an over-emphasis of one kind ofconversation, i.e. performance related conversations between mentors and students, asthe pivotal element in a student's induction into professional knowledge and practice.It may therefore be helpful to examine how understandings of situated cognition havebeen extended recently by Rogoff.

Integrating Individual and Community

RogofFs work (Rogoff, 1995) returns us to a discussion of learning to teach as the moresystematic transformation of the learner-teacher. She suggests that in order to under-stand human learning we need to look at three levels of analysis of learners in context:the personal, the interpersonal and the community. The processes which operate withinthese three levels she labels as participatory appropriation, guided participation andapprenticeship. She describes them as inseparable elements but open to analysis so thatwe might focus separately on one level at a time. Participatory appropriation, i.e. actionat the personal level, draws on Neo-Vygotskian notions of appropriation which explainhow we appropriate, i.e. take on the meanings that are salient in particular cultures.This definition allows Rogoff to circumvent any notion of knowledge acquisition as justinternalisation of transmitted information. Clearly appropriation is a necessary elementin student teacher learning. But it is perhaps insufficient without attention to whataspects of a situation are to be appropriated.

Guided participation can assist here. Operating at the overtly interpersonal level itoccurs when learners and more expert members of a community communicate andcoordinate their thoughts and actions while engaged in joint action. Guided partici-pation can involve both the engagement with and avoidance of social objects and caninclude instruction, incidental comments and the use of materials which may enhanceor restrict particular responses. At its essence is a co-construction of meanings throughactivities in which both participants have roles which may be different and in play atdifferent times. A student teacher's observation and discussion of a classroom eventmanaged by a mentor would meet RogofFs definition of guided participation, as wouldjoint planning and teaching by student teacher and mentor. Similarly Feiman-Nemserand Rosaen's label 'guided learning to teach' for the idea of learning to teach withguidance in classrooms resonates strongly with RogofFs description of guided partici-pation (Feiman-Nemser & Rosaen, 1997).

The third level for viewing learning offered to us by Rogoff, apprenticeship in thecontext of the community of practice, allows us to see how the role of mentor may beextended and supported as it develops. RogofFs community includes the economic,political, spiritual and material aspects of the contexts in which activities take place. Itis therefore at this level that learners experience the broader beliefs and principles that

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underpin the nuances of interactions at the interpersonal level and the highlighting ofwhat is appropriated at the personal level.

Rogoff s analytic framework usefully focuses our gaze on the contexts in whichlearning occurs and reminds of our need to attend to it at a number of levels.Mentoring arguably involves the weaving togedier of the three levels so that studentlearning becomes active induction into a coherent community which, unlike thatdepicted by Neave & Cerych (1986), knows what it stands for. I have argued elsewherethat too much rests in the role of individual mentors in this regard (Edwards &Collison, 1996b, ch. 10). Rogoff s framework helps us to see more clearly why learningstudent teachers may be advantaged by being placed in schools which value learningteachers and which allow these values to permeate what is appropriated and con-structed by student as they become teachers and which allow students to contribute tothe schools' constructions and interpretations of practice.

Rogoff s work emphasises the social nature of learning (Rogoff, 1991, 1995) andparticularly • the role that the more skilled practitioners have in building bridges forlearners through a mixture of support and challenge which 'comfortably stretches theirskills' (Rogoff, 1991, p. 351). Evidence from our 3-year study suggests that this formof bridge-building was rarely achieved by the mentors who participated in it. Bridge-building of this kind calls for an active form of mentoring particularly when the routefor the bridges has been determined by a teacher training syllabus. When such activementoring is placed in a model of learning to become a teacher through participation,even if that participation is at times peripheral, the task becomes daunting. Partici-pation in classrooms as teachers, as have already argued, is a necessary but insufficientsource of student learning. Arguably we need to pay more attention to the inherentlysocial nature of individual learning and how student teacher learning may be supported.

