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Mentoring is widely recognised as an effective strategy for supporting the professional learning of teachers and student teachers across different educational contexts. Yet, its effectiveness in initial teacher education (ITE) may be more widely conceived to take account of mentoring as a cultural practice, contributing to a change of professional learning habits and relationships towards collegiate and collaborative reflexivity. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of mentoring experiences between teachers and student teachers, how these are embedded within the established professional learning culture of the school and the opportunities for mentoring to affect professional learning.

Set within the context of a teacher education reform project in Scotland, involving student teachers, mentors and university tutors, the study adopted a critical constructivist theory stance to explore mentoring relationships. A sequential mixed methods approach informed the collection and analysis of data.

Quantitative data point to a diversity of experiences of mentoring amongst teachers and student teachers. Qualitative data provide a nuanced account of participants’ views of their mentoring experiences, pointing to opportunities for revisiting assumptions about learning in the classroom as well as questioning established professional learning patterns.

The authors conclude that mentoring relationships cannot be disentangled from a critical interrogation of the modes of relationships and values supporting professional learning in ITE. Practical implications centre upon preparation and resources to develop mentoring as a tool for learning, embedded within the professional culture of the school.

This study reframes the concept of mentoring as a practice that does not simply reinforce professional expectations but seeks to redefine teacher professional learning, pedagogy and social relationships in school contexts.

There is currently an increasing interest all over the world in the improvement of teacher education and the quality of teachers. Teachers are now expected to be lifelong learners in order to strengthen their professional knowledge. Mentoring as a component of collaborative partnership between schools and universities is considered a tool for improving teachers’ professional practice. Essentially, collaboration in mentoring between teachers and student teachers is acknowledged as being pivotal and instrumental to personal and professional development in initial teacher education contexts. However, studies indicate that the enactment of collaborative endeavors in mentoring processes between teachers and student teachers are not without challenges. Thus, this chapter documents collaborative mentoring pedagogy as practiced and experienced in a relatively new teacher education reform context in Scotland. Drawing on what has been learned in the Scottish context, the challenges to effective collaborative mentoring pedagogy and the means for strengthening collaborative mentoring pedagogy are discussed. Lastly, a framework for developing and enhancing collaborative mentoring pedagogy in initial teacher education is suggested.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of college tutors on peer coaching as a tool for professional development to determine its formal institutionalisation.

A survey questionnaire was used for data collection, while analysis of data was done using descriptive statistics.

The findings reveal that peer coaching is mostly perceived as a collaborative effort to enhance professional development. They also show that the tutors mainly hold that peer coaching is experienced as organised endeavour by participating tutors while some tutors hold that it takes place informally at any time or anywhere. Inadequate training and financial problems appeared to be highly rated as potential impediments to the use of peer coaching, while investment in training and commitment by all is highly rated as a possible means to strengthen the use of peer coaching among the college tutors.

The descriptive research design has the potential to explore existing conditions as the research indicates that the formal introduction of peer coaching would be appreciated and if educational leaders and tutors are committed and training in peer coaching is given, the use of peer coaching can be effective.

There is a need to conduct research on peer coaching in the Nigerian context. Thus, this paper provides an insight into tutors' perception about peer coaching in Nigeria. It also offers insights into means by which peer coaching can be facilitated for improved practices among tutors.

In this chapter, Cheryl Craig and Lily Orland-Barak, editors of International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A), expound on the traveling pedagogies theme as well as the theory–practice chasm, and conclude the edited volume with a model capturing the nature of fruitful, contextualized international pedagogies. Throughout the discussion, they highlight connections between and among potentially promising pedagogical approaches documented by the contributing authors whose countries of origins differ. As authors of this chapter and editors of this book, they claim that promising pedagogies have the potential to “travel” to other locales if their conditions of enactment are locally grounded, deliberated, and elaborated. This contextualization adds to the fluidity of knowledge mobilization to contexts different from the original one. Furthermore, all of the pedagogies have a praxical character to them, which means they strive to achieve a dialectical relationship between theory and practice. At the same time, they address local complexities in a reflective, deliberative, and evidence-based manner while acknowledging connections/contradictions in discourses and daunting policy issues/constraints/agendas. Against this “messy” backdrop, a model for traveling international pedagogies is proposed. The model balances a plethora of complexities, on the one hand, with the seemingly universal demand for uniformity, on the other hand. Through ongoing local, national, and international deliberation and negotiation, quality international pedagogies of potential use and value become readied for “travel”.