An Empirical Study to Examine for Androgynous Mentoring Behaviour in the Field of Education

Abstract

This empirical study focuses upon mentoring behaviour in the context of schools and colleges and is a continuation of an earlier empirical study which posited the theory that mentors will display androgyny—high levels of instrumental and expressive behaviour—whilst in their mentoring role. Sixteen mentors were invited to partake in a study that was designed to deploy both qualitative and quantitative methods in a complementary manner. Mentors reported the complementary nature of the mentoring role and other roles they performed and noted the positive, reciprocal nature of mentoring: such resulted in the mentors not seeing their role as a particularly demanding one. Evidence of mentors displaying expressive—or stereotypically feminine—behaviour within their role was apparent. The levels of instrumentality that the mentors felt others expected them to display were waived in favour of expressiveness when actual mentoring behaviour was reported: this was not mitigated by the gender of the mentor. Further, evidence emerged that the mentors would not alter their behaviour whether in a same or cross‐gender mentoring situation. The study concludes that mentors in education do not display androgynous behaviour whilst mentoring; rather they display high levels of expressive behaviour. Such would place mentoring as a stereotypically feminine role. The study further questions those who perceive cross‐gender mentoring as problematic, with mentor‐mentee age difference of possibly more concern. In order to allow full consideration of claims made, details of the previous study are given.     

Androgyny and the Mentoring Role: an empirical study to examine for prominent mentor expectations

abstract

As part of an ongoing research design, we wished to examine how mentors behave whilst in the mentoring role. The starting point for this was a study to examine how mentors felt they were expected to behave in context; that is, an organised educational mentoring situation, as we recognised the importance of situation‐specificity. Prior to empirical study, we theorised that the mentor may be androgynous; or more precisely are able to display high levels of expressive and instrumental behaviour. Seven suppositions were examined. Our findings were that whilst in the role, mentors do indeed feel expected to blend and display high levels of both instrumentality and expressiveness. Further, the levels of expressive behaviour they perceived they were expected to display were significantly higher. The higher levels of expected expressive behaviour is not congruent with the androgyny literature: our samples proved an exception to the ‘masculine supremacy effect’. Also, that mentoring may require high levels of stereotypically feminine behaviour is something that the mass of mentoring literature has not discussed and may warrant further attention. We concluded that the diverse, complex and complicated nature of mentoring is met with expectations to display flexibility and versatility across situations — to take a proactive approach to coping with mentoring situational demands — such is not mitigated by gender. Their reported high expected levels of both expressive and instrumental behaviour are congruent with our theory of the androgynous mentor.     

Coaching the Mentor: Facilitating Reflection and Change

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of coaching a mentor of experienced teachers. In particular, we sought to determine if coaching would help a mentor to compare her espoused beliefs about mentoring to her mentoring behaviors and possibly resolve any dissonance. The mentor and coach (the co‐researchers) participated in a platform conference, three coaching conferences, and a debriefing conference. In the platform conference, the mentor espoused the use of nondirective mentoring behaviors. The mentor and coach used the coaching conferences to review audio recordings of the mentor working with mentees during conferences intended to improve the mentees’ teaching, and to engage in reflective dialogue concerning the mentor’s interpersonal behaviors. The mentor experienced cognitive dissonance on several occasions during the coaching conferences when she discovered her use of directive behaviors in some interactions with mentees. Eventually, the mentor resolved this dissonance, primarily by changing her beliefs about mentoring and shifting from a nondirective to an eclectic platform. We conclude that the coaching of mentoring explored in this study has considerable potential for future research on the coaching process.     

优秀篮球教练员临场指挥的个性心理品质刍议

通过查阅大量文献资料,走访部分专家和优秀篮球教练员,对篮球教练员的个性心理品质进行研究.主要从优秀篮球教练员临场指挥的个性心理品质认识、理解及应该具备哪些个性心理品质,如何培养篮球教练员临场指挥下的（特别是年轻教练员）优良个性心理品质是当今现代运动训练需要迫切解决的问题,旨在为篮球教练员临场指挥提供一定参考价值.     

