“Jumping in”: trust and communication in mentoring student teachers

Teaching and Teacher Education 16 (2000) 65}80

`Jumping ina: trust and communication in mentoring student teachers Randi Nevins Stanulis!,*, Dee Russell" !Department of Elementary Education, College of Education, University of Georgia, 427 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA "John H. Lounsbury School of Education, Georgia College and State University, CBX 071, Milledgeville, GA 31061, USA Received 1 July 1998; received in revised form 15 March 1999; accepted 28 April 1999

Abstract The purpose of this study was to uncover how two student teacher/mentor teacher pairs made sense of their roles during a year-long "eld placement. We learned about the ways in which the pairs discussed the idea of `jumping ina as they framed trust and communication as integral components of mentoring in learning to teach. Qualitative data sources informed our analysis of the ways people made sense of their roles in a mentoring relationship and provided participants' perspectives on involvement in group conversations about mentoring. Implications include: (1) mentoring as `jumping ina; (2) conscious collaboration in learning to teach; and (3) mutual mentoring. ( 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Mentors; Student teachers; Learning to teach

Teacher education faculty have been exploring alternative forms of preparation that involve partnerships between area public schools and universities. Such partnerships provide possibilities for mutual renewal among students enrolled in programs of teacher education, university program faculty, and public school faculty. Such partnerships also encourage teachers, whose viewpoints traditionally have not been re#ected in the process of teacher education, to embrace leadership roles as mentors and as teacher educators (AllexsahtSnider, Deegan & White, 1995; Goodlad, 1994; Stanulis, 1995; Zeichner, 1992). Educators including Wilkin (1992) believe that this move toward the empowerment of teachers as equal partners

* Corresponding author.

in the education of student teachers is long overdue. If classroom teachers are to be partners in the education of student teachers, a clear conception of this role needs to be articulated. Over the years, classroom teachers have been referred to as supervisors, cooperating teachers, coaches, guides or mentors. Within this alternative program, we embraced the conceptual label of mentor, which is associated with issues of teacher leadership and professional development (Little, 1990). Our conception of mentor is closely aligned to that of guide, and assumes that `guided learning to teach is faceto-face, close-to-the-classroom worka (FeimanNemser & Rosaen, 1997, p. 7). We also took the position that within a mentoring relationship, the focus would be on growth and the realization of learning and teaching ideals within the context of

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a caring relationship (Feiman-Nemser & Rosaen, 1997; Noddings, 1986). We sought to examine the essence of the learning relationship between mentor and student. As mentors interact with student teachers, they bring with them their own values and beliefs about learning and teaching (Elliott & Calderhead, 1993; Saunders, Pettinger & Tomlinson, 1995). Indeed, research on mentoring indicates that classroom teachers have a signi"cant impact on the learning of novices and in shaping novices' beliefs and practices (Cochran-Smith, 1991; Feiman-Nemser, 1983; Stanulis, 1994). However, few studies `examine or analyze the intricacies of mentoring interactions, how mentoring relationships operate between the individuals involved, or how and what student teachers learn from their mentoring experiencesa (Hawkey, 1997; p. 325). Since alternative teacher preparation programs are emphasizing collaboration among student teachers, classroom teachers and university educators, we wished to examine this mentoring relationship in learning to teach. We hoped to inform mentoring practice in teacher education, and contribute to the literature on particularities of mentor}student interactions as participants make sense of their roles during student teaching. Additionally, we wanted to extend research that includes student teachers' perspectives (Abell, Dillon, Hopkins, McInerney, & O'Brien, 1995; Wildman, Niles, Magliaro & McIaughlin, 1989) by involving the students in de"ning what mentoring was and what acts of mentoring were most and least helpful across the school year. To some extent this goal was realized: Across a 6-month period the student teachers were instrumental in helping us to understand how they came to know about teaching as a result of mentoring actions such as modeling, providing support, showing interest, and trusting them with the pupils and curriculum.

1. An alternative teacher education program The Alternative Master's Program (AMP) at The University of Georgia was developed as an alternative to certi"cation through the regular undergraduate programs. This program o!ers the

opportunity for individuals who have completed baccalaureate degrees in subject areas other than education to move together within a cohort through a "ve-quarter program sequence (80}100 quarter hours). Since the regular undergraduate programs service hundreds of students each year, it has been di$cult to have intensive "eld time or close university}school connections in the schools. AMP provides an alternative form of preparation in that it is "eld-based, and built around faculty and student cohorts working closely in two school sites as university students are provided year-long placements within a classroom. The teachers also have essential leadership roles in developing and maintaining the program. This study took place during the pilot year of the program, with 20 members in the cohort, 11 middle school and 9 early childhood majors. Collaboration among program participants became an important part of developing this alternative program. Leadership roles were developed by two teachers as they volunteered to be Co-Coordinators of the program. The twenty teachers who were selected as mentors were enthusiastic about learning more about mentoring and helping novices learn to teach. A mentor teacher component, based on the research of Roth, Rosaen and Lanier (1988) was developed to provide professional support for teachers and teacher educators. Within our collaborative program we: (1) developed schoolbased program coordinator roles to help facilitate interactions between the university and the public school; (2) outlined a series of mentor workshops and support meetings to be held during the summer and after school during the school year; (3) set up monthly co-ordination team meetings with teacher and student representatives; and (4) held individual meetings with each of the mentors for feedback at the close of the pilot year. University faculty hoped that these would be means of sharing responsibility for teacher preparation among all faculty, in the public schools and in the university program (Zeichner, 1992). Meeting this goal meant building trust and communication among all concerned, including university faculty who were faced with rede"ning familiar roles as instructors and supervisors (Stanulis, Payne, Hart & Oldfather, 1995).

