Introduction

Mentoring is a global phenomenon. Even though the concept of ‘mentoring’ exists in different national and cultural contexts and is performed in a variety of ways, it is nevertheless a contested practice (Kemmis et al., 2014). The incoherent way of naming, framing and defining ‘mentoring’ has been discussed in the literature, in that different concepts, such as mentoring, coaching, supervision etc., have been used to describe the same phenomenon (cf. Gold, 1996; Sundli, 2007; Mullen, 2012;). For instance, Mullen (2012) writes that: “While some theorists think of coaching as a type of mentoring, others see the exact reverse – that is, mentoring as a type of coaching” (p. 9). Further, in the educational field a clear line is seldom drawn between ‘mentoring’ practiced in  initial teacher training and the ‘mentoring’ of newly qualified teachers. This may mean that the same phenomenon is described in different ways, or that different descriptions are applied to the same phenomenon.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to problematize how the concept of ‘mentoring’ is used in the literature to address the ‘phenomenon of mentoring’.

Perspective(s) or theoretical frame­work

In this study, a sensemaking perspective is used to acknowledge the processes of sensemaking and negotiation of meanings. According to Weick (1995), sensemaking involves three specific elements: a frame of past moments and understandings, cues of the present moment of experience and a connection in-between, Accordingly, ‘the content of sensemaking is to be found in the frames and categories’ (p. 111) that summarize past experiences. Thus, how the concept of ‘mentoring’ or the ‘phenomenon of mentoring’ is made sense of in individual or specific contexts is a result of negotiations of meanings.

Methods and data

The data for this conceptual paper comes from strategically chosen journal articles as examples of how the concept of ‘mentoring’ is used in different national and cultural educational contexts. A content analysis is performed to identify the various meanings of mentoring and the contexts in which it is used (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña, 2014).

Arguments and con­clusions

The analysis shows that major challenges in (accurate) sensemaking can be due to:

(a)   language transformation (notions and concepts from one language are transformed into another language, most often into English, which can result in a change of meaning)

(b)  context transformation (sensemaking of context specific circumstances may be difficult)

(c)   context insensitivity (mixing up different ‘mentoring contexts’)

(d)  phenomenon insensitivity (mixing up different phenomena, e.g. ‘coaching’, ‘mentoring’, etc.

In certain contexts, some of these issues may be of minor relevance, whilst in others they may be vital for achieving (accurate) sensemaking.

The paper draws attention to the importance of acknowledging linguistic, conceptual and contextual dimensions of ‘mentoring’ in the sense-making process in order to achieve stringency and coherence in research, for instance when research overviews are conducted to frame own research.

References:

Kemmis, S., Heikkinen, H., Fransson, G., Aspfors, J. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2014).  Mentoring of new teachers as a contested practice: Supervision, support and collaborative self-development. Teaching and Teacher Education. Vol. 43, 154–164

Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M. & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook. (3. ed.) Los Angeles: Sage.

Mullen, C.A. (2012). Mentoring: An Overview. In S.J. Fletcher & C.A. Mullen (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (pp. 7–23). London: SAGE.

Sundli, L. (2007): Mentoring – A new mantra for education? Teaching and Teacher Edu­cation. 23(2). pp. 201–214.

Weick, K. (1995): Sensemaking in Organisations. Thousand Oaks. California: Sage Pub­lications.

Mentoring is a global phenomenon. Even though the concept of ‘mentoring’ exists in different national and cultural contexts, and is performed in a variety of ways, it is nevertheless a contested practice (Kemmis et al., 2014). The incoherent way of naming, framing and defining ‘mentoring’ has been discussed in the literature, in that different concepts, such as mentoring, coaching, supervision etc., have been used to describe the same phenomenon (cf. Gold, 1996; Sundli, 2007; Mullen, 2012).

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to problematise how the concept of ‘mentoring’ is used in the literature to address the ‘phenomenon of mentoring’. I first discuss how the concept of mentoring can be used in different contexts and then conduct an in-depth analysis of how the results from one specific article (Aspfors & Fransson, 2015) are used by others. More precisely, I analyse how this article is cited and quoted by other scholars.

