Mentoring as a Means for Transforming Mentor-Teachers' Practical Knowledge: A Case Study from Greece

Abstract

The purpose of this research article is to reveal hidden possibilities about how mentor-teachers’ professional development through the transformation of their practical knowledge could occur into a mentoring context enhancing the role of schoolteachers as mentors. Drawing on Transformative Learning Theory literature, the study explores how five secondary teachers, involved in a mentoring program with such an orientation, come to transform or negotiate their previous conceptions of teaching, learning, and teacher’s role. The results of the qualitative data analysis reveal the transformative potential of this specific mentoring situation as well as the four types of interwoven mentoring experiences influencing the mentors’ knowledge transformation processes: innovative ideas/practices student-teachers enact in classrooms, questions on “how” and “why” of mentors’ teachings, creation of an informal mentors’ learning community, and the presence among them of a colleague having already developed a reflection-stance. The article’s contribution lies in highlighting new aspects of meaningful mentoring experiences fostering mentors’ knowledge transformation and development.