Integrative mentoring pedagogies to promote beginning teachers’ professional development: connecting practice, theory and person

At the heart of this chapter are concrete pedagogies mentor teachers can use to activate and broaden beginning teachers’ professional development. To position these pedagogies, we use the triangle, representing the integration of ‘practice’, ‘theory’, and the ‘teacher as a person’ as the frame of reference for the quality of beginning teachers’ learning in the workplace. The corners of the triangle serve as touchstones in our selection of mentoring pedagogies. We then discuss important contextual factors that influence the choice and use of pedagogies by mentor teachers. Finally, we clarify that developing and choosing specific pedagogies to activate beginning teachers’ professional development based on research into their efficacy is an important challenge for researchers, teacher educators, mentors and induction programme leaders.