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In this paper, we report on a mentoring programme which provides an accreditation pathway to a master's level qualification. The paper serves three purposes. First, informed by selected literature on education we caution against expedient reductionist models that are based solely on novice-expert mentoring relationships with limited facility for critical inquiry. Second, we present an evolving theoretical framework for productive mentoring based on our critique of a preferred academic literature and interactions with mentor teachers, school principals and teacher educators. We proactively encourage an awareness of societal norms and traditions that can appear as counterculture to critical thinking. Lastly, we consider some implications for productive mentoring as an academic, caring and professional practice within a continuum of teacher education.Keywords: expedient reductionist models, critical thinking, caring and professional agency, productive mentoring, four principles, contextually responsive.Critical thinking, caring and professional agency:An emerging framework for productive mentoringIn this paper we adopt three different and complementary lenses through which to consider mentoring as an academic and professional practice: the international literature, our own reflective and reflexive dialogue and observations from mentor teachers' efforts to interrogate AN EMERGING FRAMEWORK FOR PRODUCTIVE MENTORING 3 their own professional practices. We contend that when inquiry-driven models of mentoring, encompassing critical thinking, caring and professional agency are contextually responsive, they can be successful in providing meaningful teacher education and professional learning. We present a framework for mentoring, productive mentoring, that is based on four principles, uses an evidence-informed lens, and addresses a multiplicity of mentoring relationships of learning.We caution against expedient reductionist models of mentoring that are based solely on rigid novice-expert relationships with limited facility for critical co-inquiry or sustained networks for professional knowledge generation. During the last four years we have advanced dialogue within the context of a challenging school culture and an awareness of societal norms and traditions that can run counterculture to critical thinking and professional agency. We have regularly and consistently shared, between ourselves and with our students, our own reflective and reflexive positions with regard to teaching, mentoring and education. We have observed the struggles of our motivated mentor teachers as they seek to interrogate their professional practices and the cultural constraints they face in trying to become scholarly and professional mentor teachers.Hargreaves (2003) believes that if the education community accepts teachers working within small budgets and conforming to externally imposed standards, teachers will become "the drones and clones of policymakers' anaemic ambitions'' (p. 2). He advocates an alternative scenario in which "highly sk...

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to share findings from a Master's study exploring teacher professional learning needs with the purpose of elucidating the needs of teachers, and mentor teachers, within the school cultural context in the Republic of Ireland. This study coincides with a relentless neo‐liberal drive to outsource most of what was traditionally seen as state investment across all public services, including education.Design/methodology/approachThe research methodology is a small scale qualitative research study exploring the perceptions of experienced teachers in two secondary schools. It examines the conditions which may account for different levels of engagement in this regard.FindingsThe key findings show very different levels of engagement in school based teacher professional learning in the two secondary schools.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings have serious implications for the type of whole school mentoring that needs to be offered within schools at a time when policymakers are mandating teacher professional learning and requiring the development of critical reasoning capacities for all pupils in a global knowledge world.Originality/valueThis study is concerned with the readiness of the experienced teacher to mentor beginning teachers, and student teachers, in ways that value co‐inquiry, care, agency and critical thinking within the ecology of a whole school environment. Mentoring has become a popular construct in everyday usage. The originality of this research lies in the use of productive mentoring as a framework developed by the authors and under continual interrogation.

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