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Peer mentoring: engaging pre‐serviceteachers in mentoring one anotherRosie Le Cornu aa University of South Australia , Magill, South AustraliaPublished online: 23 Jan 2007.

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Mentoring and TutoringVol. 13, No. 3, December 2005, pp. 355–366

ISSN 1361-1267 (print)/ISSN 1469-9745 (online)/05/030355–12© 2005 Taylor & Francis Group LtdDOI: 10.1080/13611260500105592

Peer mentoring: engaging pre-service teachers in mentoring one anotherRosie Le Cornu*University of South Australia, Magill, South AustraliaTaylor and Francis LtdCMET110542.sgm10.1080/13611260500105592Mentoring and Tutoring1361-1267 (print)/1469-9745 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Group Ltd133000000August 2005RosieLe CornuSchool of EducationUniversity of South AustraliaSt Bernard’s RoadMagill, 5072South AustraliaAustraliarosie.lecornu@unisa.edu.au

This article discusses a peer mentoring teacher education initiative that aims at developing pre-serviceteachers’ capacities to participate successfully in learning communities, both during their initialteacher education and throughout their teaching careers. Peer mentoring utilizes the latest concep-tualization of mentoring, that of co-mentoring by Bona et al. or that proposed by Hargreaves andFullan, where all teachers give and receive support. Such a conceptualization challenges thetraditional assumption that the mentor knows best and is consistent with the latest approaches toteacher professional development, where teachers are encouraged to participate in learning commu-nities. A peer mentoring teacher education initiative is described and three essential elements arehighlighted.

Introduction

The terms ‘mentor’ and ‘mentoring’ have been around for a long time and variousdefinitions of mentoring exist in the literature. In regard to professional development,mentoring has traditionally referred to a formal process whereby a more experiencedperson is able to give support and advice to a less experienced colleague for thepurpose of professional growth. However, this definition is changing. In the contextof teacher development, there are many applications of mentoring, including the useof mentoring in initial teacher education, teacher induction, and transition periods ofre-entry and role changes. This article focuses on the use of mentoring in initialteacher education. However, unlike much of the literature, which applies the termmentor to the role of cooperating teachers in their work with pre-service teachersduring their school experiences, this article highlights the mentoring role that pre-service teachers can play for each other.

The first part of the paper draws on the literature of teacher professionaldevelopment, school reform and mentoring to highlight the influence of constructivist

*School of Education, University of South Australia, St Bernard’s Road, Magill, 5072 SouthAustralia. Email: rosie.lecornu@unisa.edu.au

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thinking on the changes that are being advocated in these areas. The next sectionbrings the literature of teacher development and mentoring together by positioningthe process that learning communities undergo as a mentoring one. This is followedby a consideration of the role of initial teacher education in the development ofmentoring skills and understandings in pre-service teachers and three essentialelements are identified. An example of peer mentoring at the University of SouthAustralia is then described.

The influence of constructivist thinking on teaching, teacher development, school leadership and mentoring

At first glance, the term peer mentoring might seem somewhat of a paradox given thatmentoring is normally associated with expert–novice relationships. However, therehas been a recent shift in the literature to reconceptualize mentoring as much moreof a collaborative or collegial relationship. There is a shift away from the mentor asexpert, hierarchical one-way view to a more reciprocal relationship. Terms such as co-mentoring (Bona et al., 1995), mutual mentoring (Landay, 1998), collaborative mentoring(Mullen, 2000) and critical constructivist mentoring (Wang & Odell, 2002) are beingused to reflect these changes. The term ‘peer mentoring’ is used in this article delib-erately to highlight these changes and also to focus on pre-service teachers acting asmentors for one another.

