The practicum period for preservice teachers forms an important part of teacher education, as does the level of observations and feedback from mentor teachers. The relationship between collecting evidence of teaching and pre-service teachers’mentoring sessions, forms the premise for our study. In the present study, preservice teachers and mentor teachers in four partner schools have used a multimodal tool to collect evidence of teaching practice and for mentoring. In accordance with the digital tools used, we define mentoring sessions as a sequence of: pre-mentoring with feedback on plans (prior to teaching), teaching and multimodal collecting evidence for teaching (during teaching), and post-mentoring (identifying next teaching steps, after teaching).

The aim of the study was to explore how digital tools, used in mentoring processes, can influence preservice teachers’ participation in a collaborative community of practice (CoP). The social theory of Wenger was used as a framework for the study. According to Wenger, learning occurs as a function of legitimate participation during negotiations of content. 

The qualitative design was based on a survey and focus group interviews. During the analysis, four themes of legitimate participation in negotiations were identified in the data source: 1) Participation in the sharing of plans before teaching: This phase became an important part for the rest of the mentoring sequence. Specific and concrete interaction in this phase affected the level of specificity in observation and mentoring. 2) Participation in conducting interactive observations of teaching: In this phase, and in order to collect evidence of their practice, preservice teachers developed their skills in formulating specific feedback to each other. At the same time, they also developed the skill to target teaching to students’ learning needs. 3) Participation in preparing mentoring: In this phase, conditions of preparation based on evidence from teaching and feedback affected the students’ participation in mentoring sessions. 4) Participation in selecting a particular aspect from the evidence of practice as a base for mentoring:Preservice teacher participation in mentoring changed from passive roles with a focus on listening and receiving feedback to active knowledge-producing roles. 

We conclude that the digital tools offered new opportunities for mutual engagement and participation, in the mentoring dialogue about teaching and learning. We also conclude that the CoP is a useful theory for describing and explaining the level of participation and engagement in practicum mentoring sessions.