Mentoring New Teachers in the Nordics

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of mentoring for new teachers in the Nordic countries and Estonia during the induction period. This chapter arises from the work of a longstanding collaboration between teacher educators and researchers on mentoring and induction and teachers’ trade unions, which includes partners from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. This unique multi-stakeholder collaboration has provided a mapping and comparison of mentoring and induction practices for newly qualified teachers across the Nordic region, with the explicit aim to provide impetus for change in policy and focus in the educational landscape in each of the countries. Using the theory of practice architectures, this chapter asks what conditions for mentoring exist in the Nordics, and how are mentoring practices enabled and constrained in these contexts. Using the theory of practice architectures to compare the possibilities for mentoring of new teachers, we conclude that although the Nordics are often considered to be culturally and politically similar there are many differences between (and within) the countries when it comes to providing support in the form of mentoring for new teachers.