Mentor, colleague, co-learner and judge: using Bourdieu to evaluate the motivations of mentors of Newly Qualified Teachers

ABSTRACTThis study uses Bourdieu’s interconnected notions of fields, habitus and capital as a theoretical template to analyse the responses of eight mentors of Newly Qualified Teachers with regard to the motivations and challenges of their role. The data reveal that each mentor was a highly committed re-creator of the fields and habitus in which they operated, although this was not consciously done. They were each also committed to helping the NQTs develop professional cultural capital. Although Bourdieu famously referred to education as ‘symbolic violence’ the data from this study give no indication that the recreation of fields through the mentoring of professional practice was viewed as an act of dominion on the part of the mentors. Rather, these mentors saw their role as an empowering aspect of professional agency in which both parties shared in a co-authoring of a (usually) positive and mutually-affirming outcome.