#57: Mediating Mentoring: Examining Digital Accountability within new Teacher Mentoring Dialogue

In this paper, we examine how digital tools of accountability shape the content of conversations and interactional patterns between mentors and novices. To do so, we analyze a case study of a new teacher and mentor dyad in an equity-oriented mentoring program. We investigate how teachers’ interactions are mediated by digital tools that report out data on their mentoring interactions, with attention to how this digital mediation shapes the depth with which teachers engage in critical inquiry of student thinking. Our findings illustrate that the dyad’s deeper engagement with student thinking occurred when they were not interacting with digital tools of accountability. This paper contributes to an understanding of the ways digital datafication processes can manifest in embodied teacher learning interactions, shaping the extent to which equity-oriented approaches to mentoring new teachers are realized in practice.