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.     

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.     

Taking care of youth mentoring relationships: red flags,repair, and respectful resolution

Mentoring is portrayed in the literature as benefiting young people, but ineffective or early termination of youth mentoring relationships can be detrimental. Researchers have not adequately explored issues surrounding the breakdown of youth mentoring relationships. Underpinned by a socio-ecological perspective, in this exploratory study we consider the various contexts within which these important relationships exist and identify early warning signs or red flags that a mentoring relationship is struggling. We interviewed mentees, mentors, and coordinators from four Western Australian youth mentoring programs about their experiences of mentoring relationships. Our findings suggest that red flags and repair strategies may be specific to particular programs, and that program coordinators play an important role in supporting relationships. Our research will help youth mentoring programs work toward early intervention strategies or appropriate and respectful termination of a relationship.     

Why social capital is important for mentoring capacity building of mentors: a case study in Hong Kong

Most studies of school-based mentoring practice have put their key focus on discussions of the professional growth of novice teachers rather than of their mentors. Mentoring practice, however, is also a platform from which mentors can build or enhance their professional competency and capitalize their leadership role as they interact with novice teachers and their colleagues. This is an area which deserves further research attention. Drawing on the concept of social capital, this small-scale qualitative study investigates how mentors can develop or revise their mentoring skills and knowledge while they engage in school-based mentoring practice. Semi-structured interviews and documents were collected from 31 mentors from primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong from 2014 to 2015. Findings of this study firstly show that both bonding social capital and bridging social capital can help mentors develop their mentoring knowledge in different ways. Secondly, bridging social capital can help mentors act as boundary brokers who develop transformative learning by interacting with outside experts. Providing more off-site or cluster-based mentor training programs and mentoring partnership schemes with outside experts could be the way forward to maximize the professional competency of mentors aiming at improving school capacity.     

Mentoring and teachers’ professional development in Albania

The role of teachers is becoming increasingly important in advancing student learning outcomes. This article discusses one area that is still in need of significant reform in Albania: the induction and mentoring of new teacher-candidates. Based on a mixed-method study involving 275 Albanian teachers and mentors, it provides insights into the benefits and challenges of current practices. The study identifies a number of key areas in need of improvement, including: the selection of mentors; professional training for mentors; communication among different stakeholders; and overall planning and coordination of mentoring services. These issues are discussed within a wider European policy context that situates mentoring as an important component of teachers’ ongoing professional development.     

Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature

This paper identifies salient practices of faculty mentors of undergraduate research (UR) as indicated in the extensive literature of the past two decades on UR. The well-established benefits for students involved in UR are dependent, first and foremost, on high-quality mentoring. Mentorship is a defining feature of UR. As more and different types of colleges and universities strive to meet student demand for authentic scholarly experiences, it is imperative to identify what effective UR mentors do in order to ensure student engagement, quality enhancement, retention, and degree-completion. We offer an original analysis of the literature on UR mentoring in which we identify 10 significant “lessons learned,” or evidence-based practices of effective UR mentors that apply broadly across disciplines, students, institutions, and mentoring approaches.     

Teacher training for social responsibility: a new mentoring role in the training of community teachers

ABSTRACT

Our study is focused on the field-experience of a unique ideological group. The prospective teachers are community activists who are dedicated to meeting the social needs of communities through education, mainly in the periphery and in weakened populations. Their vision is to become community teachers. We focused on a new mentoring role, which was created in order to meet the special needs of this group. The new mentors are members of the same movement as the prospective community teachers, share their ideology and dilemmas, and gain their trust. The findings show that this role is necessary and meaningful. We discuss different aspects of the role of the new mentors, including aspects of informal mentoring, and how it can be applied in other teacher-training models. Our findings may help in providing ideas for choosing mentors with special characteristics for special students.     

