Examining mentor teachers’ critical pedagogical discourses and participation in an era of changing science standards and pedagogies

We provided secondary science mentor teachers (MTs) with a series of professional learning sessions to support their work with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) framework, which their preservice teachers (PSTs) encountered in methods courses. By investigating the MTs' critical pedagogical discourses using a situative theoretical approach, we found that how the MTs made sense of NGSS and AST differed depending on how they gauged student learning, that the MTs’ participation differed over time given their perceptions of NGSS and AST, and that the teacher preparation program needed to provide more support for MTs. •Mentor teachers' critical pedagogical discourses shape how they define student learning.•Mentor teachers' definitions of student learning impact how they view science standards and pedagogies.•Mentor teachers developed different versions of mentoring based on their critical pedagogical discourses.•All mentor teachers requested more support from the teacher preparation program.