The Role of Mentoring in the Success of Women Leaders of Color in Higher Education

While numerous scholars have investigated the role of mentoring in the success of women of color in faculty positions, few have examined how mentoring affects the development of women leaders of color in higher education. Using qualitative data gathered from interviews with women leaders of color at Hispanic-serving institution, this study presents findings from cross-case studies to provide insights into perceptions of mentoring and various types of mentorship across the different levels within the organization. Supported by the empirical data, this paper challenges traditional notions of mentoring and advocates for a more critical approach to mentoring to reflect the multidimensionality of the mentoring process and explores how mentoring can be used as a strategy to facilitate institutional change.     

Positioning Mentoring as a Coach Development Tool: Recommendations for Future Practice and Research

Current thinking in coach education advocates mentoring as a development tool to connect theory and practice. However, little empirical evidence exists to evaluate the effectiveness of mentoring as a coach development tool. Business, education, and nursing precede the coaching industry in their mentoring practice, and research findings offered in these domains could be drawn upon to position mentoring as sports coaching development tool. Given the remote basis of some of mentor–coach relationships in sports coaching, additional learning can be drawn from mentoring conducted by virtual or electronic mediums. This article concludes with a series of reflective questions arising from research findings in other domains, designed to engage the potential coaching organization with the mentoring process.     

E‐mentoring for social equity: review of research to inform program development

The advent of user‐friendly email programs and web browsers created possibilities for widespread use of e‐mentoring programs. In this review of the research, we presented the history of e‐mentoring programs and defined e‐mentoring and structured e‐mentoring programs, focusing on large‐scale e‐mentoring programs that addressed issues of social equity and educational advancement. The literature reviewed spanned from the mid‐1990s to the present and included journal articles, reports, and book chapters on implemented e‐mentoring programs. The literature indicates that e‐mentoring is not a panacea, neither is it an inexpensive alternative to face‐to‐face mentoring. E‐mentoring is an alternative mode that facilitates the expansion of mentoring opportunities. The research we reviewed supported that the benefits associated with e‐mentoring mirrored the benefits associated with mentoring: informational, psychosocial, and instrumental. In addition, research supports two additional benefits of e‐mentoring: the value of impartiality and inter‐organizational connections, which were facilitated by the use of electronic communications. Research conducted on the programmatic features associated with e‐mentoring programs identified training, coaching, and group e‐mentoring as features that enhanced participant involvement. Our goal in providing a review of the research at this stage in the development of e‐mentoring was to facilitate increased understanding of the current research to enhance future research and programs and to advance e‐mentoring as a field.     

What does mentoring mean to experienced teachers? A phenomenological interview study

Abstract

This report investigates mentoring from the perspectives of 7 experienced secondary public school teachers from four different school districts in Oklahoma. The participants' teaching experience ranged from 10 to 30years. The author reviewed the research process and data provided through the teachers' interviews and protocol writings to further explain the nature of mentoring and the benefits of mentoring experienced teachers. The experienced teachers benefited from the mentoring process and their mentoring experiences in two important areas. At the professional level, the teachers gained a sense of self as professional educators. At the personal level, these teachers identified mentoring as a process that worked in almost any situation; in addition, they recognized that conversing about concerns with a knowledgeable colleague was a workable solution for solving issues.     

Using developmental relationships in mentoring to support novice principals as leaders of learning

Mentoring is an established method of supporting principals as they begin their careers; however, early studies focus on how a veteran principal supports a novice principal in acquiring the skills to manage the school. As the role of a principal has evolved from a building manager to a leader of learning, the role of mentoring has also evolved. The purpose of this study was to explore the mentoring experiences of novice principals and their mentors in a school district’s mentoring program, and how developmental mentoring relationships support novice principals to be leaders of learning. The ?ndings suggest that a strong mentoring relationship can support a novice principal in developing skills to be a leader of learning by clarifying the mentor’s role as a leader of learning, focusing mentoring sessions to build the mentee’s capacity as a leader of learning, and a commitment to mentoring sessions that support teaching and learning.     