Mentoring as an Induction Tool in Special Education Administration

Mentoring is a widely used method of induction into a variety of professional roles, including educational leadership. However, little scholarly literature has focused on the role of mentoring in the career development of special education administrators. In this examination of 14 such mentoring relationships, the existence of career and psychosocial functions as theorized by Kram is explored and the perceived value of the functions to mentors and protégés in the career development of beginning special education administrators is identified. Evidence of coaching, a career function, and counseling, a psychosocial function, was found in all relationships studied and these two functions were ranked as most important to the career development of beginning special education administrators by both mentors and protégés. Recommendations include incorporating mentoring functions into mentor and protégé training to increase the positive effect of mentoring on the career development of beginning special education administrators.     

Conceptions of Science Teacher Mentoring and Mentoring Practice in an Alternative Certification Program

Conceptions of mentoring held by six mentors and six beginning science teachers in an alternative certification program were explored qualitatively by means of case studies and phenomenography. Interviews with the six mentors and six beginning teachers produced 379 statements that were grouped into six conceptual categories. The categories of apprenticeship, personal support, and colearning revealed the variation in how mentors and beginning teachers conceptualized school-based mentoring. The conceptions functioned as referents for their mentoring practice. Mentoring as apprenticeship was the dominant conception among both the beginning teachers and mentors. The findings of this study imply that conceptions of mentoring held by mentors and beginning science teachers should be considered when organizing the school-based component of alternative certification programs.     

Does the curriculum matter in peer mentoring? From mentee to mentor in problem‐based learning: a unique case study

Peer mentoring has been used for many years by the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine to integrate new students into the academic and social culture of the institution. In 2001, an unusual situation arose. A problem‐based learning (PBL) curriculum was introduced and the first cohort in this programme was mentored by senior traditional curriculum students. The present study, by canvassing the 2002 PBL mentors, set out to determine whether the mismatch in curricula impacted on students' mentoring experiences. There was overwhelming agreement that curriculum did matter—it is only when mentors are able to share the same experiences as mentees, can they fully understand student problems. Notwithstanding this and other difficulties (e.g. timetable clashes), some 2001 mentees did form bonds with their traditional curriculum mentors. Some even identified them as role models. The 2002 PBL mentors also indicated that they had undergone considerable personal development as a result of their experiences.     

A sociocultural theoretical approach to understanding mentor–mentee interactions during a Teaching English as a Second Language practicum at the master’s degree level

Drawing on the sociocultural theoretical (SCT) perspective, we offer a microgenetic analysis of mentor–mentee interactions in the context of pre-service teachers’ practicum in a Master’s program for Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). Following two pairs of mentors and mentees, we analyze audio-recorded interactions and interviews and examine in depth how mediation occurs during mentoring and how such mediation assists the mentees in learning to become teachers. Our findings show that mentors’ mediation is dynamic and contingent upon the context in which mentoring occurs and that the quality and character of mentor–mentee interactions during goal-directed activities is a critical feature of promoting the mentees’ learning. Responsive mediation especially plays a key role in promoting the mentees’ cognitive development, and it is an essential component of effective mentoring. This calls for a more SCT-informed approach to conceptualizing mentoring and training mentors in practicums.     

Receiving as well as giving: mentors' perceptions of their professional development in one teacher induction program

Although many studies examine benefits to the mentees, this study examined the growth and development of the mentors in the context of a particular teacher induction program, the University of Missouri Teaching Fellowship Program. This program is unique in that mentors are released from classroom duties to mentor two fellows, conduct professional development in their schools and work with the university. First, second and third‐year mentors were interviewed in focus groups. Results indicated that mentors believed their professional development included: relearning, seeing a bigger picture, expanding their roles, gaining insights about the process of mentoring and understanding the impact of the program on themselves. Data suggest that having various duties encourages these mentors to better understand the complexity of schooling, which increases their leadership potential and gives them more confidence. Also, mentoring is somewhat developmental; it must be learned by engaging in it and needs to be consistently supported. Implications for existing mentoring programs are discussed.     

