Understanding Professional Identity Through Pedagogical love: A Case of a Mentoring Dyad in Turkey

Abstract

In this article, how a mentee’s developing professional identity is reflected in the use of pedagogical strategies is explored through the mentor teacher’s lens. Although mentoring relationships have traditionally focused on improving mentee teachers’ teaching repertoire, unstructured affective processes involved as a result of the mentoring relationship have received limited attention. As being mentored to teach is intrinsically an effective process, this study situates the mentee’s use of pedagogical strategies as a reflection of the developing professional identity within the pedagogy of love framework. Within the scope of the framework, how the mentee teacher utilizes her understanding of the pedagogical authority of the mentor teacher to develop her professional identity is reflected in the transformational role of pedagogical love. The mentee teacher steps into a self-actualization journey in which empathy, building trusting platforms for learning, and developing novice teacher intuition during the novel pedagogical encounters take precedence.