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2. Theoretical framework The program, based on principles of inquiry, promotes Duckworth's (1987) epistemological framework of the `having of wonderful ideas.a This framework encourages students to explore their own questions and to "gure out for themselves ways to "nd their own answers with sca!olded support. For example, program faculty encouraged our university students to `assume a posture of &being Piaget'a (Oldfather, Bonds & Bray, 1994, p. 7) as they completed a children's thinking project early in the program. The purpose of this project was to listen carefully to what children say in order to learn about children's own ideas, theories and questions about the world. Through this experience, our student teachers began thinking about the intellectual development of children they were preparing to teach. We realized that this attitude of `being Piageta extended as well to the relationship of the faculty to the student teachers. We wanted them, as well, to listen to what the undergraduates said about their own thinking. 2.1. Ideas as tools for making sense Faculty hoped that university students would see how children correlated the facts of their everyday world with the ideas that helped them to make sense of that world. We soon found that faculty and mentor teachers were called to re#ect on the lively, back and forth relationship between facts and ideas: Mere facts or data are dead, as far as mind is concerned, unless they are used to suggest and test some idea, some way out of a di$culty. Ideas, on the other hand, are mere ideas, idle speculations, fantasies, dreams, unless they are used to guide new observations of, and re#ections upon, actual situations, past, present, or future (Dewey, 1933/1989, p. 199). Dewey pointed to the movement back and forth from observation to suggested idea, from idea to observation. A technical term for the observed facts is data. The data form the material that has to be inter-

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preted, accounted for, explained2. The suggested solutions for the di$culties disclosed by observation form ideas. Data (facts) and ideas (suggestions, possible solutions) thus form the two indispensable and correlative factors of all re#ective activity (pp. 197}198). As part of our `repertoire of thoughts and actions and connections and predictions and feelingsa (Duckworth, 1972, p. 230) ideas are tools that we use to make sense of a situation; we try them out and adjust them as we need in order to get the most out of their use, in the same way we try out and adjust hammers and wrenches to "t particular situations. We found that we, like our university students, were re#ecting on the correlation between facts and ideas: As we continued our research, we found that `trusta and `jumping ina were important conceptual tools central to our understanding of mentor/student teacher interactions and learning. 2.2. Conversation as a tool for collaboration Just as we found ourselves mirroring what we hoped our university students would do, so we also found ourselves valuing conversation in ways similar to the teachers in Dewey's Laboratory School: The method of conducting all classes through the medium of conversation and the free exchange of ideas resulted in a uniform daily procedure which supplied the thread of continuity, for it linked the experience of previous days or weeks to the new or continued activity of the present2. In all social situations, the ideas formed by the group were tested in action (Mayhew & Edwards, 1936/1966, p. 275). We, too, believed in the importance of conversation as a way of linking experiences through time and among people and as a means of exchanging ideas which made sense of the facts of our everyday experiences in the classrooms and which suggested new ways to act in those classrooms. Reviews of collaborative research between teachers and university faculty have oftentimes been problematic, for participants in each culture have di!erent primary goals for participating

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in this research (Feldman, 1992). Since university/ school collaborations have traditionally given privilege to the role of university researcher over that of classroom teacher, scholars are beginning to validate the importance of the perspective of the teacher as a primary source of knowledge of teaching (Lytle & Cochran-Smith, 1992). The same premise can be applied to views of student teachers in research. As Feldman (1995) reported, participants sometimes "nd that conversation fosters created equity. In our case, conversations during our group discussions fostered learning and growth. Accepting conversation as a methodology, our talk was integral to the collection, interpretation, and analysis of data. In our talk, formulated and exchanged ideas gave life to the facts of our experience. We created our own framework for evaluating what we were seeing, moving forward to new questions, and, ultimately, new plans of action.

3. De5ning a research project 3.1. Our purpose The purpose of our study was to extend our understanding of mentoring by conversing in a series of whole group discussions with two pairs of mentors/student teachers across a 6-month period. Our overarching research question was: How do two student teacher/mentor teacher pairs make sense of their roles during a year-long "eld experience? 3.2. School participants The two mentoring pairs who participated in this study were students and teachers working at Craft Elementary School (pseudonym), a rural K-5 school in north Georgia. Noted as a school of excellence by the state, this small school has innovative teachers and a principal who provides strong leadership. Two teachers, Andrea (2nd grade) and Diane (3rd grade) (pseudonyms), volunteered to be part of this study. They had worked closely with Randi for two years prior to this study and were eager to help make this new program a success. Before placements were solidi"ed, Randi talked

about the proposed research with the two students, Julie (2nd grade) and Jane (3rd grade) (also pseudonyms), who had been tentatively assigned to these mentor teachers. Both student teachers seemed interested and enthusiastic about their participation in the project. 3.3. University participants Since this new program sought to promote educative learning experiences for student teachers, classroom teachers and university faculty, it became important to study in what ways participants were thinking about di!erent program experiences such as mentor workshops, course experiences and year-long placement and in what ways participants were using these experiences to guide their practice. We hoped to engage the student/mentor pairs in a study in which they were active participants in helping to describe the enactment of mentoring in the Alternative Master's Program. Randi, the program coordinator, designed this project to extend previous mentoring research (Stanulis, 1994; Stanulis & Je!ers, 1995; Stanulis, 1995; Weaver & Stanulis, 1996; Stanulis & Weaver, 1998). Dee, then a doctoral student assigned to work with the program all year as part of a College of Education grant, was especially interested in how his own research into John Dewey and symbolic interactionism could be brought to bear on mentor relationships (Russell, 1995). 3.4. Methodology Because our research question focused on the ways people made sense of their roles in a mentoring relationship, we wanted to gather data that arose in a naturalistic setting. We wanted to see some of the everyday experiences these teachers shared and the ideas they used to interpret these experiences. In our initial proposal we planned a series of activities for data collection: (a) classroom observations in which each researcher would observe one mentor/student pair across a 6-month period (January}June), looking for instances of informal mentoring, student teacher/mentor interactions, questioning, and the mentor's role while the student is actually teaching; (b) small group

