Looking forward into the past

Abstract

This article concerns the interpretation of a semester-long email mentoring correspondence related to social studies teaching between the two authors. Analysis interpreted the mentee’s growth along O’Malley’s stages of professional reflection. The analysis found that the mentoring process fostered the mentee’s establishment of professional identity through a negotiation of individual goals within professional expectations. This experience informs the literature with regard to the promise it holds for professional training of teacher educators, its successes in building professional community, and the safety of this method for providing critical performance feedback.