-      It involves:

u  Liasing with school based mentors to provide consistency of support and challenge both within the placement and at points of transition.

u  Developing a student teacher’s individual training plan, including the setting of appropriate development targets to support their holistic development across the different contexts or sections of the course.

u  Monitoring a student’s progress and providing interventions to support progress where necessary

u  Observing a student teacher in school contexts, and in discussion with the mentor, agreeing future targets and, as appropriate, the current level of achievement in order to moderate assessment across different school contexts.

-      And the other is getting them to realize that, while certain aspects of their practice might be very applicable in the context they’re in, that they might need to modify or adapt that practice for a different group of kids or a different school or what have you.

-      So it’s the idea of, rather than focusing on the here-and-now (which I think is very much the mentor’s role), the tutor has got to try and take them away from the here-and-now as much as possible, and try to get them to project possible alternative situations and alternative contexts, and how they might need to change in those situations.

-      Producing and reproducing of academic discourses about education

-      Having an overt knowledge of how one teachers and why (i.e. a self-consciousness of pedagogy)

-      Functioning simultaneously as both researcher and practitioner which may include engagement in the field of enquiry through sustained reading and reflection by:

u  Systematic enquires into personal practice, informed by research

u  Involvement in individual practitioner research and action research

u  Communal participation in small-scale studies