The digitalisation of educational contexts has changed the prac- tice of teaching and learning. In this, teachers have a key role in enacting digital technologies for this purpose and have different opportunities to do so. This article explores how digitalisation can affect teachers by focusing on: (a) how teachers manage to capi- talise on digitalisation; and (b) how digitalisation can affect and reconstruct their self-understanding. Two teacher colleagues of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the same teaching team are interviewed and observed. Drawing on the interplay between self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, and task perception, it is shown how the teachers’ self-understanding is played out and changes due to the call for digitalisation. Whereas one of the teachers has been able to capitalise on digitalisation in a way that has been beneficial both professionally and personally, the other has felt pressurised by it. A conclusion is that a limited or extended use of digital technologies should not be taken as an indicator of teaching quality.

This paper investigates what upper secondary school students regard as good or less good teaching using ICT. 367 Swedish upper secondary students in 2 schools responded to a web-based questionnaire. The students were asked to describe one of their teachers who used ‘ICT in a way that made them learn very well, and one who used ICT in a way that made them learn less well’ and to describe what these teachers did and why their teaching was understood as good or less good. 18 themes were identified, of which 17 were combined into eight overall counterpart themes and one non-counterpart theme. ‘Clarity’ was the most prominent theme, followed by ‘teachers’ ‘ICT skills’, ‘uses ICT in a good way’, ‘fun factor’, ‘puts information on the LMS’, ‘varies the teaching methods’, ‘demonstrates how to use ICT’ and ‘general pedagogical skills’. The results show that although the specific focus is on students’ views of their teachers’ use of ICT, general pedagogical skills are a major focus in the themes. Effectiveness is an explicit theme in terms of ICT adding value to teaching and learning, while ineffectiveness is an implicit underlying dimension in the themes relating to less good teaching. It is also evident that the students value the same teacher’s use of ICT in teaching differently.

Teacher standards are used in many countries, but it has been argued that there is a disconnection between the standards and teachers’ everyday practices. Mega-narratives about teachers' practices have been recognised as powerful for educational change and when implementing and legitimising standards. In this comparative study, the standards for newly qualified teachers in Australia, Scotland and Sweden are analysed in order to determine the extent to which they contain human elements, here framed as contextual professionalism, and/or paradigmatic knowledge (Olson and Craig, 2009. This comparison facilitates an exploration of how teachers' work is envisaged in the respective countries and what is expected or required from newly qualified teachers.  The results indicate that the Australian and Scottish standards emphasise paradigmatic knowledge in teaching, whereas the now abandoned Swedish standards emphasise contextual professionalism in teaching.

Purpose – To explore upper secondary school students’ voices on how ICT could structure and support their everyday activities and time at school.

Design/methodology/approach –11 group interviews were conducted with a total of 46 students from three upper secondary schools. NVivo PRO 11 was used for a qualitative content analysis.

Findings – The results show that ICT plays a central role in the students’ schooling, not in terms of “state-of-the-art” technology, but rather as ‘state-of-the-actual’, by for example supporting the writing process and for peer-support, digital documentation and storage.

Research limitations/implications – A relatively small number of students in three schools and three specific programmes make generalisations difficult.

Practical implications – Students’ perspectives on the ‘state-of-the-actual’ could influence teachers’ use of ICT in education, their professional development activities and the development of an in-school ICT infrastructure.

Social implications – The study could lead to a better understanding of students’ expectations and use of ICT at school and in everyday life. 

Originality/Value – The originality of this article is the focus on students’ voices about how the basic use and functionality of ICT could structure and support their everyday activities at school.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of teachers’ reframing of practice in digital contexts by analysing teachers’ pedagogical reasoning processes as they explore ways of using ICT to create added pedagogical value.

Design/methodology/approach

A design based-research (DBR) approach is employed, in which the on-site researcher collaborates with eight teachers of English as a foreign language in four Swedish schools over a period of two years. Multiple data sources are included for thematic coding and analysis. The TPACK framework is used as a conceptual construct in the analysis.

Findings

The findings show that teachers’ pedagogical reasoning is a complex and multidimensional process and is closely integrated with teachers’ reframing of practice. Common characteristics in the teachers’ reframing of practice are identified. The results highlight the reciprocal relationship between developments in teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and TPACK development and the need for a distinction between general and specific, theoretical and practical TPACK.

Research limitations/implications

An increased focus on TPACK research on teachers’ pedagogical reasoning is required. DBR is a relevant approach for this.

Practical implications

The pedagogical uses of ICT identified as adding value could benefit teachers in other contexts.