Support and Challenge in Learning to Teach: the role of the mentor

The increased emphasis on school‐based programmes as part of initial teacher education has resulted in renewed efforts to forge more effective partnerships between higher education institutions and schools. The University of Bath has established a mentor development programme to ensure that subject mentors have an opportunity to examine ways to engage novice teachers in critical reflection about their practice while providing the support and challenge necessary to help them develop as teachers. This study is based on experienced mentors’ and their perspective on their work with novice teachers and it is a follow‐up to earlier research based on Daloz’ model (1986, Effective Teaching and Mentoring, San Francisco, Jossey Bass) of support and challenge. It examines an emerging mentoring pedagogy through which experienced mentors attempt to engage novice teachers in shaping their own vision of teaching. Three mentor profiles are discussed—the laissez‐faire, the collaborative and the imperial mentor.     

Why mentor? Linking mentor teachers’ motivations to their mentoring conceptions

Current mentoring models for teacher preparation and induction emphasize the need to engage novice teachers’ learning through collaborative professional learning communities. Mentors in such communities are expected to engage in joint knowledge construction with novices, and to be ‘co-thinkers’ who enact a developmental view of mentoring, as well as ‘co-learners’ who are willing to engage in mutual learning with their novices. These two aspects are assumed to be associated in mentor thinking. The aim of this questionnaire study was, therefore, to explore the relationship between mentors’ mentoring conceptions and their mentoring motives. Participants were 726 secondary education mentor teachers, associated with 13 institutes for teacher preparation in the Netherlands. Results showed that a motivation to mentor for personal learning was more strongly associated with a developmental conception of mentored learning to teach than with an instrumental mentoring conception. The same was found for a motivation to mentor for contributing to the profession, but less pronounced. These findings suggest potential strategies for the selection and preparation of mentor teachers for programs that intend to foster collaborative inquiry approaches for novice teacher support.     

Mentoring in the virtual organization: keys to building successful schools and businesses

Mentoring can take on a whole new perspective when people have a common goal but are in different physical locations. The benefits of virtual mentoring, in other words, mentoring when the mentor and mentee are not geographically co‐located, and which occurs mainly by electronic communication, can be substantial. They include lowered costs, increased access to mentors, and no limitations on space, time, and location. There are also disadvantages to virtual mentoring. Notable among these is the lack of face‐to‐face communication, something that adds another dimension to understanding the tone and attitude of messages between mentors and mentees. This article not only defines and analyzes the concept of mentoring as performed in the virtual organization but also deals with phases of mentoring and types of mentors used in this relatively new work environment. The synthesis of the literature and the authors’ experience results in a list of keys to successful mentoring in the virtual organization. These are: trust, self‐motivation, flexibility, communication skills, and technological skills. In addition, implications for worldwide mentoring are discussed.     

Mapping mentor teachers’ roles in mentoring dialogues

This literature study deals with the issue of how to conceptualize the supervisory behaviour of mentor teachers in mentoring dialogues by systematically examining empirical literature on key aspects of mentor teachers’ behaviour during dialogues with prospective teachers. From the findings a model is derived which can be used to study mentor teachers’ behaviour in mentoring dialogues. The model may be helpful in the further development of the quality of mentor teachers’ behaviour in mentoring dialogues.     

Mentoring among high school teachers: a dynamic and reciprocal group process

In education, mentoring is typically understood as a one‐on‐one relationship between a novice teacher and a more experienced, competent colleague. Through the mentoring relationship, the veteran teacher guides the new teacher into the profession. In this article, the author supports an alternative conception of mentoring by describing how a group of new and experienced high school teachers, committed to changing their teaching practices toward a pedagogy of intellectual engagement, together created the conditions and relationships within their collaborative inquiry group to mentor one another. In the group, novice teachers modeled risk‐taking and vulnerability for their more experienced colleagues. Veteran teachers guided their newer colleagues toward learner‐centered pedagogical possibilities and inquiry practices. Additionally, the group itself, with its norms of open questioning and doubt, trust, collegiality, and a shared purpose, created a collaborative space of mentoring that was dynamic and reciprocal.     

