In the UK and elsewhere, the training of teachers is increasingly seen as a matter of partnership between schools and institutions of higher education. There is thus an urgent need within the profession to define more carefully what the role of teachers acting as mentors should be. Clearly some aspects of professional knowledge can only be acquired from practical experience in school, and this book draws on extensive research on students' school-based learning to isolate and analyse those aspects. Like any form of teaching, mentoring, the authors suggest, must be built on a clear understanding of the learning processes it is intended to support. In this book, they report on their research into the nature of students' school-based learning and what this means for the role of the mentoring.

John Furlong is a Professor,
Trisha Maynard is a Senior Research Associate and Lecturer in the Department of Education at University of Wales, Swansea.