Mentoring, coaching and collaborative dialogue to support professional learning throughout teachers’ career paths; exploring roles, responsibilities, tensions and opportunities.

Internationally, both Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Continuing Professional Development and Learning (CPDL) are under reform, creating the opportunity to rethink roles and responsibilities of individuals and organisations. Trainee teachers are experiencing extended school placements, with school-based mentors taking on roles including supervision, tutoring, feedback and monitoring. In some jurisdictions there is provision for ongoing mentoring and / or coaching of early career teachers to help them to develop practice and to promote teacher retention. CPDL often foregrounds the role of shared enquiry into, and dialogue about, pedagogic practice. Maximising the potential of coaching, mentoring and collaboration in ITE and CPDL is critical in enabling teachers to contextualise, authenticate and reframe relevant theory, research and policy to inform and shape their practices in complex educational settings. This requires appropriate and well deployed structures, roles, processes and tools. The opportunities and tensions which emerge in developing these practices will be explored, drawing on research, practice and policy evidence from Australia, Wales, Canada, Finland, Japan and England. The discussion following the papers will encourage participants to consider the question; How can we maximise the potential of mentoring, coaching and other forms of collaborative dialogue to support professional learning throughout teachers’ career paths?

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