Mentoring as Mediation

The idea of active mentoring across the three levels of learning outlined by Rogoff(Rogoff, 1995) becomes a little less daunting when we explore how learning at each ofthese levels may be mediated by more expert others. A major contribution of psychol-ogists who have been loosely placed in the field of situated cognition is their emphasison the social, i.e. interactive, nature of learning at each of Rogoff s levels. Building onthe work of Vygotsky they extend his notion of the social nature of learning from whatVygotsky termed the social or 'intermental plane' to include individual mental function-ing or what Vygotsky termed the 'intramental plane' (Shotter, 1993; Wertsch, 1991).A recognition of the social nature of learning on the intramental plane is importantbecause it allows us to see that all learning is interactive whether interaction isindividual with texts and objects or social with others. However, the problem stillremains. How do we ensure that what is learnt in any kind of interaction assists thedevelopment of professional knowledge?

Mediation, as the considered highlighting of what is salient through conversation, isa major feature of Rogoff s level of guided participation and is evident in Feiman-Nem-ser and Rosaen's guided learning of teaching in classrooms (Feiman-Nemser & Rosaen,1997). But our data presented some concerns over how interactions between studentsand mentors were managed in the conversations we analysed. Mentoring conversationsas a way of launching students into low error performance in classrooms are unlikely toaddress student learning at Rogoff s individual and community levels. Arguably thefunction of the mentoring conversations we analysed would have been enhanced had

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more attention been paid to the collaborative processes emphasised by Rogoff and inaddition if they had assisted students in learning how to learn from interactions at thepersonal and community levels. At both of these levels student teachers as learners,without the interactive guidance of their mentors, need to learn to take some responsi-bility for their own mediated learning: in other words to become learning teachers.Student teachers therefore need to learn how to learn from their immersion in practice.However this assertion presents two challenges to schools. Firstly what has been said sofar about the situated nature of learning and the appropriation of what is importantthrough participation, suggests that simply telling student teachers that they shouldmonitor their own learning as they operate in classrooms will not work. Indeed ourresearch evidence would support such an assertion. In asking students to operatemetacognitively by monitoring their own learning we are suggesting that they acquirean important psychological tool which can be used to assist their knowing movementbetween different settings and their ability to monitor their own responses to thosesettings.

However, Wertsch reminds us that psychological tools are also products of asociocultural history which places value on some tools and not others (Wertsch, 1991).In England and Wales, for example, policy makers are placing value on competentperformance and not on the learning that leads to and may constantly modify com-petence as teachers develop professionally (Edwards, 1995). If, as Wertsch suggests,psychological tools also have social meaning the development of student teachers asprofessionals in control of their own learning can best occur in contexts where mentorsand their colleagues are also operating metacognitively.

The second challenge lies in the extent to which students' own mediation whenoperating individually can encourage them to recognise and work with discrepantinformation, i.e. how might the more expert other impact on student teachers' learningat the personal level? Here we return to the need to weave together RogofFs three levelsso that the values which inform the community level encourage students operating atthe personal level to face the challenges of information which may destabilise theircurrent understandings.

Communities of Learning

Both of these problems return us to the benefits of mentoring and learning in schoolswhich are learning organisations (Nixon et al, 1996; Dalin with Rolff, 1993). Schoolswhich are communities of practice which are closed communities and which inhibit thedevelopment of informed practice are unlikely to provide environments which areconducive to encouraging student teachers to operate metacognitively as they work inclassrooms. Huberman, for example, has indicated the conceptual and professionalweaknesses of schools which operate as closed professional networks or which do notencourage the exercise of individual agency in collaboration with others (Huberman,1995).

As an alternative Huberman advocates strong links or networks between schools,which have internal cultures of conversation and collaboration, and outside agencies,such as universities. A consequence of the networks proposed by Huberman is that theprofessional knowledge bases in schools are both destabilised and enriched by evidence-based conversations about practice between groups of practitioners and externally-based specialists. Hirst similarly suggests that conversations about practice betweenschool-based practitioners and those who are better placed to mediate research-based

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information can benefit the development of both practical and theoretical elements ofthe knowledge base of teaching (Hirst, 1996).