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re#ection sessions conducted by each researcher with the mentor/student teacher pair during their 45-minute planning session in order to re#ect on material from observation notes, journals, and remembered events; (c) whole group re#ection sessions conducted by both researchers with both pairs of student teachers and mentors to share learning across the pairs and to talk about larger issues of participation in mentoring within this particular school context; and (d) dialogue journals which would be kept by each pair of mentors and student teachers as a vehicle for asking questions and sharing feedback. In the research process, all four activities were used with varying degrees of intensity throughout the 6-month period. Classroom observations and small group re#ection sessions were only used early in the period as a means of establishing trust between the university researchers and the mentoring pairs. These activities would later appear as topics of discussion in the whole group re#ection sessions. Dialogue journals were not kept consistently by the mentoring pairs; one mentor teacher adapted the journal for her personal re#ections. At the end of the research period we asked each participant (including the two university researchers) to write a brief re#ection about the whole process. As our data collection progressed, we became interested in how the participants were exchanging ideas about a collaborative model of mentoring in teacher education, where students, teachers, and university faculty supported each other through substantive conversations. Transcripts of tape recordings of the large group re#ection sessions became the principal data source for this project. We chose to focus our analysis on the whole group re#ection sessions because they provided the best evidence of social collaboration among all participants: the novice teachers, classroom teachers, and university educators. Constant comparative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used in the course of data collection following the "rst three large group meetings on January 18, February 15, and March 7. After the transcripts were prepared, they were distributed to all participants and Randi and Dee reviewed the transcripts to "nd signi"cant themes. It made sense during this process to follow the historical develop-

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ment of themes as they occured in the mentoring relationship across the six- month period. After we individually coded each transcript we met to discuss and summarize our codes for themes we had interpreted from the data. As we shared these preliminary analyses with each other we used this method as a way to prepare suggested questions to introduce during the next whole group re#ection. As a member check, the participants were asked to review all three transcripts to identify their own themes. We discussed the students' and mentors' analysis of themes with the whole group in May. The themes that the participants de"ned became integral to our analysis. The teachers and student teachers both identi"ed themes of trust and communication in mentoring as the most signi"cant theme that was discussed within the transcripts. The analysis was framed as a historical exploration of the themes identi"ed by the participants. We wanted to trace, as succinctly as possible, the shaping of the ideas we exchanged. The three themes include: (1) trust and communication in mentoring; (2) jumping in as a tool for learning to teach; (3) conversations as a tool for learning about mentoring.

4. Trust and communication in mentoring The "rst whole group discussion meeting took place in the third month of the year-long placement. We reviewed the transcript from the "rst meeting and found that trust had been discussed throughout the meeting. Part of the meeting time was devoted to self-re#ections of how each participant perceived the development of the mentoring relationship. Teachers and students remarked in their analysis of transcripts that this theme stood out from the beginning of our discussions. In response to our opening question, both of the classroom teachers had begun by talking about the trust that could potentially develop over the year-long placement. Diane said, The biggest thing that hit me at the beginning of the year2was thinking, `Wow, by the time she student teaches, I'll have so much more trust built up in her than your traditional student

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teachersa2. You know, that as we got to know each other and she got to know the children, especially, that I just look to the future and think, `Yes, this is going to be wonderful.a Later, she added, `She's going to know the ins and outs.a They initially de"ned trust as knowing each other and the children well, having insight and care for children from continuous observation and interaction. Diane remembered that Jane even made a comment today about how a math lesson went: `Well, you know this child, that's just him,a and `You know that child, well, he's just going to be like that.a These comments indicated to Diane that Jane had begun to recognize the unique qualities of the children with whom she would be working; since Jane showed she knew the children, Diane felt she could trust her to teach responsibly. Andrea, too, reported that Julie `had already gained so much insight on the students individually in her second grade classroom.a Mentors and student teachers de"ned the initial period of the mentoring relationship as a time to watch mentors, to get emotional support, to exchange questions and answers. In the early period there were lots of questions about basics; examples that Andrea had heard were `What is Chapter One? and planning time? and [what] about the [daily] schedule? and everyday kind of things.a Although these were genuine questions asked in order to become familiar with the school, Andrea admitted that I get a little aggravated sometimes, and maybe aggravated is a strong word, but it was like I would forget that she doesn't know all this stu!, and then all of a sudden she asked me something2. And that has been one of the hardest things for me, is to answer those kinds of questions. The questions changed as the mentors and student teachers moved to another phase in the year-long relationship; questions became more concerned with complex issues of the relationship between children and curriculum. Andrea noticed that `basically everything [you] have asked today has been