A shift towards collegial learning relationships is also apparent in the literature onteacher professional development and school reform. A current trend in teacherdevelopment is the establishment of professional learning communities that providea positive and enabling context for in-service teachers’ professional growth(McLaughlin, 1997; Peters, 2001). By participating in such communities, teachersprovide support and challenge for one another to ‘learn new practices and to unlearnold assumptions, beliefs and practices’ (McLaughlin, 1997, p. 84). Various nameshave been used to describe learning communities for teacher development, including:teacher research groups (Grimmett, 1995), communities of practice (Wenger, 1998),learning circles (Collay et al., 1998; Le Cornu et al., 1999, 2002), inquiry communities(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) and teacher networks (Lieberman, 2000). Regardlessof name, the work of such communities is to promote professional dialogue, whichaims to enable teachers to ultimately change practices and social relationships inclassrooms and schools, so that learning outcomes are maximized for all learners.

Much of the school reform work in the past decade has also focused on the devel-opment of schools as learning communities. Schools have made changes to the waysthey are organized and structured, in recognition of the view that many of the struc-tures in traditionally organized schools have impeded teaching and learning. Changeshave also been made to school cultures, resulting in the breaking down of individual-istic cultures where teachers spent much of their working lives separated from oneanother, to more collaborative situations, which involve interdependency and team-work, more participatory decision-making processes and a commitment to sharedgoals about teaching and learning (Hargreaves, 1994; Peters et al., 1996). Teacher

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learning is facilitated in collaborative cultures, as teachers learn with and from oneanother and feelings of isolation experienced by staff are reduced.

In developing schools as learning communities, new notions of leadership have alsoemerged. As Elliott et al. (1999) have explained, ‘Traditional role-based leadership,underpinned by notions of positional authority and exercised through “top-downgovernance”, is inadequate for the demands of the restructured school’ (p. 172). Thechange of emphasis was depicted in Senge’s (1990) article, entitled ‘The leader’s newwork: building learning organisations’. In developing learning communities, teacherlearning became a priority and part of the principal/school leader’s role was seen asproviding opportunities for staff to learn to work differently and to assume new rolesand responsibilities. According to Connolly et al. (2000), one of the significant devel-opments in the school improvement journey is the movement of leadership down theorganization. This dispersion of leadership represents a monumental shift in howschool leadership is conceptualized. It effectively blurs boundaries of role, where allparticipants in a community of learners have the opportunity to move in and out of arange of roles. Teachers as leaders and capacity building are growing themes in the liter-ature, which reflect a commitment to teachers’ growth and support their criticalengagement with both learning and participation in leadership (Smyth et al., 1997;Seddon, 1999; Lambert, 2000).

All of these trends represent a shift away from the traditional transmission modelsof schooling, teaching, and teacher development and mentoring, and highlight theinfluence of constructivist thinking. Central to constructivism is the notion that learn-ers play an active role in constructing their own meaning, while proponents of socialconstructivism also acknowledge the role of social interaction in learning. A socialconstructivist view of learning therefore suggests that learning should be ‘participa-tory, proactive, communal, collaborative and given over to the construction of mean-ings rather than receiving them’ (Bruner, 1996, p. 84). Such is the experience oflearning for teachers in learning communities and indeed for students in classroomsthat are being re-cultured to reflect a constructivist philosophy. In such classrooms,there is a commitment to participation and on ‘pedagogies of co-construction … withtheir emphasis on reflecting, building, inquiring, talking, writing and project-centredlearning’ (Holt-Reynolds, 2000, p. 22). Windschitl (2002) stressed the priority givento collaborative activities in constructivist classrooms, where ‘discourse is valued as away to help students make ideas explicit, share ideas publicly, and co-constructknowledge with others’ (p. 146).

