Mentoring as meaningful professional development The influence of mentoring on in-service teachers' identity and practice

Purpose Within teacher education, many experienced in-service teachers routinely mentor pre-service teachers during teaching practicums. Notwithstanding the benefits pre-service teachers are meant to experience from these mentor-protege relationships and experiences, recent research has demonstrated that mentors, too, may experience some (oftentimes unintended) potential benefits. The purpose of this paper is to further investigate such potential benefits within a Canadian secondary school physical education (PE) context. Design/methodology/approach The researchers employed a qualitative case study methodology. The three primary data sources included field observations/notes, journals and interviews. More specifically, over a ten-week period, the researchers made 26 field visits, observing two mentors' interactions with five proteges before, during, and after PE class instruction; collected the two mentors' ten journal entries, all made in response to researcher-provided writing prompts; and interviewed the two mentors, both individually and together. Findings The mentor teachers viewed the mentor-protege relationship/experience as meaningful professional development, recognizing that it approximated a professional learning community. Relatedly, the mentor teachers experienced professional growth with respect to their own teaching identity and teaching practice. Originality/value This research adds to the emerging body of research that investigates how mentoring may provide benefits to mentors. More specifically, this research suggests benefits to mentors relate, especially, to their own teaching identity and practice.