The EEF's Metacognition and Self-Regulated Learning Guidance Report highlights the importance of helping learners plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning (Education Endowment Foundation, 2021). Within mentoring, questioning supports each of these processes.

Effective mentors use questions to help trainees:

• Plan future teaching by anticipating challenges and selecting appropriate strategies.
• Monitor teaching during lessons by recognising what is happening in the classroom.
• Evaluate practice afterwards by considering evidence of pupil learning and identifying future improvements.

By repeatedly using questions in this way, mentors gradually reduce trainee dependence upon external feedback. Instead of waiting for the mentor to identify areas for development, trainees begin asking these questions of themselves. This is one of the defining characteristics of professional autonomy. The long-term aim of mentoring is therefore not to create trainees who rely upon mentors for answers. Instead, it is to develop reflective practitioners who ask increasingly sophisticated questions of their own practice.