The interconnectedness of the roles of mentor and mentees in pre-service teacher education mentoring relationships

This review of the research literature focuses on the interconnectedness of the roles of mentor teachers and pre-service teachers. In order to examine the interconnectedness of mentors and mentees, the paper firstly delves into what mentoring is and what contextual factors influence mentoring in pre-service teacher education. It then examines the research literature on mentors and mentees and the roles they undertake in a mentoring relationship. Emerging from the examination of the roles is identification of how the relationship functions with regard to the mentor and mentee who work together to achieve specific goals. The paper highlights the fact that limited research has examined mentor and mentees as interconnected partners in mentoring relationships. The paper outlines how the mentoring relationship participants can actively participate and interact. In conclusion, the paper provides a definition for mentoring that embraces essential mentoring components for pre-service teacher education contexts.