But Huberman's open collaborative networks and Hirst's conversations at theinterface of theory and practice are unlikely to occur spontaneously. I have suggestedelsewhere that a systemic approach is required to create sites in which these interactionscan occur (Edwards & Collison, 1996b, ch. 11; Edwards, in press). Such an approachwould require schools and universities to reconsider their relationships and would belikely to demand shifts in the priorities in each setting. For example, schools wouldneed to accommodate the structural implications of a whole school commitment toinitial teacher training, while universities would be obliged to examine the impact ofschools as sites of knowledge production on how they work with teachers in theircontinuing professional development and on the range of approaches to research theyare prepared to use.

It may be worthwhile exploring possible benefits of networks for conversationbetween the communities of practice of educational research, teacher education and theteaching of children. One outcome of an overlap between these three communitiesmight be that that members of the communities engage jointly in developing theknowledge base of teaching and so become practitioners, whether researchers, trainersor classteachers, who are constantly engaged in the processes of professional growth. Inthe context of England and Wales such an alliance would usefully provide a powerfulcounter to centrally driven educational reform programmes in which the voices ofprofessional educators rarely are heard. In such a solution, initial teacher trainingpartnerships between schools and higher education could have an important functionas sites for the development of the knowledge base of teaching and the practices whichemerge from it.

Attempts at achieving overlap will need to be sensitive to the histories and expecta-tions of the communities yet will demand changes within them. At Leeds, we have, withsome Government funding, just embarked on such an endeavour through a school-fo-cused research consortium consisting of six primary schools involved in initial teachertraining, the University's School of Education and the Local Education Authority. Theconversations have started and we are all learning.

Seeking the Learner-Teacher

However, as indicated earlier, current approaches to initial teacher training in Englandand Wales, through their emphasis on curriculum delivery, appear to be paying toolittle attention to the breadth of the knowledge base of primary school teaching and tothe demanding nature of professional learning in complex settings. In consequence, arelatively narrow view of mentoring is prevailing. Mentoring as currently operating inEnglish and Welsh primary schools appears, in line with national teacher educationpolicy, to be focusing on student performance as curriculum delivery with littleemphasis on either pupils' or student teachers' learning.

The lack of attention to the learning of student teachers is perhaps exacerbated bya weak view of what a learner-teacher might be. Student teachers are consequentlyobliged to function as teachers as soon as they are launched into classroom life by theirmentors. It has been suggested here that a view of learning which emphasises thetransformation of the learner rather than simply the acquisition of knowledge to beapplied has much to offer a reconceptualising of the potential inherent in the role ofmentors. In such a reconceptualisatioh mentors might be seen as significant others who

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are able to assist student teachers in their appropriation of professional values whichwill include attending to and learning from the unexpected in classrooms. In addition,the approach to learning outlined in this paper moves beyond a view of learning asmerely constituted in social interaction between novice and expert and places thesedyads in the wider context of the knowledge in use in schools and schooling.

The view of knowledge as relational and negotiated in communities of practice,outlined by Lave and Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1991), would however challengecurrent English and Welsh policy preoccupations with the control of curricula. A recentsmall study with six expert primary teachers has, for example, indicated the extent towhich teachers' professional knowledge has been shaped by policy directives (Edwards& Hodgson, 1996). Consequently, mentoring in England and Wales is unsurprisinglyconstrained by a view of professional preparation which is the application of approvedknowledge and which limits mentoring conversations to discussions of apparentlyeffective ways of delivering that knowledge.

Having been unable to defend itself in the 1980s (Neave & Cerych, 1986), theteaching profession currently finds itself with a considerable fightback if it is to assertits claim to be in control of its own professional knowledge base. Arguably school-based training partnerships between schools and universities do have the potential tobe the sites of the regeneration of a form of professionalism based on a view ofteachers, trainers and researchers as learners who are able to inform a developingprofessional knowledge base. I can think of no better learning situation for beginningteachers.

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Correspondence: Professor Anne Edwards, The School of Education, University ofLeeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK Tel: + 44 (0)113 233 4559/4654; Fax: + 44 (0)113 2334664; e-mail <A.Edwards@education.leeds.ac.uk>.

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