Joint and mediated tutorship: how to train novice teachers within their zone of proximal development and foster their power to act?
This study addresses tutorships with novice teachers during their year of university-based professional training (alternating between theory and teaching practice) in France. Specifically, it examines these tutorships’ contribution to the novice teachers’ learning and development process. Based on the premises of a historical and cultural psychology and a psychological theory of activity, the described case study analysis makes two principal contributions. First, it suggests mediated joint activity as a way to help implement advice within novice teachers’ zone of proximal development. Second, it suggests the posture of the tutor as an “agent of development” in terms of novice teachers’ power to act within the classroom.