Traditionally, classroom teachers have been asked to “cooperate” during student teaching, providing advice to imitate and emotional support to meet immediate needs. Based on theories of educative experience, educative mentoring focuses on growth, continuity, and inquiry. The purpose of this study was to understand what educative practices look like through the eyes of 10 mentor teachers who participated in six mentor study groups across a school year. We report on mentor’s talk about and enactment of three practices: coplanning, observing and debriefing, and analyzing student work. Although we introduced and gave name to particular mentoring practices, the mentors’ interpretations of what these look like when done in educative ways helped us craft the definitions we present in our findings. The findings of this study highlight that mentors benefit from professional learning that is focused on concrete practices with opportunities to develop over time in educative ways.

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Purpose -Mentor teachers are tasked with supporting the professional development of student teachers. Yet, little is known about the mentoring practices they enact in the moment during classroom instruction. The purpose of this paper is to examine mentoring that happens in the moment, extending Schwille's (2008) notion of mentoring "inside the action" of teaching (p. 156), and conceptualize mentoring in the moment as educative mentoring. Design/methodology/approach -This paper shares findings of a qualitative case study, foregrounding the perspectives of a mentor teacher and a student teacher who audio-recorded conversations about what they considered to be instances of mentoring in the moment that took place earlier that day. Conversations were transcribed and analyzed through a process of iterative coding. Findings -Mentoring in the moment occurred when the mentor teacher and student teacher made decisions about whether and how to adjust course during lessons to better support student learning; and highlighted strengths and recognized weaknesses across multiple and distinct moments. In addition to demonstrating in action examples of modeling, transparent decision-making and taking the stance of a learner, participants exhibited unique characteristics that enable educative learning to occur. Specifically, they demonstrated: flexibility; humility; and a desire to learn and improve. Originality/value -The findings build upon the existing research about educative mentoring, mentoring inside the action and mentor teacher characteristics, contributing to a more robust definition of mentoring in the moment.

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