INTRODUCTION

It is the aim of this book to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about how student teachers develop their knowledge, beliefs, understandings and skills while they are in school and how subject mentoring might most helpfully support their professional development. The main focus of this book, therefore, is upon subject mentoring rather than upon the subject mentor, for while we acknowledge that there are personal skills, qualities and attributes which might be identified as comprising, or indeed exemplifying, a good subject mentor and that positive professional relationships between student teacher and subject mentor are of significance, it is the processes of mentoring which we believe to be of most importance. By processes of mentoring, we do not mean the practices of mentoring (observing student teachers, collaborative teaching, giving feedback, and so on) but rather we refer to the underpinning and unifying approach in which all such activities might be conducted in order to

facilitate student teacher development. It is the aim of this book to provide a conceptual framework which will support subject mentors in developing both their student teachers and themselves professionally. At the heart of this book we propose that student teacher development and the processes of mentoring are most productively placed within the dialogue of educational discourses which encompass classroom practice, for, as Stubbs (1983) reminds us, ‘language, action and knowledge are inseparable’.