ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the features characteristic of effective mentoring in primary school initial teacher education. The most significant of the circumstances which determined mentors’ decisions about how to proceed were differences in the structure and stage of a teacher education scheme, mentors’ own level of skill, the students themselves, and the context of the school and class. The school-based emphasis of articled teacher and PGCE schemes involved mentors from the beginning to the end of a student’s course, so that these mentors were engaged with the full range of a student’s development from novice to beginning teacher. The suggestion that being effective needed a wide range of skills and strategies, and the ability to make effective judgments about which to use and when and how to use them, implies that effective mentors are special people. Mentors needed to be aware of the limitations on what they could hope to achieve imposed by their own circumstances, opportunities, qualities, skills, and experience.
