In many ways the question at the end of the last post was a rhetorical one, but it does raise what has been seen as a central issue of initial teacher education – that is what to do about the difference between student teacher’s experiences at University and at school.   Should school be a place to put into practice the theory learned at university?  Your view of the role of school practice obviously determines your view of the role of the mentor.

What should be done about the inevitable conflict between schools which use criteria of practical "effectiveness" and "feasability" to assess teachers and teaching ideas, and University, where criteria of "theoretical coherence and consistency" hold sway? Well, according to Katherine Burn’s D.Phil, which I’m still reading (she wrote alot!) there are several answers.  If one takes the Neo Liberal, New Right view of teaching as essentially a craft, which is to be learned and applied then mentors have the important task of teaching their apprentices their craft knowledge and assessing how well their charges implement it practically in the classroom, and thus has a primacy over the role of University, which takes on a quality control function.

If one takes (as I do) a different view of professional development (see ODT Article on Schon and Dewey for an, as yet, unfinished reference to this belief) as encouraging and enabling an independent critical faculty in new teachers of history, then the role of mentor becomes a very important one.  For instance, McIntyre, whos ideas are discussed in depth in Katherine’s D.Phil, envisages teacher education programmes in which in school mentoring becomes part of a "three way dilectic" of university, school and student.

McIntyre’s idea was that the differences between these three perspectives should not be smoothed over, in an attempt to reach an impossible consensus, instead the different criteria for judging teaching ideas, theory and pratice should be made explicit.  Thus every idea, every perspective, every theory becomes open to question and tested according to the different criteria of school, university and personal perspective.

This model of teacher education has come in for criticism from several different commentators, but if one accepts that teacher education is about more than teacher training then the role of the mentor becomes one that is much more subtle than mere transmission of techniques. The question is then one of whether mentors are up to, or receive enough help to undertake this complex role.