The Development of Mentoring Partnerships: How a Shared Learning Experience Enhanced the Final Internship

Practicing teachers often identify the final internship as the most valuable and relevant component of teacher preparation. An important key to effective internship experiences is quality mentoring, which should be educative in nature (Bradbury & Koballa, 2008; Feiman-Nemser, 2012). While the rationale for these educative mentoring relationships and interactions are outlined in the literature, there is less information about how to foster their development. In this study we examined how a shared learning experience held prior to the internship was perceived by mentors and interns as contributing to their mentoring relationships and interactions throughout the internship.