more about your little unit, or about a reading activity, or something like that as opposed to just a general school question.a In this new phase, the student teachers were beginning to assume some teaching responsibilities. As Andrea put it, `I think probably what I have done has been modeling so far, but all that will change starting next week: Jump right in!a As we summarized the themes we heard in this initial conversation, we tried to capture the sense of moving through phases that the participants had described. We divided the mentoring process into three phases: observing, questioning, and participating. These are not distinct phases with hard boundaries; they are aspects of the relationship. As the relationship progressed, there was a move toward greater participation in classroom activities. During the fall months, before our study began, the students had only been in their classrooms one day per week. Now during the January}March period, the students were working in their classrooms for 2 days per week, with a 2 week full-time "eld experience from February 12}23. Full-time student teaching began March 25. The students initially observed their teachers in action, learning about the daily roles and responsibilities of teaching. As they observed, they questioned their teachers about decision-making and about speci"c student information needed to understand a child's learning context. The students also had many questions about routine tasks of teaching. By the middle of February, the students were expected to teach a 3 day unit of instruction to the whole class and take on as much instructional responsibility as possible. Seeing that trust had been so central to our "rst meeting, we began our second meeting, on February 15, by asking the teachers to clarify what trust meant to them. By this time, Andrea explained that she needed to feel that she could trust Julie to `be the sole teacher, knowledge-giver in my classroom. That's where the trust part comes in for me. Just trusting her to educate my class.a Looking at this response, in the context of what we have written about the constructivist underpinnings of the AMP program, we begin to wonder how this idea of sole teacher and knowledge-giver would a!ect the way that Andrea interacted with Julie. When Randi asked what it would take for Julie to earn Andrea's

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trust, she replied, `Just demonstrating that she has the skill, and not just the skill, the enthusiasm2. Knowing that she's going to be able to teach them, and knowing that she's going to be kind to them.a Diane agreed that `leaving the room and knowing that only good things are going to happen is just what is so important to me.a We asked the student teachers to continue to describe how trust was important to them as student teachers. Jane reinforced an idea that she had brought up earlier by linking trust with communication: As long as we can keep the dialogue open with each other, then that's what's going to make the trust in the relationship grow stronger, because I like, I want you to depend on me. You need to be able to depend on me. With prompts from Dee, Jane listed some of the behaviors that would stop her open communication: telling her to be quiet, a dirty look, crossed eyes, and rolled eyes. Diane, Jane's mentor, commented that the fear of hurting each other's feelings could also break down communication. Andrea (Julie's mentor) expanded on this: Well, I think, too, that if she does crush you, you need to say you're crushed. I know the way that I am sometimes. I may say something that Julie is so taken aback with and I don't even realize it. And so that's what I have said to her, `If you're ever feeling frustrated or anything, tell me.a Because sometimes I do pop o! at my mouth before I've thought about what I'm saying. And I have just always been that way and I hate it. And I wish I wasn't. But I think that's important. If your feelings do get hurt, don't sit around and stew about it; say, `Listen, you know I really think2a Underneath these words seemed to be an invitation to Julie to express her feelings more directly. But Julie never jumped in to this part of the conversation. Later, we would come to realize how signi"cant was Julie's silence in the face of Andrea's statement: `You need to say you're crushed.a At our third group meeting, on March 7, when the students were preparing for full-time student teaching, we extended issues that student teachers

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had raised about communication and trust. Randi asked, `What barriers still might exist that you'd like to work through?a Julie picked up a theme in her learning that dealt with dimensions of trust and communication. As she engaged in initial planning for teaching, she found herself wanting support but afraid to ask for it directly: I need help seeing things in di!erent ways. Whether it's because I haven't had enough experience yet, or my mind just kind of gets shot o! in one direction, and I need a little bit of sca!olding, a little bit of help to help my mind go o! in other directions. And as soon as they [her university supervisors] talked to me [about concerns with her management during a lesson], and they said the "rst couple of sentences, I was like, `Oh, yeah!a And then I had to think about the whole experience in a whole di!erent way. Julie recognized her need for new perspectives but she was unable to ask for help along the way.

5. `Jumping ina as a tool for learning to teach From our "rst conversations we heard issues of trust and communication raised; we noticed that the phrase `jumping ina became a kind of touchstone that indicated the trust necessary at the heart of the relationship between mentor and student teacher. In our conversations we were returning to these ideas again and again, as a means of making sense of our experiences in the classroom; these have become concepts that are central to our understanding of the mentoring relationship. We "rst heard the phrase, jump right in, from Andrea in January when she was marking the shift from a phase of modeling and observing to a phase in which more active participation would be encouraged; the phrase was developed by Julie as she discussed the constraints she felt against full and easy participation. Andrea had said during our January meeting, `I think probably what I have done has been modeling so far, but all that will change starting next week: Jump right in!a Julie admitted that she had wanted to jump right in, but had found it di$cult to do so early on:

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I had a million questions. I'm sure I drove her crazy because these questions were `Where's this? What's this? Where do you go for this?a while she's trying to plan what reading groups the kids are going to be in2. You want to jump right in and start doing this and start planning this, and running here and doing that. Julie restrained herself and avoided jumping in. One day, while Andrea was teaching a lesson on weather, a child wanted to know if the outside temperature was hotter than the sun. Andrea said she answered, `Well, I don't think so. The sun's really, really hot, and I didn't know how hot it was.a Julie looked it up and passed a note to Andrea with the sun's temperature. Andrea recalled that she said, `Ms. Fox, you don't have to pass me notes, jump right in!a Jumping in echoed throughout this "rst conversation. It seemed to touch on an element of easygoing participation that was an indication of the trust between mentor and student teacher. Diane and Jane talked with great animation about their plans to co-teach a unit. Julie, on the other hand, continued to explore why she had handed a note to Andrea, why she had not jumped in: `A lot of times I think to myself, I think a lot before I do anything, and I'm like &Should I do this? Shouldn't I do this?'a As we looked across transcripts from our three research meetings in January, February, and March, we found that six people, with varied experiences in classroom settings, focused their attention on the common object of classroom interaction and, through their conversation, began to construct a common language with common ideas. We used ideas, such as trust and jumping in, as instruments to identify interactions in classrooms. As we talked, these words referred back to events that had already happened; they also, as they sharpened our focus on speci"c aspects of life in the classroom, began to shape the future: The ease to jump in was built up as a center of our interactions. Jumping in, thrown casually into the #ow of our "rst meeting, set up a series of ever-widening ripples that extended through our subsequent interactions. As we began, we hoped that we would be bringing young and less-experienced teachers into our circle of collaborating about learning to teach; as we