There is no doubt that educators are being challenged currently to work in newcollaborative ways with both their students and with one another. It might be arguedthat there has never been a better time for such opportunities to exist, that is foreducators to work collaboratively with one another. Teaching is more complex thanit has ever been amid a current difficult economic, social and political context. Asteachers are being called upon to teach differently and school leaders are being askedto lead differently, there is new learning for all concerned. Consequently, all teachersnow need support, which differs significantly from the past view, where only noviceswere seen to need support (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000). There is a growing emphasis

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in the literature on the affective dimension of educational change as it is becomingclear that the development of learning communities is not without challenges topeople’s emotional well-being (Fullan, 1997; Hargreaves, 1998; Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 1999; Little, 2001; Stokes, 2001). Nelson and Hammerman (1996) hinted atthe emotional aspect when they noted that reinventing one’s practice from within anew epistemology ‘generates substantial dissonance with most teachers’ prior ideasabout teaching which teachers must work through to extend their knowledge andteaching skills’ (p. 7).

Clearly there is a need in the current context for teachers to have access to bothpersonal and professional support, as teachers need to be supported both emotionallyand intellectually.

Mentoring: the process of learning communities

It has long been recognized that traditional mentoring has mutual benefits for allparticipants—the mentee is provided with support, while the mentor is provided withopportunities for reflection on practice and is affirmed for his/her expertise (Murrayet al., 1998; Odell & Huling, 2000). However, one of the problems identified in thementoring literature is the issue of traditional power hierarchies, particularly whenexperienced teachers are mentors for pre-service teachers or beginning teachers or inother expert–novice situations (Eddy, 1969; Martinez, 2003). Reconceptualizingmentoring as a process of co-learning challenges the traditional hierarchical relation-ship dynamics by positioning the participants differently. As Bona and co-authors(1995) have argued, ‘Placing the “co” before “mentoring” reconstructs the relation-ship as non-hierarchical; “co” makes mentoring reciprocal and mutual’ (p. 119). Inthe past, the mentor was positioned as the wise one imparting knowledge to a‘mentee’, that is, the mentee was clearly the learner. With co-mentoring, both arepositioned as co-learners or co-constructors of knowledge.

Given the new definition of mentoring, I would argue that the process undertakenby learning communities is a mentoring one. In learning communities, participantsbecome genuinely involved in one another’s learning, as well as their own.Participants are positioned as co-learners as they engage in professional dialogue withone another. Lieberman (2000) highlighted this focus when she stated that ‘teachersare provided with opportunities to create as well as receive knowledge’ (p. 226). Therelationships are of a much more collegial, equal nature, as participants become co-constructors of knowledge and co-learners. Learning communities attempt to reduceexpert–novice hierarchies by positioning everyone as a learner as they engage in amentoring process.

There is a number of reported benefits for teachers who participate in learningcommunities, including their feeling more positive about the profession (Darling-Hammond, 1996) and reducing their isolation (Lieberman, 2000). Most important,however, learning communities are seen by many as an effective way to supportteachers and bring about the changes that are deemed necessary for effective teach-ing and learning in the twenty-first century (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999;

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Darling-Hammond et al., 1999; Lieberman, 2000). Cochran-Smith and Lytle(1999), for example, stressed that teachers who participate in learning communitiesoften become agents of change in the classroom and school.

The role of initial teacher education

There is a role for initial teacher education in preparing teachers of the future toparticipate effectively in learning communities. We cannot assume that pre-serviceteachers will be fortunate enough to be involved in learning communities during theirschool experiences, nor can we assume that they will have the necessary skills andunderstandings to act as mentors. We as teacher educators therefore need to have anexplicit commitment to developing mentoring skills and understandings and toproviding opportunities for prospective teachers to engage with the process ofmentoring. In my role as a university-based teacher educator, I propose that there arethree crucial components of an initial teacher education program committed to thispriority. These are the development of a mentoring attitude, interpersonal skills andcritical reflection skills.

