This study critically addresses mentor and mentee understandings of mentoring primary education student teachers within existing operations of power in the context of Scottish Initial Teacher Education. Semi-structured interviews of mentors and student teachers were used to elicit relational understandings of the mentoring process within an…

Mentoring is widely believed to be beneficial to mentors and mentees in the teacher education context. However, mentoring as a tool for strengthening professional knowledge is not without barriers hindering its effectiveness. This paper explores common barriers in mentoring, drawing on studies conducted in Croatia, Ireland, and Scotland which have…

School placement is an essential part of student teachers' professional learning. Yet in Scotland, as elsewhere, there is evidence of inconsistency in the nature and quality of the support that students receive in schools. This article draws on data from 16 Secondary English student teachers on the one-year Professional Graduate Diploma in…

This review is based on research that identified the factors that appear to contribute to effective multidisciplinary teamworking. It focuses on solutions to problems that could plague multiprofessional activities in Scotland's education sector. It draws on both published research and unpublished commissioned reports, focusing on the work that has…

This document provides part of a final report to the Scottish Education Department on a study of student teachers' observations of and interviews with cooperating teachers. The purpose of the research was to help student teachers acquire an understanding of and control over teaching methods. The findings are from experiments with three samples of…

Teacher education programs are based on cultural and political assumptions about the processes involved in learning to teach and about what constitutes good teaching. A comparative study of teacher education in France, England, and Scotland examines differences in course structure, school placements, training support, professional educational…

Surveys of Australian, English, Irish, and Scottish classroom teachers who hosted U.S. student teachers examined factors contributing to program success. Most believed the experience benefitted their schools and students. Though they reported some adjustment difficulties, most were not insurmountable. They believed U.S. students advanced in many…

Beginning teacher competencies identified by the Scottish Education Department would best be achieved through a clearly defined college-school partnership involving structured input from the college and the development of a mentoring program for student teachers. This partnership would also require uniformity of standards and specific criteria for…