https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487117720388 Journal of Teacher Education 1–16 © 2017 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0022487117720388 journals.sagepub.com/home/jte Article Introduction Mentoring is central to learning to teach. As such, mentor- ing frameworks have become integral to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs (Ambrosetti, 2014). During this initial stage of preparation, mentors assist novices to acquire knowledge of pupils, of teaching and of standard routines that integrate classroom management, pedagogy, and subject matter instruction (Hashweh, 2013). Mentors’ ability to promote such learning is not only a matter of their competence and knowledge but is also influenced by con- textual factors of their practice (Knoblauch & Hoy, 2008). Different contextual factors in mentors’ work might yield different interpretations of teaching and professional duties, affecting the mentoring roles and practices espoused and enacted. For example, we know that the institution within which mentors work affects their professional motivation and ideas of learning to teach. School-based mentors see themselves primarily as schoolteachers rather than teacher educators (Livingston, 2014). Thus, their professional motivation is affected by the agendas of the school commu- nity—a contextual factor that informs their views of learn- ing to teach. Mentors in higher education contexts are engaged in research (Zeichner, 2005). Their professional dispositions are affected by agendas promoted by their research community—a contextual factor that informs their deliberations, such as how to integrate theory into their mentoring (Loughran, 2006). Furthermore, while certain contextual factors in mentors’ work might help to reconcile between incompatible agendas, others could intensify conflicts. For example, contextual fea- tures of arts education (which our study explores) could cre- ate conflicts: For one, the arts embed values such as freedom, flexibility, and choice. These often clash with values of stan- dardization, rationality, and uniformity prevalent in Western schooling tradition (Eisner, 2004). These tensions can be problematic for mentors when mediating student teacher (ST) learning, especially around content pedagogical issues. In addition, the praxical character of the arts carries complex interrelations between theory and practice (Pearse, 1992). The academic scholarship of the arts might promote views of subject matter learning that are different from those endorsed by the artists’ community. The affiliations of mentors in rela- tion to these contexts (as artists, scholars or both) could influence the views of learning arts that they model to STs. Conflicts between disciplinary and educational approaches to learning are found in most school subjects (Goodson & Marsh, 2005). Our study examines how mentors in arts edu- cation are affected by such contextual dispositions. Studying 720388JTE XX X 10.1177/0022487117720388Journal of Teacher EducationBecher and Orland-Barak research-article 2017 1 University of Haifa, Israel Corresponding Author: Ayelet Becher, Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education, University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel. Email: abecher@edu.haifa.ac.il Context Matters: Contextual Factors Informing Mentoring in Art Initial Teacher Education Ayelet Becher 1 and Lily Orland-Barak 1 Abstract This article explores the contextual factors that shape mentoring practice in Art Initial Teacher Education. Based on in-depth interviews, nonparticipant observations and stimulated recall interviews with participants, we examine how various factors related to the context of mentors’ work influence their approaches to subject matter mentoring. Adopting a discursive stance to mentoring, we use critical discourse analysis to expose connections between mentors’ language, ideas, and beliefs and the broader context of subject matter mentoring. In each mentoring setting studied, the analysis surfaces distinctive contextual factors that are grounded in mentors’ interpretations of the roles and functions of their subject matter domains. We show how these factors inform mentors’ perceptions of the purposes and processes of mentoring and their enactments in practice. Our findings offer an extended perspective to subject matter mentoring and new directions for thinking about context in mentoring. Implications for mentor preparation and selection are discussed. Keywords mentoring, preservice teacher education, discourse analysis, art teacher education