From mentor to co-tutor: reconceptualising secondary modern foreign languages initial teacher education

Abstract

This paper¹ traces recent developments in the work of modern foreign languages (MFL) mentors in secondary initial teacher education² (ITE). It demonstrates how the nature of teacher education requires mentors, i.e. school — and subject-based partners, to emancipate themselves from the apprenticeship model of mentoring propounded since the early 1990s. This we regard as an essential requirement for engaging student teachers³ effectively in the sophisticated discourses required in relation to the multidimensional nature of their learning process. This inevitably involves a consideration on the part of school-based colleagues of conceptual and theoretical perspectives traditionally associated with HEI tutors. The paper considers the convergent roles of mentors and tutors, in particular how their dual contribution to ITE programmes points towards a new model of partnership characterised, amongst other things, by a notion of co-tutoring rather than a partnership of largely contrasting if complementary duties and responsibilities. Invariably new notions of partnership bring with them challenges for both school-based and HEI-based colleagues. For the former, the broadening of roles, whilst affording intellectual challenges in keeping with their status as educational professionals, also represents additional responsibilities on top of already heavy workloads. For the latter, issues to do with forging, maintaining, developing and monitoring these new types of partnership become increasingly central. The article moves from a discussion of more generic issues of ITE and mentoring to a consideration of more MFL-specific matters.