Calling to mentor: the search for mentor identity through the development of mentor competency

ABSTRACT

There is a common assumption that experienced educators will automatically be effective mentors. My experience indicates that building competence in mentoring others requires conscious intent and effort. This article is a self-study action research account that explores mentoring practice from the mentor’s perspective. The study sets to explore the relational dynamics within mentoring relationships, with the focus of obtaining a deeper understanding of the mentor’s growth and the impact of this learning on mentor identity. Data collection was through personal reflective journals, mentoring conversations, and focus group interviews. Findings indicate that critical reflective practice can lead to transformational learning that results in personal and professional growth and improved mentor competency. Transformative learning episodes highlight significant learning points that converge to enhance personal and professional learning and contribute to the formulation of mentor identity. A conclusion drawn is that applying a personal strategic intent towards mentor development can lead to improved mentoring culture and organisational learning and growth.     

Developing Mentors: An Analysis of Shared Mentoring Practices

Understanding how experienced teachers share and articulate effective mentoring practices can guide efforts to prepare quality mentors. This qualitative study focused on mentoring practices within a teacher-designed student-teaching program conceptualized while the mentor teachers within the program were students in a graduate-level mentoring course and implemented upon the mentors’ completion of their graduate studies. Data sources included interviews and field notes from meetings with mentors and student teachers. The results detail specific mentoring practices: explicit instruction through scaffolding, developing the whole teacher, student-teacher-directed learning, fostering student teachers’ individual practice, explicit mentoring of one another, and reflecting on mentoring. These practices were enabled by program structures such as mentor meetings, an online forum, and mentors’ observation of all student teachers in the program.     

Reciprocal mentorship: an effective support for online instructors

This article presents a reciprocal model of mentoring as an alternative approach to more traditional mentoring models. A mentor, experienced with online course delivery and pedagogy, worked with six online instructors over two academic terms within a reciprocal mentorship model. This model was designed to build a collaborative learning relationship which would benefit each partner. The mentoring was scheduled on a just‐in‐time basis in response to each online instructor’s needs. Study results show that the time commitments required to accomplish the goals of the mentoring project were challenging for participants; that post‐secondary institutions have a responsibility to provide multiple supports (including, for example, mentoring assistance) for faculty members teaching online; and that developing a structured mentoring program could facilitate a more effective reciprocal mentoring process, with benefits for both mentors and mentees.     

Factors affecting willingness to mentor

The paper presents a survey among 300 employees in Northern Italy to assess the willingness to mentor and identify the factors that affect it. Men and respondents with previous mentoring experience indicate a higher willingness to be a mentor. Willingness is affected by personal characteristics that are perceived as necessary for a mentor and the perceived benefits and drawbacks of mentoring.     

Sometimes a novice and sometimes an expert: mentors’ professional expertise as revealed through their stories of critical incidents

Drawing on the methodology of critical incidents, this study sets out to explore the perspectives that 20 experienced in‐service mentors in Israel adopt towards critical incidents in their work, as they account for how they reason about and act upon these incidents. Mentors’ stories of critical incidents shed light on the complex nature of mentors’ professional expertise, reflected in the finding that experienced mentors’ reasoning and behaviour constantly fluctuates between a novice and an expert stage, depending upon the nature of the situation and the type of mentor–mentee interaction that the mentor is confronted with. The study supports the more dynamic, discontinuous and interactionist view of the acquisition of expertise, highlighting the regressions and progressions that play out when experienced professionals take up an additional role, such as in the passage from teaching to mentoring.     