Mentors and Muses: New Strategies for Academic Success

Mentoring programs in higher education institutions have met with mixed success. In response to the limitations inherent in the dominant approaches to mentoring, we present an example of a unusual mentoring program, the New Scholars Network (NSN). The NSN is a variant of traditional mentoring approaches, having evolved from mentoring into musing. Framed within a radical humanist philosophy, musing is a process of creating peer communities that facilitates connections between naturally developing relationships, shared power, and collective action. Through mentoring as musing new faculty have the potential to evolve as change agents in the institution, instead of assimilating into the existing system.     

Smooth Transition for Advancement to Graduate Education (STAGE) for Underrepresented Groups in the Mathematical Sciences Pilot Project: Broadening Participation through Mentoring

The Smooth Transition for Advancement to Graduate Education (STAGE) project was a three-year pilot project designed to mentor undergraduate students primarily from under-represented groups in the mathematical sciences. The STAGE pilot project focused on mentoring students as they transitioned from undergraduate education to either graduate school or a career in the STEM workforce. We discuss the various mentoring structures, the STAGE pilot utilized, and how those structures affected programmatic outcomes. In addition, we discuss challenges we faced in mentoring undergraduates and special considerations we made when mentoring students from under-represented groups.     

Specific mentoring: a theory and model for developing primary science teaching practices

The transition from generic mentoring to specific mentoring practices can provide a stronger focus for developing preservice primary teachers (mentees) in subject‐specific areas. Constructivist theory and a five‐factor model towards specific subject mentoring are proposed as ways to develop mentees' teaching practices. Firstly, constructivist theory complements mentoring within field experiences (practicum/internship), as it can be used to build upon prior understandings towards developing the mentee's knowledge and skills for teaching. Secondly, the picture that emerges from the literature shows five factors for mentoring, namely: (i) personal attributes that the mentor needs to exhibit for constructive dialogue; (ii) system requirements that focus on curriculum directives and policies; (iii) pedagogical knowledge for articulating effective teaching practices; (iv) modelling of efficient and effective practice; and (v) feedback for the purposes of reflection for improving practice. It is argued that ‘generalist’ primary teachers in their roles as mentors will require specific mentoring strategies linked to these five factors to enable effective mentoring in specific subject areas.     

Mentoring in literacy education: a commentary from graduate students,untenured professors,and tenured professors

This commentary continues a dialogue which began among literacy teacher educators attending an alternative format session about mentoring in the academy at a national conference. Literacy teacher educators participated in an informal discussion centered on the nature of mentoring in the academy for doctoral students, untenured professors, and tenured professors. Doctoral students focused on their changing identities and roles in the academy, their concerns about navigating the political infrastructure of academia, and the importance of assuming a proactive stance towards obtaining mentoring, especially for part‐time doctoral students. Untenured professors focused on the ways they were inventing and reinventing themselves within the power and politics of academia and their need for more holistic mentoring during these turbulent times. Tenured professors were able to embed mentoring experiences into their scholarly work and find ways to benefit or learn from mentoring experiences. These mentors also found comfort in more informal mentoring that included self‐initiated endeavors centered on mutual interests. Our commentary draws on these discussions as well as the professional literature on mentoring to describe the importance of mutual trust and reciprocity in mentoring throughout all stages of academia with attention to cultural and linguistic diversity.     

The influence of mentoring on the academic trajectory of a 17-year-old Black male college sophomore from the United Kingdom: a single case study

There has been a national- and state-level call for colleges and universities to develop targeted mentoring programs for Black males. However, there is limited published scholarship that has investigated the experiences of non-U.S.-born Black males in these college mentoring programs generally, and at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) specifically. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the experiences of a 17-year-old Black male college sophomore from the United Kingdom who enrolled in a HBCU male-focused mentoring program. Findings reveal that he benefited from pre-college mentoring as he developed strategies to respond to racist encounters during his K–12 schooling in the United Kingdom. In the university mentoring program, he benefited most from one-on-one mentoring opportunities with university officials. Implications for universities and future research are discussed.     

