Purpose After many years working with mentors for beginning teachers, both through a formal, Ministry-sponsored program, known in Ontario as the New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) and through a university-based Faculty of Education practicum, the authors cultivated an understanding of the value of both mentoring and the communities that foster it. The authors observed that pre-service mentors are not offered the same level of support as their induction mentor counterparts. The purpose of this paper is to explore the aforementioned gap by bringing together a small group of pre-service mentor teachers with several highly trained induction mentors from the NTIP program in two full days of professional development: one day of learning and community building among mentors, and the second day of collaboration by pre-service mentors alongside their teacher candidates (TCs). The authors learned that pre-service mentors need and desire professional learning and community mentoring support to develop foundational understandings about the role of mentors and the skills and strategies that support an effective mentoring practice. As a result, the authors advocate for sustainable professional development that leverages existing programs and the clarification of the pre-service mentoring role through continued study and collaboration over time. Design/methodology/approach This qualitative study was designed to explore, understand, and interpret pre-service mentor teachers’ experience of professional learning about mentoring and the role of the mentor, including their responses to participating in a like community of learners. This study brought together educators serving as pre-service and induction mentors to engage them in formal professional learning about mentoring, within an environment that created the conditions for collaboration and community in the context of learning about mentoring. Findings This study surfaces the insights related to the types of knowledge and skills that mentors developed in this study in addition to pointing toward the knowledge and skills they perceive to be necessary to their effective participation in their roles as mentors. The study also identifies both the value that pre-service mentors perceived as a result of being invited into a learning space and the dynamics of professional learning and dialogue in collaboration with their induction mentor counterparts and their pre-service mentees. Research limitations/implications This research study explores a research gap in the area of mentoring as it relates to pre-service mentors or cooperating teachers. Its unique feature involves bringing together two previously segmented groups of mentors: pre-service mentors supporting developing TCs and induction mentors supporting novice teachers. It describes the value and impact of mentoring as understood by pre-service mentors, in particular identifying the reciprocal benefits they experienced. The authors also investigate and shed light on the value and impact of pre-service mentor participation in a community that is intentionally created to support their professional learning about their role. It provides recommendations for practice and indicates areas of potential research. Practical implications This study surfaces the potential benefits of professional learning and community for pre-service mentors who play an integral role in supporting TCs in the completion of their education degrees. It makes practical recommendations which point to uniting pre-service and in-service mentors as participants in learning communities that build leadership capacity and advance mentoring knowledge and skills to impact the mentoring relationship. This study advocates for a restructuring existing practice in the area of pre-service mentoring to encourage professional learning and interaction that connects the work of pre-service and in-service mentors, bridging two currently separate mentoring communities. Originality/value This study offers a re-visioning of mentoring as a community endeavor. It advances the notion that, supported by a targeted program of professional development and participation in communities of inquiry, knowledge creation and mobilization, mentors can build their mentoring and leadership capacity and extend their professional impact.

Mentoring is an essential fixture of teacher education. With growing opportunities for international learning exchanges, there is a need to better understand how cross-cultural mentoring can be characterized by reciprocal learning. This study investigated mentee perceptions of the mentoring relationship in an international, cross-cultural teacher education exchange. We conducted research among 19 Chinese preservice teachers who participated in an international teacher education exchange program, exploring their perspectives on the cross-cultural mentoring relationship and mutual learning. Our findings suggest that learning outcomes are improved in a mentoring relationship when there are strong relational ties, opportunities for reciprocal learning, and a greater awareness of cultural complexity. We contend that there is value in supporting the mentoring relationship directly, which has implications for both international exchanges and teacher education programs.

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Current literacy curriculum often reflects an emphasis on traditions of print literacy. This focus is a concern in the post-truth era, as youth engage in diverse meaning-making practices that shape their habits as consumers and producers of information. This in-depth case study investigated the in-class and at-home online behaviors of high school students. We find that even when explicit learning about ‘research’ occurred in class, students are lacking sense-making strategies in their personal online engagements. We also find that curriculum relies on tradition with very little recognition of (multi)literacies as socially constructed and that teachers desire more professional development and guidance about how to engage these literacies more holistically.

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This analysis addresses the ethical and epistemological considerations for using an arts-based pedagogy in the classroom as a means of disrupting dominant hegemonies and as a foundation for a more inclusive, robust democracy. The work advances two arguments. First, education must seek recourse for a renewed democracy by focussing on our ethical and political responsibilities in relation to the other. Second, art can serve to act as that other in unique and powerful ways in the classroom. I begin by proposing that an intersubjective relation is at the heart of both ethics and politics. I then consider how art can serve as an other in that relation. To conclude, I discuss the pedagogical implications for art as an other in pursuing freedom and advancing toward democracy.

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