Entry points when undergraduate research mentors reflect on their role: a qualitative case study

Abstract

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are increasingly taking on mentoring roles in undergraduate research (UR). There is, however, a paucity of research focusing on how they conceptualize their mentoring role. In this qualitative interview study, we identified three entry points that mentors reflect on to define their role: (1) What are the goals of UR? (2) What do the students expect from me? and (3) How should I use my expert knowledge? We discuss how academic developers can use these entry points together with a set of reflective lenses to stimulate critical reflection on the mentoring role and help the mentors to define their role and help the mentors to define their role.     

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.     

Characterizing mentoring capital in a residency program through mentor’s voices

The purpose of our study was to examine mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring residents (preservice teachers) in a teacher residency program. Understanding the nuances of mentoring in a year-long placement in a mentor’s classroom may further illuminate mentoring in this context. In this qualitative, longitudinal study, we used constant comparative analysis to allow the data to drive recurring patterns and ideas linked to real-life situations and values coding to examine mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring in a residency program. Residents enrolled in the federally-funded Teaching Residency Program for Critical Shortage Areas program were placed in a high-need urban secondary school for a year-long clinical experience to work alongside mentors, who had a non-evaluative role. By examining mentors’ conceptualizations of mentoring in this particular context, our data reveal aspects of their agency that reflected three main themes: (a) professional altruism, (b) extant knowledge, and (c) resident as stimulus. Our findings add to the research on mentoring by illuminating the voices of mentors to describe how they conceptualized mentoring and to further examine their motivations for mentoring, contributions to the mentee, and professional gains.     

Reading a mentoring situation: one aspect of learning to mentor

This paper describes and interprets the meanings that one novice mentor attributes to ‘reading a mentoring situation’, an organizing metaphor for describing how one experienced teacher of English learns to analyze one aspect of her learning in talking to mentor teachers of English throughout her first year of induction into mentoring. The study revealed that learning to become a mentor is a conscious process of induction into a different teaching context and does not ‘emerge’ naturally from being a good teacher of children. Thus, at an operational level, teacher education programs should prepare teachers for this passage by encouraging the dissemination of in-service courses that allow novice mentors the opportunity to articulate the construction of their new role. Such courses can be structured as ‘learning conversations’ whereby mentors are encouraged to reflect on their roles in the company of fellow mentors, mediated by an experienced mentor of mentors.     

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.     

Designing Higher Education Curriculum to Increase Graduate Outcomes and Work Readiness: The Assessment and Mentoring Program (AMP)

Pre-service teacher programs have a responsibility to equip graduating students with more than the minimum skill sets required by governing bodies. The Assessment and Mentoring Program (AMP) is a four-way collaborative mentoring learning community underpinned by social constructivism. Conducted in Victoria, Australia during the 2014–2016 academic years, 25 final year physical education pre-service teacher mentors aged 19–23 years (M = 13; F = 12) participated in focus groups to discuss the perceived benefits of the program prior to commencing their mentoring role. The mentors considered AMP as a pathway to develop experience in assessment, engage in appropriate professional relationships through mentoring and further their professional learning experiences. Through the involvement in mentoring and developing and implementing assessment, mentors perceived they would have an opportunity to develop valuable work ready skills, immediately transferable to their future professional role as a teacher in a school.     

Learning to mentor: unravelling routine practice to develop adaptive mentoring expertise

While studies have shown that mentoring is central to new teacher development, few investigations have examined what mentors learn about themselves as mentors. The purpose of the study was to illuminate mentor learning. The article reports on two case studies that investigated the development of mentoring expertise over a two-year period. During this period, the two mentor participants were engaged in a professional development intervention focused on fostering mentoring expertise. Data sources included transcribed professional conversations, interviews and action research documentation. Analysis of these data found that despite good intentions, mentors’ preconceptions of their role were difficult to change. Where substantive change was evident, there was a conceptual shift from a focus on mentee and student learning to include mentor learning. The study suggests that the development of mentor expertise is complex and cannot be assumed. The complexity associated with letting go of deeply ingrained beliefs and practices to develop mentoring expertise is illuminated in the dynamic interaction between the school context, the mentor’s preconceptions and re-conceptualisation of their role along with the on-going assessment of professional learning opportunities.