Collaborative professional learning: Creating a community of practice among school and university partners in teacher education

This study investigates the development of educative mentoring practices in the context of a school-based mentor teacher study group. In a combination professional development and research project, the researcher developed a study group among 5 collaborating teachers working with teacher education interns in an urban elementary school. The professional development component of the project combined the study of artifacts and accounts of participants' mentoring practice, with inquiry-oriented discourse around emerging ideas about mentoring, in a sustained effort to engage mentor teachers in constructing their own understandings of that practice. Leadership for the study group was designed to implement collaborative learning guided by ideas about critical colleagueship and learning in communities of practice. The study focuses on how collaborative inquiry in the study group influenced participants' learning by analyzing what they learned about mentoring, how that knowledge was constructed in the study group, and how individuals acted on their learning in their mentoring practice. Using an approach to conversation analysis featuring the constructs of participant structures and participant frameworks, the study examines how study group discourse engaged participants in negotiating the meaning of mentoring experiences and collectively constructing more and more collectively warranted ideas and commitments about mentoring practice. The study also draws implications for leadership for inquiry-oriented discourse in study group contexts.