Technical Communication Teachers as Mentors in the Classroom: Extending an Invitation to Students

In this article, we argue that mentoring of technical communication students must occur within the classroom. In our survey of students, we found that most students felt they had not been mentored. In our ethnography, we found that although students could define the term “mentor”, many were conflicted about its value. This confusion made students less likely to seek out or recognize mentoring opportunities. Students recognized mentoring practices that teachers implemented; however, they did not necessarily identify those practices as “mentoring”. We conclude that confusion arose from students' ambiguous views about mentoring and the lack of standard mentoring practices in the humanities. Therefore, teachers who intend to mentor in the classroom must (a) be more explicit in implementing elements that distinguish mentoring from teaching (e.g., intent and involvement), (b) extend an invitation to students to be mentored, and (c) help students develop a professional identity.     

Reviews

The aim of our study was to examine formalized mentoring as a learning strategy for volunteer sports coaches and to consider implications for other volunteer groups in the community. Despite the increasingly popular use of mentoring as a learning and support strategy across professional domains, and the sheer scale of volunteer sports coach activity in many communities, there has been comparatively little research on structured mentoring programmes in such settings. Data are reported from a 12-month longitudinal study of 6 mentors and 18 volunteer coaches who were organized into formal mentor partnerships in one region of the United Kingdom. Findings from our study revealed that mentoring was the result of continuous interaction between coach and context, and that context must be understood in both spatial and temporal terms. The implications for mentoring in other community based volunteer groups are explored.     

Mentoring to facilitate socialization: The case of the new faculty member

How easily a new faculty members adjusts and adapts to life in the professoriate is often dependent on the types of relationships that the newcomer establishes with colleagues and on the willingness of veteran faculty members to assist newcomers as they learn the ins and outs of the academy. One avenue for facilitating interaction between newcomers and academic veterans is to establish formal mentoring programs. In this case study, the formal mentoring relationship is examined as a means for understanding the socialization processes of new faculty members. Results suggest that mentoring relationships may facilitate socialization because they allow newcomers to establish interpersonal bonds and receive support and advice from experienced colleagues. Results also indicate, however, that the most important feature of mentoring may be accessibility. This finding leads to questions concerning the feasibility of assigning mentors rather than encouraging informal mentoring from multiple faculty members.     

‘It’s only a phase’: examining trust,identification and mentoring functions received across the mentoring phases

Kram has proposed that mentoring relationships develop and mature over time, providing different levels of mentoring functions as they progress through a sequence of four distinct phases: initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. However, the influence of these mentoring phases on the dynamics and functions of mentoring has received little research attention. This quantitative field study examined the effect of mentoring phases on protégés’ perception of trust and identification with their mentors and mentoring functions received using data from 88 working professionals from industry and education. Results of MANCOVA indicated that protégés in the redefinition phase reported higher levels of psychosocial support than other protégés, and protégés in the separation phase reported lower levels of career development and role modeling than other protégés. No significant differences across the mentoring phases were found for trust and identification among protégés towards their mentors; however, protégés from education reported lower levels of identification with their mentors than those from industry.     

Contexts of mentoring and opportunities for learning to teach: a comparative study of mentoring practice

Drawing on data from twenty-three US, UK, and Chinese mentor teachers, this study explores the relationship between contexts of mentoring and mentoring practice. It discusses learning opportunities created by mentoring in different contexts for novices to learn to teach. Through comparative analysis, it finds that mentoring practices show greater differences across programs and countries than within. This is the case even when mentors are practicing or moving toward practicing a kind of teaching as expected by education reformers. These differences are reflected in mentors’ beliefs about what novices need to learn, their interaction patterns and foci with novices. Three instructional contexts in each setting shape such differences: structure of school curriculum and assessment, organization of teaching and mentoring, and student population. These findings suggest that the reform-minded teaching practice that mentors developed does not necessarily guarantee the effective mentoring that supports teacher learning and teaching reform. Teacher educators should pay attention to the influences of instructional contexts on mentoring and the kinds of learning opportunities that mentoring creates for novice teachers in different contexts. When designing mentoring programs and arranging mentoring relationships, teacher educators need to consider how to restructure school contexts and help mentors learn how to mentor.     