proceeded, we began to question our own takenfor-granted concepts. As we began to see that the participants in our mentoring meetings were making use of ideas, we began to ask ourselves to what degree the research project itself, with the formation of the whole group discussions, was a tool for our development. An idea is always situated, a tool for making meaning of particular data. Trusting enough (trusting oneself enough, trusting the other enough, trusting the classroom enough) to jump in became a tool that helped us all make sense of these particular interactions between mentors, students, teachers, and university researchers. The instruments that we use habitually to make sense of the world are, when stymied by some resistance, capable of being reformed. With each reformation, the idea takes on added richness. We try `to apply to every new experience whatever from [our] old experience will help [us] understand it, and as this process of constant assumption and experimentation is ful"lled and refuted by results, [our] conceptions get body and clearnessa (Dewey, 1910/1985, p. 281). Or, as Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) put it: All knowledge is, we believe, like language. Its constituent parts index the world and so are inextricably a product of the activity and situations in which they are produced. A concept, for example, will continually evolve with each new occasion of use, because new situations, negotiations, and activities inevitably recast it in a new, more densely textured form. So a concept, like a meaning of a word, is always under construction. (p. 33) 5.1. `Jumping ina to mentor There were stark di!erences in the interrelationships of the two mentoring pairs. Diane and Jane described their high level of trust and communication. They interacted with open expressions of warm emotion. Because they had so much in common, their learning soon rose to a critical level where resources and ideas were mutually shared, where feedback was welcomed and cherished, and a deep respect had developed between the two. But

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a storm was brewing (or already secretly raging) in the other classroom. Andrea and Julie conveyed warmth through their high expectations and through a carefully de"ned respect for personal boundaries. In private conversations, they described several occasions when they shut down to protect themselves, closing o! avenues for communication and feedback. During our third meeting, Andrea never looked at Julie; she persistently referred to Julie, sitting at the same table with her, in the third person. Throughout the research Randi and Dee had met to re#ect together on what was happening. Now we became acutely aware of the need to reconstruct our model of the researcher's role. As program coordinator, Randi had become privy to information she would not have ordinarily known. Both Andrea and Julie, in fact, repeatedly asked that our conversations be kept con"dential from the university faculty member who was supervising Julie. How could we not jump in to mentor? We began to wrestle with questions such as: What limits did the research act place on our ability to intervene? Should we jump in? By jumping in, would we increase the trust and communication? Within many models of qualitative research `the researcher is urged to in#uence the research context as little as possiblea (Gitlin, Bringhurst, Burns, Cooley, Myers, Price, Russell & Tiess, 1992, p. 18). But we could not sit back silently, refusing to jump in. We realized that our silence was reinforcing issues of powerlessness that were already part of the teaching culture: `Although they [teachers] are central "gures of authority and control in the classroom, in the larger hierarchy of the educational bureaucracy they are remarkably isolated and often strikingly powerlessa (Kreisberg, 1992, p. 9). If we were not willing to jump in, how could both Andrea and Julie learn and grow? We decided it was necessary to play an active role in structuring a supportive intervention by means of which Andrea and Julie could talk openly about the very issues they had de"ned as crucial to success in a mentoring relationship: trust and communication. Dee agreed to guide the intervention. In this way we hoped to reduce Julie's fear that she was being evaluated, and increase her feeling that she had power to speak honestly about her con-

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cerns in the classroom. This intervention became an important source of data in helping us understand university faculty's role in supporting educative mentoring. 5.2. University faculty `jump ina to mentoring A session was planned to intervene with Andrea and Julie. The purpose of the intervention was to ease communication. Dee agreed to facilitate the steps of this plan, trying not to bring his own agenda, but supporting each participant in speaking what she felt needed to be said, in hearing what was spoken to her, and in deciding on a plan of action which she could a$rm. The plan included meeting with each separately so that Dee could listen to whatever she had to say about the mentor relationship. We all agreed that this part of the conversation would remain con"dential. Then, meeting together, the participants moved through steps that included each one saying the thing that she had earlier decided she most wanted the other to hear. The listener repeated what she had heard; then the speaker clari"ed any possible misunderstanding. Together, all brainstormed possible plans of action. From the list of many di!erent and unique plans, participants chose one plan that both mentor and student teacher were willing to put into action. A guiding principle was that we all (Dee included) would avoid assigning blame, but that each (Dee included) would recognize how we could respond more openly to the others. All agreed to record this second large meeting on audio tape. Later all agreed that material from the transcript of this meeting could be used for future reference. This intervention occurred on April 18 and proceeded according to the protocol outlined beforehand. In the middle of the meeting was an interchange that continues to nag at us. In describing their miscommunications about planning a unit on Italy, Andrea told Julie that it was almost like you were trying to blu! your way through it2. You had a ton of stu!, but you hadn't really made connections through the stu! and it was almost like, I feel, that once

