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.

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The Interconnectedness of the Roles of Mentors and Mentees in Pre-service Teacher Education Mentoring Relationships

This book explores the recent trend toward the transformation of religious symbols and practices into culture in Western democracies. Analyses of three legal cases involving religion in the public sphere are used to illuminate this trend: a municipal council chamber; a town hall; and town board meetings. Each case  involves a different national context—Canada, France and the United States—and each illustrates something interesting about the shape-shifting nature of religion, specifically its flexibility and dexterity in the face of the secular, the religious and the plural. Despite the differences in national contexts, in each instance religion is transformed into culture or heritage by the courts to justify or excuse its presence and to distance the state from the possibility that it is violating legal norms of distance from religion. The cultural practice or symbol is represented as a shared national value or activity. Transforming the ‘Other’ into ‘Us’ through reconstitution is also possible. Finally, anxiety about the ‘Other’ becomes part of the story of rendering religion as culture, resulting in the impugning of anyone who dares to question the putative shared culture.
The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policy-makers working in the areas of sociology of religion, religious studies, socio-legal studies, law and public policy, constitutional law, religion and politics, and cultural studies.

The Transition of Religion to Culture in Law and Public Discourse

Within the professional placement component of pre-service teacher education, mentoring has become a strategy that is used during the practical application of learning to teach. In this paper, we examine mentoring in the pre-service teacher education context by proposing a theoretically based framework for mentoring in this context. Firstly, the nature of mentoring along with mentoring in the context of pre-service teacher education is explored. A mentoring framework that has been developed to enable pre-service teacher educators to maximize the potential use of mentoring during the professional placement component of a pre-service teacher education degree is then proposed.

Maximizing the Potential of Mentoring: A Framework for Pre-service Teacher Education

Reflection is widely used in cooperative education to support learning and praxis; however, a review of the literature reveals limited empirical evidence for the correlation between reflection and positive student learning outcomes. As with any ‘wicked’ issue, there are multiple positions on reflection. A substantial body of anecdotal evidence, together with evidence based on student satisfaction and self-reporting does, however, indicate the value of reflection for learning, particularly when transparently aligned with the curriculum. This paper draws from the evidence for the practice of reflection to present new models, informed by theory and developed as a result of this research, to support the alignment of reflection in the cooperative education curriculum. (Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2010, 11(3), 137-152)

Aligning reflection in the cooperative education curriculum

Addressing Professional Competence Problems in Trainees: Some Ethical Considerations

– A four‐year longitudinal study was conducted on the school‐to‐work transition in four professions traditionally called “helping professions,” namely education, social work, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy. One goal of the study was to understand the nature and process of the mentoring relationships that develop and sustain newcomers in their professional life, especially the possible tension between the roles of mentor and evaluator. It was expected that this would help us in our jobs of preparing student practitioners and supporting their mentors and would offer models of practice suitable for other occupations., – Teams of researchers visited university students involved in professional training and engaged in a practicum during their final year at university. The students and their supervisors were interviewed separately according to a semi‐structured protocol, and each interview, lasting between 40 and 60 minutes, was audiotaped and transcribed., – An inherent contradiction between supervision‐as‐mentoring as the literature defines it and supervision‐as‐evaluation – as the universities and professions demand was observed. Evaluation as it is practiced often includes intangibles, even though the intended evaluation seems well‐defined., – Although this study was focused on practice in four particular professions, it is believed that the findings may be extrapolated to any enterprise where experienced practitioners are placed in a supervisory role with newcomers and are expected to perform the potentially conflicting role of mentor and evaluator. If the same person must mentor and evaluate the newcomer, they must be trained in these roles, evaluation guidelines must be clearly defined, and dialogue is of prime importance., – The paper focuses on the role of the universities in the preparation of new entrants to the “helping professions” and offers some suggestions for their support – which are generalizable to any workplace where beginners are trained, mentored and evaluated.

Mentor or evaluator? Assisting and assessing newcomers to the professions

Quebec has had a unique history in North America regarding religious instruction in public schools. To understand Quebec's new Ethics and Religious Culture Program, it is important to have an appreciation of some of the major historical events and contexts that led to the program. This article presents the history of Quebec religious instruction from its roots in New France to the present day. It highlights the key elements of the evolution from a confessional religious program to an ethics and religious culture program that is now a requirement for all students.

Spencer Boudreau

Papers

Mentor or evaluator? Assisting and assessing newcomers to the professions

From Confessional to Cultural: Religious Education in the Schools of Québec