Within the continuum of teacher education (Behr, 2017), mentors assume a central yet hitherto undertheorised role (Carmi & Tamir, 2023). They act not only as teachers but also as teacher educators. This dual positioning entails specific demands that extend beyond professional action in the classroom. While the question of what constitutes core professional pedagogical action has been—and continues to be—intensively debated in research on professional practice (Cramer, 2022; Cramer, 2023; Cramer et al., 2020; Helsper, 2020; König, 2020), far less clarity exists regarding what defines professional pedagogical mentoring as articulated in mentors’ own self-descriptions. Addressing this research gap is the central aim of the present study.
Pedagogical professionalism is understood in research as a complex, multidimensional construct. Although generalised competence models in professionalism research are foundational for teacher education, they fall short with respect to the demands placed on mentors. This is because mentors, in their new professional function, confront specific developmental tasks (Keller-Schneider, 2020b), and mentoring encompasses its own dimensions of quality that include cognitive, affective, and relational components (Alonzo et al., 2025). Effective teaching and successful mentoring require partially distinct competencies. Mentors navigate a field of tension between individual relationship-building and normative expectations (Kraler & Schreiner, 2022), between facilitating development and adhering to structural conditions (Dammerer, 2019b), and between personal stance and institutional responsibility (Frey & Pichler, 2022). These specific demands call for an independent disciplinary and professionalism-theoretical perspective. The central thesis of this dissertation is that mentoring possesses its own dignity—manifested in a specific professional self-understanding that is inherent to the role.
Theoretisch folgt der Forschungsablauf:
Im Rahmen seiner sozialkognitive Lerntheorie ging Bandura in den 1970er von vier verschiedenen Quellen aus, die die Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung einer Person beeinflussen können. (Bandura, 1977, 191–215.)
Begriff Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung (SWE):
Selbstwirksamkeit bedeutet, die innere Überzeugung zu haben, schwierige oder herausfordernde Situationen gut meistern zu können – und das aus eigener Kraft heraus.
Selbstwirksamkeitserwartung (engl. self-efficacy), kurz SWE, bezeichnet das Vertrauen einer Person, aufgrund eigener Kompetenzen gewünschte Handlungen auch in Extremsituationen erfolgreich selbst ausführen zu können (Yokoyama, 2019).