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I looked at the stu!, maybe I would have said, &Well, you can do this, and you can do this, and you can do this' where I would have ended up making the connections. Julie then said: Well. I was completely overwhelmed2 Dee: OK. Did you say, `I'm completely overwhelmeda? Julie: Probably not. Andrea: I don't think so. Dee: And why not? I think this is really important to push to, because this is what you've said you've done all your life. What are you trying to do?2 Julie: Well, I don't know. I probably, I obviously didn't say that2. But if I didn't, then I would have been probably scared to say `I don't know what to do.a2 Dee: What keeps you from saying, `I don't know what to doa? What keeps you from saying, `I made a mistakea? What keeps you from saying, `I'm overwhelmeda? Julie: Trying to do everything right As Dee, in an attempt to show Julie that her drive for perfection was a part of other lives, shared his own experience in learning to ask for help, Julie's eyes "lled with tears. We had hoped that this process would be a means to encourage more open communication between Andrea and Julie. By naming the barriers that had grown up, they would be able to move ahead into a more productive interaction which would facilitate Julie's preparation to be a teacher. After the recorded meeting, Julie asked that the recorder be turned o! so that she could re#ect on the process con"dentially. Dee later wrote about this intervention process: After the day of the intervention with Andrea and Julie, I came home and felt uncomfortable, embarrassed. I had followed the plan as outlined; I believe we had done what we set out to do; but there was an unpleasant emotional texture to the aftermath, a slimy discomfort with what had happened2. My discomfort was rooted in my sense that I had participated, not in a clarifying of a di$culty, but in a reassertion of the power of classroom teacher over student teacher. We had

moved to keep Julie in her place. We had maneuvered her into crying, into exposing her weak places, while Andrea and I remained safe. I continue to wonder how power is enacted by the unsuspecting in day to day life2. I wonder how university bullied school; and how experienced teachers bullied the inexperienced. Becoming a conscious part of the interaction pulled the researchers out of any easily de"ned role. In jumping into an intervention that was intended as a means to open communication, we were pulled into a situation that forced us to confront our own roles in the play of power. We, too, were having to reformulate the ways we saw ourselves; we were having to reconstruct the ideas with which we made sense of the research process. The communicative di$culties, the tensions within the mentoring pair, the intervention itself, and Dee's response to the intervention are indicative of the change that happened in the course of the research process.

6. Conversation as a tool for learning about mentoring After the intervention our group did not meet for several weeks. As researchers and educators, we felt that our work was not "nished, that there was more to learn about mentoring by holding further conversations together. In order to involve our participants more closely in analysis of our data and to bring closure to our conversations, we asked each participant to read the three whole group discussion transcripts and code the transcripts according to meaningful themes. This member check provided an opportunity for the students and teachers to look at the conversations and see how these discussions had become tools for learning about mentoring. All six of us agreed to come to our "nal meeting on May 6 prepared to talk about a theme or passage from a transcript that held signi"cant meaning, and to talk about why this was signi"cant. Similar to our interpretation of the transcripts, the main issue that rose out of this meeting was the ways in which each participant was working with ideas of trust and communication in learning to teach.

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Near the beginning of the meeting, Andrea shared her interpretation of what was signi"cant for her from the transcripts: It seems like to me, the main themes that are coming out are trust and communication. And I picked, down at the very bottom on page 10, this sentence in particular, Julie said it. It says, `I mean, as long as we can keep that dialogue open with each other, then that's what's going to make the trust in the relationship grow stronger.a Andrea's choice initially con"rmed our belief that indeed trust and communication had been signi"cant themes throughout their mentoring. Furthermore, her reference to Julie's desire to open communication bolstered our belief that perhaps the intervention had helped to spawn a new level of awareness of Julie's needs and discomforts. Immediately following Andrea's comments, however, a dialogue ensued that illustrated Julie's sense of vulnerability in her relationship with her mentor. Julie said: 2Andrea's talking about trust and communication being the two main things. I think this one is more under communication2how everyone has di!erent opinions, and it's real important under that communication to share your opinions and to take that information. You can either take that information, you can use it, you can dump it. But just being able to be open to talk and share your feelings about what's going on with lessons or how you're doing things. So I just thought that was a real important thing. That we all have di!erent opinions2 Early in this meeting, Julie brought up a point that she continued to reassert throughout the conversation. She wanted to make it clear that she did not have open communication with Andrea, and that she felt squelched and closed o! from having her own opinions and ideas. Julie's description resonates with Daloz' (1986) contention that when support is low and challenge is high in a mentoring relationship, the learner will withdraw from learning if she does not feel that she is being supported to have her own ideas and opinions. Diane, the other mentor in our meetings, then tried to mentor Andrea as she described an episode with her husband:

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My husband's in the middle school program and he's in this "eld experience2He was going over his lesson in the car yesterday, and it just broke my heart because I thought, that's not going to work, but I had to tell him it may. It's not something you can just say, 'this is the best way to teach.' We have such di!erent styles. Julie: I think that's important, too, not to say that it's not going to work. Andrea: But I think it's very important to warn. To say, in my experience, this is what has happened when I have done this, so you might want to watch out for something. I think that's very important. Diane: And that's how I tried to do it2Because you want to protect people who are starting out, it's just natural, that if you've been through a hard time with something, you don't want people to go through the same thing. Julie: Right. Well, then having that information in the back of your head you just know, you can be more cautious. Or you can change it2 Though Julie and Diane talked about the role of mentor in supporting di!erent styles, Andrea asserted her belief that it is important for a mentor to take an active role in `warninga a student teacher about prior experience with a lesson idea. The mode of this warning, in this case, seems to have excluded Julie from jumping in and trying new ideas. Julie may have felt that Andrea's warning was in essence an a$rmation of research on conversations between mentors and student teachers, where it was found that within some mentor}student teacher relationships, the only decisions a student could make were ones with which her mentor was likely to agree (Haggerty, 1995). At this point in the conversation, Dee, Diane and Jane provide examples to continue thinking about nurturing individual styles. Dee: To me that's going back to that dimension that we touch on when we talk about the instinct for teaching2Because it is to me all involved with something about our character, things that come from the unconscious. Whenever I talk to students about the singing that I do in classrooms, and I teach them songs, and I do it. I always say, &This is stu! that works for me.

