This chapter focuses on the role and place of guidance and mentoring in learning as it may occur in the circumstances of professional practice. Recent literature in the field of workplace learning has stressed the importance of guidance in the process of learning in and from practice. Workers do not only learn just by conducting specific tasks individually; they learn when adequate resources are afforded to them and when more experienced workers are able to assist them in their practice. Hence, there is considerable importance to investigate the specific qualities of guidance at work and to understand how novice workers engage with these resources. In this particular context, the chapter advances two main ideas. The first idea is to consider that a close examination of the conditions under which mentors and students engage in face-to-face interactions provides a relevant theoretical basis for exploring the relational interdependences between these actors. These interdependences may be described and analysed as “interactional participatory configurations”. The second idea the chapter puts forward is to consider that video analysis should be seen as a rich and relevant methodological resource for describing how interactional participatory practices emerge, unfold and transform in the conditions of professional practice. These resources, it is proposed, bring complementary insights to the understanding of the importance of participation and guidance in vocational and professional learning as it occurs in the workplace. Transcripts of video data collected in the field of vocational training of early childhood educators are used as empirical illustrations of the proposed analytical frame. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
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