Originality/value

Rich data from multiple design contexts is collected and analysed over time through DBR. The paper contributes new knowledge about the process of pedagogical reasoning and its relation to teachers’ reframing of practice. The paper also contributes to TPACK theory development.

The implementation and use of information- and communication technology (ICT) in education are high on the educational agendas of most countries. In principle, all western countries now have a policy or strategy for ICT in K-12 schools. Although countries may have similar economic preconditions, they often implement different ICT policies in school (Austin & Hunter, 2013; Ottestad, 2010).  ICT policies may also have different rationales and are often over-optimistic about ICT options (Convery, 2009; Egea, 2014; Jordan, 2011) and the use of ICT as a tool for teaching and learning in education (Hammond, 2014). Most research on ICT policies seems to focus on issues such as policy rationale or how policy is implemented in schools. However, few studies focus on the existing educational practices in schools as preconditions for ICT implementation. In this paper, the focus is on how policy implementation strategies, as they are understood in the recently proposed Swedish ICT policy, relate to already established educational practices in upper secondary school settings. Specifically, the aim of the paper is to discuss how policy implementation strategies relate to the existing local practices in three upper secondary contexts as preconditions for integration of ICT.

Traditionally, policy has often been viewed as a top-down process, where policy is formulated in one arena and then realized in another (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). However, policy formation processes are rather more complicated than that and can be understood as processes of interpretation and enactment (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). Acknowledging these processes of policy formation (Edwards, 2012) is to acknowledge processes of micro-political manoeuvring, power and negotiation in practice, and to relate the policy enactment processes to the existing preconditions, structures and activities of the contexts in which the policy is to be realized. Thus, understanding how the proposed policy implementation strategies relate to existing practices as preconditions in schools may help us to understand what kind of challenges an ICT policy may face and to formulate more realistic expectations for the use of ICT in education.

The kind of analysis that is suggested in this paper may also clarify why the implementation and use of ICT in school is so challenging and why there seems to be a discrepancy between expectations in the policy formulation arena and its use in the realization arena (Author 1, Author 2, Author 3 & Colleague, 20**; Tondeur, van Braak and Valcke’s, 2007). It has been suggested that national and political initiatives and governing have little impact on the use of ICT in school (McGarr, 2009). Rather, it has been emphasized that teachers want to see compelling reasons why they and their students should use ICT for teaching and learning (Howard, 2013; Lim, 2015). This might be related to ‘teacher culture’ and a reason why principals have been identified as key persons when implementing ICT. However, different leadership styles have also been found to give different results when it comes to implementing ICT (Hadjithoma-Garstka, 2011). Indeed, different leadership styles seem to fit different educational cultures. Implementing an ICT policy in local schools has been found to be a multifaceted phenomenon rooted in educational culture (Vanderlinde, van Braak, & Dexter 2012). If contextual matter is of importance for implementing ICT, it is therefore of interest to study how the proposed policy implementation strategies relate to existing educational practices in schools.

Methods/methodology

The discourse and qualitative content analyses of a Swedish national ICT policy (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña, 2014) identified several suggested strategies for its implementation. These were then related to data from a 4-year research project in three upper secondary schools ‘known’ for their advanced use of ICT for teaching and learning. However, the narratives of advanced use appear to have been projected onto the schools. It is possible to trace this to different specific contextual circumstances: for school A, to the reputation of the municipality regarding the use of ICT in its K-12 schools, for school B, to a specific centre of technology at the school sponsored by a private founder, and for school C, as being known for remote teaching. All three schools are so-called one-to-one schools, meaning that every student and teacher has their own computer.

In the three municipalities involved in the project, interviews were conducted with three centralized ICT strategists. In each school unit (A, B and C above), interviews were conducted with the principals and with the local ICT coordinators. These interviews were conducted between September 2015 and February 2016 and focused on the use of ICT in schools in a general sense, policies and routines related to ICT, the challenges and opportunities with ICT, infrastructural issues and professional development for principals and teachers. In total, the three interviews lasted almost three and a half hours.

Data has also been collected from teachers and students in the three upper secondary schools. At each school unit, teachers and students were interviewed and observations of the teaching situations were performed. These interviews and observations were conducted between October and November 2015. In school unit A, ten teachers and 13 pupils were interviewed and approximately 22 hours of teaching was observed. In school B, nine teachers and 15 pupils were interviewed and approximately 20 hours of teaching was observed. In school C, six teachers and 10 pupils were interviewed and approximately 9 hours of teaching was observed. In spring 2016 seven subject-oriented group interviews were conducted with in total 21 teachers. 