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I encourage you to try it, but I can't guarantee that it will work for you the way it works for me.' Jane: It's natural for you, but it may not be natural for the other person, and then it's going to look stilted to the child2So that's real important because we need to think about the way people feel comfortable presenting the information as well, not just the style's di!erent, but how comfortable you'd be doing somebody else's suggestions, too. Diane: But to me that's a role of the mentor, too. It is to model and all that, but it's to help you recognize your strengths, and use those. Because each of us in the school has di!erent strengths. And just because you're placed with me doesn't mean you're going to have my same strengths. I would see that as an important way to help you. Within this conversation, layers of how students and teachers think about mentoring were described. The aftermath of the intervention lingers as a strong backdrop to this conversation, where Diane and Jane were evidently trying to support Julie's ideas about mentoring: that mentoring involved providing ideas and guidance without telling a person that a particular idea cannot succeed, that mentoring involved recognition of strengths and styles and di!erences in approaches to teaching. Equally apparent are Andrea's strong beliefs about mentoring, including her belief that it is important to warn students if she feels a lesson will not succeed. This conversation emphasized the importance of communication, a communication that was closed. Julie was, in the end, unable to jump in to a trusting relationship with her mentor.

7. Summary: reconstructing ideas We began this adventure in teacher education by embracing notions of mutual renewal among students, university faculty, and public school faculty; we a$rmed that a mentor is involved in `face-toface, close-to-the-classroom worka (FeimanNemser & Rosaen, 1997, p. 7); we knew that people bring along their own values and beliefs. We end with a certain bewilderment and dismay at the

vulnerability that may be exposed, and even required, by this renewal. Ideas, we were told by Dewey, are ways out of di$culties, ways of making sense of facts, ways to redirect our observations. Jumping in, the easygoing participation that seemed to be built on trust, was an idea that directed our attention to the kinds of interactions that seemed to be necessary in a classroom setting for student teachers to move toward greater responsibility. It moved to the center of Randi and Dee's discussions of their roles as researchers and as mentors in their own ways: should they jump into the middle of a di$cult mentor relationship? Throughout our taped conversations, we hear this idea being used. And, in the months that followed our period of research, Randi and Dee continued to converse. We drafted this paper. We wrote an early version that was revised and then presented at an annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (then it was called `Weathering the Storma and used a metaphor that arose from our own private conversations, not from those with the mentor and student teachers). We revised again with helpful prompts from anonymous reviewers. Always we circled back to the transcripts, looking again and again at the data, "nding ways that this idea helped make sense of what we read. How trusted did we feel to jump in? As we described earlier in this paper, we wanted the AMP students to become aware of the ideas that are part of children's thinking; we wanted them to become observers like Piaget in order to see ways that ideas are constructed. Yet, in an early conversation (February 15) with mentor and student teachers, we heard Andrea explain that she could trust Julie to be the `knowledge-giver in my classroom.a This idea of giving knowledge was in direct con#ict with the idea of providing opportunities to construct knowledge, of provoking or inciting knowledge. This con#ict may be at the heart of the di$culties Andrea and Julie faced. Andrea expected knowledge to be given, she wanted to be able to answer Julie's questions, she wanted Julie to tell her when she was frustrated, she wanted Julie to pass on her plans for a unit; yet Julie found herself unable to ask for anything directly, she said she needed help `seeing things in di!erent ways.a To

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see things in di!erent ways requires a transformation of the ideas that are used to make sense of the situation. And yet, Andrea did desire to participate in the kinds of interactions among mentors and student teachers that could provide professional development. She talked about having a support group which had a comfortable atmosphere, an atmosphere where people would be comfortable `sharing something wonderful, then something uncomfortable.a Andrea also believed that mentors need a forum to discuss things. However, our support group did not meet these needs because according to Andrea, `healing conversations never took place.a This idea of jumping in points to a great di$culty: The trust underlying this capacity requires a willingness to see things in di!erent ways. Julie was not alone in needing help for her mind to `go o! in other directions.a As we look over our decision to intervene in the mentoring relationship, we can begin to see that we jumped in without su$cient willingness (or time) to reconsider the power relations involved in this encounter. It is not the construction of ideas that is central to education, but the reconstruction of ideas. `A concept2will continually evolve with each new occasion of use, because new situations, negotiations, and activities recast it in a new, more densely textured forma (Brown et al., 1989, p. 33). With that recasting comes a responsibility to act, to give the idea its due. An atmosphere that allows participants to feet trusted enough to jump right in requires that all be willing to see things in di!erent ways, to see things with a new idea in mind. Julie asked for that; it took us a long time to hear.