Mentoring support and the professional development of beginning teachers: a Chinese perspective

For a long time, there has been a tradition in China of experienced teachers helping beginning teachers. This empirical school study investigates the kinds of support that are provided by eight dyads of mentoring teacher and first‐year secondary school teachers in Guangzhou of southern China and the major factors affecting mentoring support. In addition, this research focuses on the professional development of first‐year teachers in areas of subject knowledge, student, teaching and classroom management. The findings reveal that mentors provide four forms of support: provision of information, mutual lesson observation, collaborative lesson preparation and discussion in the office. Factors affecting mentoring support include teaching workload, grade and subject, style of mentor–protégé interactions, relationships between mentor and mentee, incentives for the mentors, and collegial culture in the case study schools. It is notable that there are positive and negative developments perceived by the protégé and the foci of mentoring tend to be the teaching of content rather than curriculum and pedagogy.     

History,Organisation and Power: a preliminary analysis of educational management in Tasmania

Mentoring currently plays an important role in the professional development of both trainee and newly qualified teachers. However, despite the prominence given to this in the delivery of programmes of teacher education and the associated literature there is as yet no consensus as to how it is best managed nor, indeed, that it should be done so in a way that can be universally applied to different schemes. In order to give an overview of the current state of the art this paper considers mentoring and its associated dimensions using the literature to inform the various aspects of the mentoring process: selection of mentors; preparation of mentors for the task; mentor‐student interaction; sustaining the mentoring role; assessment and mentoring in context.     

Warwick University PGCE Mentoring Scheme

As schools and HEIs have become partners in initial teacher education, the roles of personnel from both institutions have experienced radical change. Whilst the role of the university tutor as a student support and assessor has diminished, the teacher's role has been extended, to that of the student's subject‐specific mentor. Considering the importance of mentorship in the teacher education process and the lack of evidence on mentoring from the student's perspective, the present study sought to expand on current knowledge and increase understanding of the student's perspective through exploration of postgraduate PE and Dance students’ perceptions of the mentor role and the mentorship relationship at the University of Brighton. This study forms part of a larger, collaborative project between the University of Brighton and Liverpool John Moore's University which is investigating the development and impact of School Based Teacher Education Partnerships. In semi‐structured interviews, 25 students were asked to discuss: ideal qualities for mentoring and the student/mentor relationship; the mentor's role and their influence on the student. Students generally valued a supportive, professional relationship with their mentor which allowed mutual input and a mentor who is approachable and has a depth of subject expertise. These findings indicated the need, in the course of future research, to consider interaction and information exchange in the student/mentor relationship and the perceived and actual role which student and mentor play in this relationship.

Of current interest is the postgraduate student's experience of mentoring, which is highlighted and discussed in the present article. The data discussed here derive from work in the project's early stages at the University of Brighton, and the article is the first in a series which will be presented as the project continues. Future publications will discuss investigations which expand on the present findings and which result from either collaborative inquiry between the two institutions or replication studies to enable cross‐comparison between findings.     

The problematic context of mentoring: evidence from an English language teaching department at a Turkish university

‘Mentoring’ has become the central issue of the ‘restructuring programme’ in education faculties in Turkey since 1998. This study aims to explore the participants’ perceptions and experiences about the concepts of ‘mentor’ and ‘mentoring’. A mentor and six English Language Teaching Department (ELT) students, who were in the final year of their training programme, participated in the study. A qualitative case study methodology was employed and data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with faculty students and mentors, semi‐structured journals kept only by the faculty students and debriefing notes kept only by the researcher. The findings demonstrate important issues about the nature, functions, benefits, and problems of the mentoring experienced by the faculty students at the particular department such as the need for developing selection criteria and training programmes for mentors and organising regular meetings and seminars about the partnership programme for mutual understanding and sharing opinions. Drawing on the data, recommendations and implications are suggested.