Knowledge Construction and Personal Relationship: Insights About a UK University Mentoring and Coaching Service

This article examines interview data from 12 mentors/coaches and eight of their clients in order to explore a mentoring and coaching service among UK university staff. Both mentors/coaches and clients were administrative or academic employees of the Institute of Education or affiliated colleges at London University, UK. Their roles related to the administration for, or leadership of, teaching programs as well as educational research and consultancy projects pursued by the institute. The mentors/coaches in this service aimed to construct or co‐construct knowledge with their clients rather than to transmit advice to them. The author explores the learning of mentors/coaches and clients, conceptualizing their “co‐construction” of knowledge as either collaborative construction or as participation. She examines the link between the construction of knowledge and personal relationship, considering the personal relationship both of mentor/coach with clients, and among mentors/coaches themselves. Additionally, the author draws on the divide between functional and personal. She concludes by considering implications from the findings about mentoring and coaching. Emphasized is their potential to play a subversive role within the established functional systems of an institution, if mentoring and coaching prioritize personal relationship.