Practices of Freedom? Seeking the Social Justice Aims of Peer Mentoring Within a Higher Education Professional Development Programme for Teaching Assistants

The social and economic opportunities offered by education and the role that mentoring can play in this have been documented for a range of professions, including teaching. What has been less well documented is the extent to which peer mentoring within higher education programmes of study can be utilised for other professionals working within schools who are often overlooked within the research in this field. In this chapter we study the reported experiences of over 300 teaching assistants who were studying at a university in North West England to construct a dialogue with the work of Lave and Wenger (Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Freire’s philosophy to explore peer mentoring as a “practice of freedom” (Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th Anniversary Ed.). New York: Bloomsbury, 2000, p. 41). In doing so, we reflect upon the social justice aims of developing a supportive community of practice for a group of education professionals who are often undervalued.