Mentoring as a Profession-Building Process in Physical Education Teacher Education

This paper describes the findings of a one-year collaborative research project funded by the Standing Conference on Teacher Education North and South (SCoTENS). The paper is derived from a Short Report on this study prepared for SCoTENS on 16th May 2012. The study examined the role of physical education (PE) teachers as mentors to new members of the PE teaching profession. Research participants comprised 6 university tutors and 10 PE mentor teachers across three national research sites (Republic of Ireland, England and Northern Ireland). A range of qualitative data collection methods were employed, and the data were analysed thematically using a constructivist version of grounded theory. The paper reports two key findings: (1) Mentor teachers had a shared perception of the need to be selected on the basis of suitability; i.e. disposition and expertise and the need to be trained to mentor pre-service teachers effectively. (2) Mentor teachers perceived that they should provide a safe learning space for the pre-service PE teacher where he/she is free to take risks and explore praxis (theory-informed practice) in a variety of contexts. (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables and 3 notes.)