Mentoring attitude

For a long time in education, many educators have argued for the development ofparticular attitudes. Dewey (1933), for example, maintained that the three attitudesof ‘open-mindedness’, ‘responsibility’, and ‘wholeheartedness’ are necessary forreflective teaching. Additionally, Noddings (1992, 1994) has argued for a caring atti-tude that not only involves ‘the act of affirming and encouraging the best in others’(1992, p. 25), but is also about encouraging the best in oneself. Noddings (1994,cited in Collinson & Killeavy, 1999) made the point that for teachers, ‘caring impliescompetence: wanting the best for students leads caring teachers to become increas-ingly competent themselves’ (p. 350; emphasis in original). One might infer from thisthat caring teachers would involve themselves in ongoing professional learning. Iwould argue that such a commitment demonstrates a mentoring attitude.

A mentoring attitude values both one’s own learning and the learning of others. Aneffective mentoring relationship is underpinned by the notion of reciprocity, whereeach person is required to adopt the role of learner, and needs also to be prepared totake on the role of a facilitator of someone else’s learning. There is a mutual exchangeand each person is not just concerned with ‘what am I learning?’, but also ‘how can Iassist someone else’s learning?’. Kochan and Trimble (2000, p. 21), in describingtheir mentoring relationship, wrote that they became ‘co-learners in a process ofdiscovery’, and in so doing, exemplified Mullen and Lick’s (1999) notion of synergisticco-mentoring. Mullen and Lick (1999) coined this concept to capture the essence ofco-mentoring as a synergistic process that ‘supports opportunity, dialogue, enthusi-asm and change’ (p. 11). The focus on reciprocity seems central to effective partici-pation in learning communities. In writing about the ‘new technologies ofcollaboration’ (p. 1), Schrage (1990) argued that successful collaboration requires a

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high level of cognitive involvement by participants, as well as a preparedness by themto contribute to the creation of a shared understanding.

Developing an attitude in prospective teachers that requires them to not only takeresponsibility for their own learning, but also to accept some responsibility for thelearning of their peers, is challenging. This is particularly so given the prevailingtraditional individualistic culture of teaching. Several writers have commented on thedifficulty of developing an understanding that teaching is a collaborative practice(Manouchehri, 2002; Bullough et al., 2003). Bullough et al. (2003), for example,when trying to develop a peer teaching model of student teaching, wrote:

The belief that to teach is to work in isolation, to plan lessons alone, solve problems alone,and to stand alone in front of a classroom and to talk at children, is a recognised and majorimpediment to educational renewal. (p. 67)

Interpersonal skills

There is no doubt in mentoring, that highly developed interpersonal skills arerequired. This is illustrated in the following example based on a mentoring group ofteacher educators:

We are always learning how to listen better, how to respectfully challenge one another,how to give feedback in non-threatening and responsible ways, how to receive feedbackwith equanimity, how to ‘stay with’ a person in his or her struggle to understand his or herteaching, and how to stay open. (Rodgers, 1993, p. 8)

Many initial teacher education programs have for a long time acknowledged theimportance of developing communication skills, however traditionally the focus hasbeen on working with students in classrooms. A consequence, as Evans (2001) haspointed out, is that many teachers prefer to work with children and are neithercomfortable nor particularly well skilled at dealing with situations involving adults,particularly where conflict is likely. And even when teachers do work more with eachother, as Peters et al. (1996) discovered in a study on school restructuring, whileteachers felt comfortable discussing educational issues with their colleagues, theywere uneasy when it came to engaging in critical reflection that might involve ques-tioning, challenging and debating one’s own and others’ practices and controversialteaching and learning issues. It is therefore necessary for teacher education programsto develop prospective teachers’ interpersonal skills in working with adults as well asstudents, such that they feel confident to participate with adults as well as childrenand to be able to deal with conflicts and differing worldviews.

Taylor (2002) emphasized that a ‘culture of trust’ is needed for successfulcollaboration and that a reciprocation of trust needs to be built between peers orbetween peers and leaders. In order to build trust, pre-service teachers need to be ableto demonstrate empathy and understanding and be able to speak and listen in waysthat demonstrate that they value themselves and others. Prospective teachers need tobe taught these skills of assertive communication, so that they can relate much morein partnership with one another and with children rather than in traditional more

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hierarchical relationships. Here again, they need to need to develop an understandingof the reciprocal nature of the learning process and an appreciation for reciprocalways of working.

