Developing practice-based educative mentoring with secondary mathematics mentor teachers

Experienced P-12 teachers play a crucial role in the learning of preservice mathematics teachers, though the preparation provided them can be inconsistent or even lacking. In this paper, we share two case studies of secondary mathematics teachers serving as mentor teachers as they engage in a professional development experience designed to shift both their mentoring practice and their perceptions of their roles as mentor teachers. To this end, we simultaneously leveraged Feiman-Nemser’s vision of educative mentoring and NCTM’s effective teaching practices to create a semester-long professional development opportunity focused on practice-based educative mentoring. Drawing on written reflections and video recorded planning and debriefing discussions between two sets of mentors and preservice teachers, we developed profiles of two mentor teachers as they refined their mentoring practice. Based on our findings, we suggest a set of key elements for a professional development framework for practice-based educative mentoring.