While new teacher mentoring has traditionally focused on socio-emotional support and professional socialization, understanding mentors' role in developing novices' content teaching is needed given new educational reforms. Few researchers have explored a knowledge/practice base for content-focused mentoring. Therefore, we ask: what do content…

Given educators' call to equalize educational opportunities, research is needed to illuminate promises and tensions in schools that resist negative labeling and sorting of nondominant youth. This article examines an urban high school that challenges traditional expectations for low-income, Latina/o students by engaging in "relabeling," a…

Background/Context: Literatures on college-going cultures offer patterns and lists of practices that promote schoolwide attention to college-going for nondominant youth, often with organization-level analyses of policies and procedures. Other literature identifies promising practices and challenges to conventional instruction, often examining…

Research on new teachers identifies two critical challenges in relation to how novices view their students: practice shock that results in an over focus on controlling students and a cultural mismatch that causes novices to see diversity as a problem. This article explores how mentoring strategies intervene at this critical phase, influencing…