Critical reflection skills

Many initial teacher education programs have had a commitment to developingcritical reflection skills and understandings for some time now. Yost et al. (2000) havenoted that a ‘consistent recommendation of such programs is the need to attend toand address the beliefs that pre-service teachers bring with them to the teacher educa-tion program’ (p. 47). Critical reflection involves prospective teachers learning toreflect on these beliefs and question their own and others’ assumptions in an effort touncover values and interests served and not served by the arrangements of schooling.The processes of critical reflection are underpinned by a strong commitment to socialjustice.

The development of critical reflection skills will enable student teachers to engagein the level of professional dialogue that is necessary for active participation in learn-ing communities. That is, they will be able to have substantial learning conversations,where they can open up their ideas and beliefs to critique and also support and chal-lenge their peers in doing the same, as they learn to cater for the needs of all children.Critical reflection skills need to be seen as a component of mentoring, so that mentor-ing is conceptualized as not only about providing personal support for another, butalso about providing professional support by challenging ideas and beliefs. This is inkeeping with Rodriguez’s (1995) concept of multicultural mentoring. She argued thatmentors’ values and assumptions must be examined, so that multiple perspectives arepromoted, rather than mentoring which aims for homogenization or conformity toone viewpoint.

What we know from the teacher development literature is that the critical reflectionprocess is challenging and at times can be very uncomfortable for those involved(Smyth, 1993, cited in Brown, 1995; Tremmel, 1993). Thus, there is a need for atrusted colleague with whom to practise such conversations. A strategy that has beenused in a number of teacher education programs is the notion of critical friends,where pairs and groups of students work together to develop skills of reflection.Hatton and Smith (1995) have argued that engaging in dialogue with a peer who actsas a critical friend is an impetus for powerful reflection. It is particularly effective, theymaintain, when the relationship between the peers is one of friendship that permitshigh levels of risking and trusting. They found that reflection was optimized whencritical friends were prepared to confront one another with seeming contradictions inwhat was said. Manouchehri (2002), in a recent study on the development of profes-sional knowledge of prospective teachers, confirmed the value of peer discourse andcollaborative reflection in helping prospective teachers develop the capacity to takeon new perspectives.

The notion of reciprocity needs to be made explicit in critical friendships. That is,the purpose of working with a critical friend is twofold: to develop one’s own

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reflection skills and to facilitate the development of one’s partner’s reflection skills.Traditionally, the focus has often been on the individual as a learner, rather thanrecognizing the mentor role as well. This is a subtle but important shift of focus.

Peer mentoring: an initial teacher education example

For many years now, the teacher education programs at the University of SouthAustralia have had a commitment to developing reflective practitioners. Variouspractices and strategies, including reflection time and journaling, have beendescribed elsewhere (see Dobbins, 1996; Reid et al., 1998). The focus here is onpeer mentoring, which is developed within the practicum courses of the four-yearBachelor of Education program and the graduate 18-month Bachelor of Educationprogram.

Here peer mentoring refers to participants becoming directly involved in each other’slearning by being mentors for each other. It is not to imply that peer mentoring canoccur only in a pair. I agree with Hargreaves and Fullan (2000), who claimed that‘mentoring in the new millennium’ should see mentoring move from being performedin pairs to becoming an integral part of professional cultures in schools. However, asa starting-point, I am advocating an approach to mentoring, where students worktogether in pairs, so that they learn how to participate successfully in learningcommunities. Such an approach has the advantage of providing a collaborative rela-tionship based on a partnership where neither of the participants holds a position ofpower over the other. This is not insignificant given the issue of equality in relation-ships, discussed earlier in the paper.

