Rereading the dominant narrative of mentoring

Mentoring is currently being promoted as an effective means of easing new t eachers' transition from preservice programs to the profession. At the same time it is seen as a way of providing teacher development for those leache rs with more experience. Furthermore researchers promote mentoring as a for ce for change to diminish isolation and promote teacher collaboration. In t his article I present an overview-the dominant narrative-of some recent res earch on formalized mentoring programs in education. Bringing this material together reveals that researchers are virtually unanimous in their enthusi asm for these initiatives. A dialogue which took place between me and a col league/friend about what we construed as our mentoring relationship potenti ally serves as a counternarrative to this prevalent story. Through an analy sis of the educational research and the personal narrative, I suggest that the widely accepted vie rv of mentoring may need to be reread, particularly in relation to language: mentoring's meaning is now imprecise because it i s used as an umbrella term for many kinds of affiliations in teaching. In r ereading our narrative I argue that my colleague/friend and I did not act a s each other's mentor. Rather, our professional association became entwined with the friendship we developed over time. I maintain that by doing a sim ilar rereading of the research on mentoring in education we might find rich er and more precise language to describe how we as teachers can assist one another in becoming sophisticated professionals.