ABSTRACT
Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and early career mentoring take place in specific locations. Unlike some educational activities which can happen anywhere, teacher education by nature requires at least a site of practice, such as a school, and often a student teacher will experience teacher education in multiple school contexts and a university setting, at least in part. Those localised settings are influenced by a range of scales: individual experiences, local contextual influences, national policies and international debates. ITE can therefore be seen as a spatial practice, and by extension mentoring can also be viewed through this lens. Drawing on a model of influences on ITE as a spatial practice, built through research on ITE practice in international settings, this chapter explores what spatial knowledges are needed for effective ITE and early career mentoring, and at what scale those knowledges occur. By extension, the implications for mentors are explored: what sorts of situated knowledges do mentors need, what adaptive teacher education expertise is required and what capacity for change do they have.
