Mentoring: Towards a Professional Friendship

Mentoring is a rapidly growing area covering the fields of education, business and community. At a fundamental level, mentoring provides individuals with a relationship which builds from a foundation of friendship. This paper looks at the possible role of ‘friendship’ in formal mentoring systems. It analyses the elements and components of friendship and offers a model of ‘professional friendship’ within the formal mentoring context. The model represents what a. mentoring relationship might be at a generic level and the paper argues for a model of ‘professional friendship’ to be integral to quality mentoring.     

The Subject of Mentoring: Towards a Knowledge and Practice Base for Content-focused Mentoring of New Teachers

While new teacher mentoring has traditionally focused on socio-emotional support and professional socialization, understanding mentors’ role in developing novices’ content teaching is needed given new educational reforms. Few researchers have explored a knowledge/practice base for content-focused mentoring. Therefore, we ask: what do content mentors identify as knowledge/practices needed for subject-specific mentoring? How is subject-specific mentoring enacted? What complexities arise? We found: (a) developing novices’ content teaching is a distinct mentor role; (b) a knowledge/practice base, with mentor’s pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge of content-specific assessment most frequently reported; and (c) enactment of content-focused mentoring reveals promising practices in guiding novices in assessing and developing students’ disciplinary thinking, and tensions between content-focused and socio-emotional mentor roles.     

Emerging Principalship Collaborative Style: Towards Research in Mentoring

An earlier exploratory study (Chong, 1991) suggest that a collaborative style of principalship is expected to emerge from the mentoring process. This paper highlights aspects of the environment of school management in Singapore which are beginning to support this emerging style that future principals are learning to adopt. It also identifies some possible areas for further research. Implications for policy and management are discussed. Mentoring episodes in Singapore could provide a unique opportunity for research that explicate a theory of morphogenesis.     

Using a Geriatric Mentoring Narrative Program to Improve Medical Student Attitudes Towards the Elderly

This study examined first-year medical student attitudes concerning the elderly before and after instituting a geriatric mentoring program. The program began and ended with a survey designed to assess students' attitudes toward the elderly. During the mentoring program, students visited the same senior for four visits throughout the academic year. After each visit, students were required to write a narrative that included reflections on assigned themes. Comparisons of pre- and postsurvey data indicated that students became more positive in their attitudes toward older patients after the geriatric experience. Narratives indicated students were highly engaged in the visits with their seniors.     

Mentoring Online about Mentoring: Possibilities and practice

Mentoring is most often associated with direct personal contact between individuals. Computer-based learning, on the other hand, is more associated with the impersonal interaction between human and machine. Recent developments in online technology, however, have paved the way for more personal interactions between people via machines. This article reports on the experience of a university professor and her graduate students as they embarked on learning about the very personal domain of mentoring via face-to-face and online learning. The results in terms of student learning, professional practice and mentoring suggest the benefit of utilizing technology as a support and enhancement to direct personal interaction, not replace it.     

Mentoring the gifted: a conceptual analysis

Mentoring is considered among the most effective pedagogical measures, yet it is rarely used in gifted education. One of the main reasons for this neglect seems to be the lack of a thorough analysis of its conceptual foundations from the point of view of giftedness research. This contribution starts with a discussion of conceptual and definitional issues pertinent to mentoring gifted individuals. An ideal definition is proposed, followed by a review of the effectiveness of mentoring programs. Existing mentoring programs rarely take full advantage of the educational potential inherent in mentoring. Next, the conditions and characteristics of effective mentoring are analyzed. From a general pedagogical point of view, mentoring should allow full use of the “Learning Triad” of modeling, instruction, and provision of learning opportunities and satisfy the “Big Four” effective learning processes (improvement‐oriented learning, individualization, feedback, practice). Mentoring can promote excellent development of the whole actiotope of a gifted individual.     

Evaluating a Psychology Graduate Student Peer Mentoring Program

Research on mentoring outcomes and characteristics of various types of mentoring programs in different settings is limited. The present study sampled 39 graduate students at a small Midwestern university to evaluate peer mentoring in a graduate school setting. Mentoring function and outcome relationships as well as program characteristics were explored. As expected, mentoring functions were highly correlated with various outcomes. Results indicated psychosocial assistance, networking help, and relational outcomes were reported most among participants. Interestingly, pair compatibility and mentor preparation were not found to be essential program characteristics. Program recommendations and future research are discussed.     

The Value of Mentoring

Mentoring involves the use of an experienced individual to teach and train someone with less knowledge in a given area. Through individualized attention the mentor/teacher transfers needed information, feedback, and encouragement to the protegé/learner. The success of such a program depends heavily on the investment of effort by the mentor. Although benefits for the protegé are typically easily discerned and have been well documented in the past, the factors affecting motivation for the mentor have been less well defined. Therefore, after a discussion of the basic mentoring process and a summary of the protegé and organizational benefits, the major focus of our paper is directed to the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards attained by those who participate as mentors and to the establishment of guidelines that help to maximize the value for all involved.     

Mentoring in Action on a Primary PGCE Course

Abstract

School‐based mentors are taking increased responsibility for the initial training of student teachers as a result of government policy to lengthen the proportion of time students spend in school during their training. The role of the mentor is critical in the development of a partnership model of initial teacher education (ITE), involving close collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) and schools. This article draws on our research into the practice of mentoring on the one‐year Primary Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute. Through observations of mentoring sessions at school we analyse the process of mentoring in action. Drawing on mentor observations and interviews with mentors, students and college (link) tutors we examine the diverse nature of mentoring and identify some of the common qualities of good mentoring practice.     

Mentoring and Argumentation in a Game-Infused Science Curriculum

Engaging in argumentation from evidence is challenging for most middle school students. We report the design of a media-based mentoring system to support middle school students in engaging in argumentation in the context of a game-infused science curriculum. Our design emphasizes learners apprenticing with college student mentors around the socio-scientific inquiry of a designed video game. We report the results of a mixed-methods study examining the use of this media-based mentoring system with students ages 11 through 14. We observed that the discourse of groups of students that engaged with the game-infused science curriculum while interacting with college student mentors via a social media platform demonstrated statistically significant higher ratings of cognitive, epistemic, and social aspects of argumentation than groups of students that engaged with the social media platform and game-infused science curriculum without mentors. We further explored the differences between the Discourses of the mentored and non-mentored groups. This analysis showed that students in the mentored groups were invited, guided, and socialized into roles of greater agency than students in the non-mentored groups. This increased agency might explain why mentored groups demonstrated higher levels of scientific argumentation than non-mentored groups. Based on our analyses, we argue that media-based mentoring may be designed around a video game to support middle school students in engaging in argumentation from evidence.     

Mentoring in Higher Education: a synoptic overview

In 1995 academic staff in the Graduate Diploma of Education program from Charles Sturt University in Bathurst worked with teachers from 7 local high schools to co‐operatively deliver the Graduate Diploma of Education. Students were inducted into the profession of teaching by teachers and lecturers working together to ensure that students developed effective teaching skills, competence and confidence. The program emphasised learning to teach (and understanding students' learning) rather than learning about teaching. Practising teachers were involved in the planning and delivery of the program and students' induction into the profession. The program was firmly embedded in the context of current secondary schools and built on existing productive partnerships. This new program provided opportunities for students to develop more realistic and sustained contact with secondary schools and to develop reflective workplace practices. Students engaged in critical reflection on, and discussion of, their teaching with practising teachers and university lecturers. In what follows, we describe the process of reform and delivery of the new program from the perspectives of the students, teachers and lecturers involved.