In the final practicum experience in both programs, as well as being placed with aschool mentor, each student teacher acts as a peer mentor for at least one other.During the block practicum experiences, the expectation is for peers to have weeklycontact. How they do this is negotiable and may involve face-to-face meetings, phonecalls or email contact and can be a paired activity or a larger group as they decide tomerge to support each other through the challenges and dilemmas associated withbeing a student teacher.

It is acknowledged in the literature that the experience of being a pre-service teacherhas its own dynamic, with its own set of relationships, rules, intellectual andemotional responses, judgments, and unpredictability (Britzman, 1991; Dobbins,1994; Groundwater-Smith et al., 2001). Increasingly, the benefits of engaging indialogue with peers and supporting one another throughout practicum experiencesare being recognized (Featherstone et al., 1997; Le Cornu et al., 2001). The use ofinformation communication technology (ICT) makes it even more possible for pre-service teachers to establish and sustain communication with their peers during apracticum experience and to provide personal and professional support to theircolleagues (Le Cornu et al., 2000).

As well as providing opportunities for the pre-service teachers to engage with theprocess of mentoring, their capacities for mentoring are developed throughout theirprogram. In each program, there is a commitment to developing a mentoring

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attitude, interpersonal skills and critical reflection skills. The mentoring attitude isdeveloped in a number of ways. This includes being explicit about particular attitudessuch as open-mindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness and being congruent withthese in the messages that are given to students, in face-to-face interactions, emailcommunications, online and written program materials. It also is reflected in how we,as lecturers, work with students in workshops and being explicit about how we wantthem to work with one another. The notion of reciprocity is explained such that thestudents understand that there is an expectation that they care about other students’learning as well as their own. Each workshop lecturer aims to develop a democratic,respectful culture of discussion and debate and we try and help student teachers‘make sense of their learning’ (Smyth, 1993) rather than dictating what it should looklike. This is similar to establishing what Awaya and co-authors (2003) have termed aculture of mentoring.

The interpersonal and critical reflection skills are explicitly taught and practisedduring on-campus workshops. Students spend 20 minutes of each of their practi-cum workshops, developing their skills with a critical friend. In this way they learnhow to interact with each other as intellectual partners. This time is based aroundjournal responses and each person is encouraged to elaborate on their journalentries, pose questions and discuss them, clarify issues, expand on their earlieropinions and discuss how they might view or do things differently. At the end of the20 minutes, the discussion is opened up to the whole group, so that students alsohave opportunities to articulate their emerging views in a larger context. The aim ofthese times is for each student to be able to develop their ability to talk about whatthey are doing, why they are doing it and in whose interests. This, of course, is inkeeping with outcomes of any critical reflection process in many teacher educationprograms.

However, what we are also doing is trying to encourage students to appreciate therole they play in assisting their peer(s) in being able to do this. This is the mentoringaspect. The goal is for pre-service teachers to develop an appreciation of the skills thatare needed for engaging in professional dialogue that is enabling, both for themselvesand others.

Conclusion

I have argued in this paper that there is a role for initial teacher education in preparingteachers of the future to participate effectively in learning communities. Teachereducators need to have an explicit commitment to developing mentoring skills andunderstandings and to providing opportunities for prospective teachers to engagewith the process of mentoring.

Peer mentoring has been proposed as a strategy for pre-service teachers to becomedirectly involved in each other’s learning by being mentors for each other. Theexample provided in this article illustrates how the necessary mentoring attitude,interpersonal skills and critical reflection skills were developed on-campus and thenthe pre-service teachers were required to practise these skills and understandings

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during the practicum experiences, where they were expected to provide professionalsupport for each other.

The ultimate aim of peer mentoring is that pre-service teachers will have theconfidence and willingness to participate actively in professional learning communi-ties in the future. This participation will be based on the notions of social justice andreciprocity, whereby they will have a commitment to examining the consequences oftheir professional practices in catering for the needs of all students and they will alsohave the capacities to enable their colleagues to be able to do this.

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