The role of feedback in teacher mentoring: how coaches,peers, and students affect teacher change

ABSTRACT

Our study contributes to understanding teacher mentoring by exploring impacts of feedback from multiple mentoring sources as teachers with varying levels of experience learned to implement student-centered instruction. Mentees in our study learned to implement a student-centered model, supported by mentoring from students and teachers experienced in the model. We employed qualitative methods to collect and analyze data from two summer schools, with 22 STEM teachers and 47 student-instructors from 15 non-selective, public high schools. Findings include: (a) teachers had positive attitudes towards feedback, (b) feedback from multiple sources changed practice, (c) effective feedback required structure, (d) experienced teachers benefited most from feedback, and (e) student feedback was most valuable. These findings provide strategies to shape future mentoring, informing teachers, administrators, professional development coaches, and teacher educators about critical factors in the use of feedback to improve teaching through mentoring.     

Where enterprise and equity meet: the rise of mentoring for women in Australian universities

In this paper I use a governmentality framework to explore the growth of women's mentoring programmes in Australian universities over the last 10–15 years. These programmes are supported because they speak to institutional concerns with improving performance in a performative culture, while being seen to deal with the problem of gender inequity. I draw on the mentoring experiences of two women academics from a larger study to illustrate the ways women are governed and self-govern, and negotiate subjectivities through mentoring. This reading locates mentoring within a network of institutional power relations, in so doing unsettling the truths we hold about mentoring as always good and unproblematic. It offers an important account of why mentoring has become so popular in these places in these times and reflects on the implications for feminist political goals.     

New teachers’ perspectives of informal mentoring: quality of mentoring and contributors

As an individual socialization initiative, informal mentoring has often been lauded as an effective tool to provide spontaneous and immediate social–emotional and career-related assistance to new teachers. Little is known about how informal mentoring is perpetuated in workplace. Through the conceptual lens of dynamic process theory of mentoring, we seek to illuminate the interactional patterns of informal mentoring as manifested through its contributors and quality. The findings of our study reveal that social interaction, time, organizational contexts, and individual characteristics mediate the process of informal mentoring. Further, informal mentoring is limited primarily to seeking information and is low in frequency of interaction and follow-up activities. Finally, we discuss a number of practical and theoretical implications related to informal mentoring, including the advantage of a hybrid model of mentoring and the addition of social interactions as a mediating factor of the dynamic process theory of mentoring.     

Clear Mentoring: Contributing to Mentees’ Professional Self-confidence and Intention to Stay in their Job

Researchers have highlighted developmental mentoring as being beneficial and judgmental mentoring as hampering the potential positive outcomes of mentoring. We introduce the construct clear mentoring as a beneficial form of mentoring. The findings suggest that newly qualified teachers who perceive higher levels of mentoring characterized by mentees’ opportunities to reflect upon their own practice, openness to different approaches to being a teacher, and an atmosphere of relational trust are more likely to report lower levels of self-efficacy. In contrast, mentees who perceive higher levels of mentoring characterized by clear communication of feedback and advice are more likely to report higher levels of self-efficacy and lower levels of intention to quit. This study contributes to the field of mentoring by illuminating how mentors’ communication of evaluations, advice, and feedback can positively affect mentees, and how mentoring dominated by mentees’ perspectives can negatively affects mentees.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Inspiration: Reflections on the Origin of a Peer-Mentoring Project

The author gives a personal account of his relationship with his graduate mentor, Allan Schnaiberg. He also describes a mentoring project that he created with a colleague. The mentoring project emerges as both a vehicle for and a window onto the intergenerational transmission of the mentoring disposition of Schnaiberg. It stands as but one of many branches of the expanding influence of Schnaiberg’s life as a scholar, professor, graduate mentor and man. The importance of holistic mentoring is explored, with particular attention to the critical value of its central, affective dimension. Mentoring is particularly important today for non-traditional students, who have a heightened need to feel that they belong in the academic setting. It is suggested that mentoring serves as the guidance function associated with the process by which any being goes through the challenging transition from one cycle, or level of experience, to the next.