Expected outcomes/results

The analyses of the policy document identified the following ICT policy implementation strategies:

(a) the importance of strategies and plans for policy implementation,(b) local processes of policy enactment, (c) principals strategic leadership,(d) professional development for teachers, principals and management, (e) organized collegial learning and(f) cooperation and strategic alliances.

In this proposal, three of the strategies (c, d and e) are used to exemplify and discuss how they relate to existing practices in the three upper secondary schools as preconditions for ICT policy implementation. In the full paper, all six strategies will be discussed in relation to existing educational practices.

Regarding principals’ strategic leadership (c): existing practices show that at present the extent to which the principals act as strategic leaders is not clear when it comes to digitization and the use of ICT in the schools. The principals express that digitization is important, but it is not clear which strategies they deploy and how they operate as active strategic leaders in this regard. The ‘ICT issue’ competes with the many other issues that principals have to deal with and does not seem to be prioritized or generate any significant activities.

Regarding professional development for teachers and principals (d): there are several issues that teachers and principals are expected to learn about. Analyzing professional development regarding ICT at four levels – the municipal, school, collegial and individual level – suggests that teachers learn most about ICT and its use in teaching and learning at the individual and collegial level, usually as informal learning when two or more colleagues create an informal self-organized professional development activity around a specific issue, application or lesson. This kind of activity could be regarded as informal “collegial learning”. The strategy proposed for organized collegial learning (e) appears to be less frequent.

References

Author 1, Author 2, Author 3 & Colleague (20**). [details removed for peer review]. Published as an international book chapter. 

Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. London & New York: Routledge.

Convery, A. (2009). The pedagogy of the impressed. How teachers become victims of technological visions. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 15(1), 25–41.

Egea, O. M. (2014). Neoliberalism, education and the integration of ICT in schools. Acritical reading. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 23(2), 267-283.

Edwards, D.B. (2012), “Researching international processes of education policy formation: conceptual and methodological considerations”. Research in Comparative and International Education, 7(2), 127-145.

 Hadjithoma-Garstka, C. (2011). The role of the principal’s leadership style in the implementation of ICT policy. British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(2), 311–326.

 Hammond, M- (2014). Introducing ICT in schools in England: Rationale and consequences. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(2), 191–201,

 Howard, S. K. (2013). Risk-aversion: understanding teachers’ resistance to technology integration. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 22(3), 357–372.

 Jordan, K. (2011). Framing ICT, teachers and learners in Australian school education ICT policy. The Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 417-431.

 McGarr, O. (2009). The development of ICT across the curriculum in Irish schools: A historical perspective. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(6), 1094–1108.

 Miles, M.B., Huberman, A.M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook. (3. ed.) Los Angeles: Sage.

 Lim, M. H. (2015). How Singapore teachers in a pioneer ‘School of the Future’ context ‘deal with’ the process of integrating information and communication technology into the school curriculum. The Australian Educational Researcher, 42, 69-96.

 Lindensjö, B., & Lundgren, U. P. (2000). Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning [Educational reform and political control]. Stockholm: HLS förlag.

Tondeur, J., van Braak, J., & Valcke, M. (2007). Curricula and the use of ICT in education: Two worlds apart? British Journal of Educational Technology, 38(6), 962–976.

Vanderlinde, R., van Braak, J. & Dexter, S. (2012). ICT policy planning in a context of curriculum reform: Disentanglement of ICT policy domains and artifacts. Computers & Education, 58, 1339-1350.

Great expectations have been placed on information and communication technology (ICT) to change and improve education. In research and evaluations, the picture seems to be of expectations not yet realized. To be able to change practice in the area of ICT in education, one key issue often put forward is teachers’ professional development (TPD). This paper investigates an alternative way of stimulating TPD in the area of ICT in education by building on ideas of formative intervention. The aim of this paper is to present an interview model used in a research project as a tool to develop awareness of digital competence and skills among upper secondary school teachers and discuss this as a model for TPD in the area of ICT. Furthermore, the aim is to present early results from an analysis of teacher interviews using the model and discuss the limitations and possible strengths of this model in relation to other models of formative intervention research and change in practice.