8. Implications 8.1. Mentoring as `jumping ina Building on work of Feiman-Nemser and Rosaen (1997) and Noddings (1986), we recognize the importance of fostering a caring environment where teacher learning can occur. This is not always easy, as even the most supportive mentoring relationships cannot escape some issues of power among classroom teacher, university faculty and

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student. If we advocate mentoring roles where teachers are skilled to sca!old novices to high levels of achievement through critical analysis and improvement of practice, then mentors themselves need to work within a professional support system to learn about helping other teachers learn about their practice (Gratch, 1998; Stanulis, 1994). Within this study, we found that working together in a support team provided opportunities for professional growth for both teachers. Andrea, for example, believed that the idea of having a mentor support group was a bene"cial site for discussions about speci"c ways mentors were modeling, providing feedback, etc. Since teachers do have a profound in#uence on the learning of novices, Hawkey (1997) believes that `facilitating teachers' professional development requires mentors to understand and engage in this process, helping their mentees unravel their preconceptions and examine the impact of these preconceptions on practice2a (p. 329). We believe it is crucial to add that the mentors themselves need to go through a parallel process, for it was through sometimes painful disclosures that the teachers learned about themselves as mentors. It was also through these group discussions that the teachers learned that the essence of their mentoring was framed around trust and communication in `jumping ina to teaching. The idea of `jumping ina was central to how students and teachers in this study conceptualized mentoring. `Jumping ina implies a willingness to take risks, to be involved, to immerse oneself in acts of teaching in order to maximize learning opportunities. University- and school-based educators play a critical role in developing a caring learning environment through providing opportunities for conversations that allow both trust and communication to develop in an environment that welcomes `jumping in.a As Daloz (1986) has shown, this environment needs both support and challenge to grow. Daloz contends, for example, that if support is low and challenge is high, a novice teacher will withdraw from learning. The key component of appropriate challenge is not always evident, for many classroom teachers operate from norms of noninterference which restrict ways in which teachers feel comfortable posing di$cult questions and ideas about teaching to novices (Gratch, 1998;

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Little, 1990). We advocate a model of learning to teach that embraces `jumping ina through conscious collaboration among participants. 8.2. Conscious collaboration in learning to teach An implication of this work is to make university- and school-based teacher educators conscious of the kind of collaboration we are trying to foster while supporting students in learning to teach. Conscious collaboration involves the view that all participants feel safe in revealing their vulnerabilities for the sake of learning. Such collaboration relies on the establishment of honest and professionally supportive relationships among university, school, and student teacher, and a stance that the expert adult learners feel safe to `put themselves out therea (Stanulis & Weaver, 1998) to help novices learn. Before teachers can be positioned to truly be ready to collaborate, they need to acknowledge their own values and perspectives that they bring to their role as mentor (Saunders et al., 1995). Conscious collaboration necessitates an awareness of Bruner's conception of sca!olding. Appropriate sca!olding among collaborative participants means that novices feel safe asking for the kind of help that they need, whether it be demonstration, explanation, segmenting learning, or providing hints or cues. University-based educators must collaborate with classroom teachers to help them understand the kind of #exible interactions needed to connect new ideas to existing ones, to be explicit about what is expected during a certain task, or coaching the student using familiar and supportive language (Eby, 1998). Sca!olding relies on a model of expert peer helping another reach maximum potential. In order for sca!olding to be e!ective, it involves trust and communication and a collaborative support structure. If educators wish to enact school-university partnerships that also involve the valuable participation of student teachers, we need to work in a way that chips away at privileged positions. If it is possible to make this `chipping awaya process explicit among all participants, then we may truly be better positioned together to improve practice, and to provide collaborative research on practices.

Cochran-Smith (1991) has asserted that `students' vulnerabilities are best addressed by adjusting the learning context to tap into those resources and build on students' strengthsa (p. 306). We intended to address Julie's vulnerabilities in the course of our supportive intervention; we now realize that unless we are also willing to expose our own vulnerabilities, we unconsciously engage in behaviors that safeguard our privileged positions. Julie cried, feeling exposed; Dee and Andrea remained high and dry, o!ering their interpretations of what student teaching is all about. The construct of mutual mentoring that we propose works against privileged positions. 8.3. Mutual mentoring The challenge that lies ahead for teacher educators who wish to be involved in collaborative research about learning to teach is to truly reform our actions. We believe, as a result of our research, that in order to have reciprocal bene"ts for all participants, university- and school-based educators must become conscious and explicit about how we imagine our role. We need to talk about recasting our idea of the mentoring role. This recasting calls into question whether there is a single mentor within the triad of university, school and student participants. Mutual mentoring in learning to teach is likened to many of the premises involved in shared supervision, where teachers are prepared through professional development to appropriately guide the practices of novices. In order for this shared model to occur systematically, university- and schoolbased educators must both be actively present during student teaching (Borko & May"eld, 1995). Our study indicated the power of the support group as the mentors worked with student teachers to all re#ect on their practice. Mutual mentoring also means that all participants encourage, guide, and sca!old at appropriate times. Cross's (1995) belief that mentors `seek to bolster the con"dence of the mentee through encouragement and praise, thus contributing towards his or her future developmenta (p. 38) can be refashioned to extend this same bolstering among all participants.

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In our conversations with mentors and student teachers, we, the university faculty, learned about the importance of feeling enough trust to jump right in to a classroom situation; later, through the process of jumping into a particular intervention we learned about the hidden power we continued to assert behind our good intentions. In the future, we expect to be more watchful for these hidden positions and to listen more carefully for indications of ways that we are imposing our own interpretations. We believe that reforming our actions necessitates a stance that truly embraces the philosophy that each participant brings their own expertise and experience to learning about teaching, and that in various instances all are mentors and all are learners. We also believe that we play a crucial role in helping to open dialogue, but to do so in a way that can truly honor each voice in the conversation. This is a tricky position to imagine, but one we believe is necessary in order to truly create a caring environment that is both supportive and challenging: one where teachers, students, and university educators together learn from each other. For it is only as mentoring becomes mutual and shared that equity can be achieved among all participants.

Acknowledgements This research project was funded by a College of Education Faculty Collaboration Grant. The authors acknowledge Dr. Joel Taxel for his feedback throughout the project.

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