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The purpose of this paper is to describe a qualitative action research study into the collective experiences of establishing a mentoring culture within a research triad consisting of a university professor together with a doctoral student and a master's level student who served as research assistants (RAs). This paper documents a process of ongoing reflection, which was used to gain insight about the personal selves, the professional selves, the role of being a RA, and concepts, ideas, and frameworks that might be useful in fulfilling the work inside and outside of the collaborative research project.

A Faculty of Education within a Canadian university provided the context for the study. A large-scale, pan-Canadian document analysis research project served as the context for mentorship activities. The Adaptive Mentorship© model (Ralph and Walker, 2010) was the tool used to document and analyze experiences of working on the research project. Completion of individual mentoring session reflections, as recommended by the Adaptive Mentorship© model, provided a means for documenting the process and experiences within the triad.

Findings indicated that the enhancement of working environment and the professional growth of all three members of the research triad were primarily achieved as a result of the commitment to collaborative mentoring for the duration of this project rather than as a direct result of application of the model. Nonetheless, the application of the Adaptive Mentorship© model within the research project triad proved to be a valuable tool for supporting the social competence-based and experiential needs.

In the context of this study, collaborative mentoring led to professional growth and an enhancement of the working environment due to multiple contact-points and exposures to specific tasks or skill-sets. The establishment of the mentoring culture and continued identification of individual needs within the triad allowed for adaptive support, appropriate skills development, and an increase in confidence necessary for both students to be successful in their RA positions and in turn, successfully support the university professor to complete the project. The experience suggests that the Adaptive Mentorship© model, if further refined, could be applied to graduate RAships with multiple participants, increasing the potential to enhance research experiences through its focus on one or several specific tasks or skill-sets around which the work is organized.

The purpose of this paper is to review and highlight key findings, themes and ideas from selected published academic papers on mentoring in education, with a specific focus on how mentoring can foster the professional learning and development of educators at all stages of their professional development.

The author conducted a literature review of all the papers published in the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, from Volume 1, Issue 1 (2012) to Volume 4, Issue 4 (2015), that contained the word “mentoring” in either the title, abstract and/or keywords and with a discussion of mentoring in the main text. In total, 37 papers were analysed in order to create a meta-synthesis of the primary findings.

The findings present factors that foster mentoring success or failure. The purposes and components of mentoring programmes are diverse and contextually bound. Additionally, there is a tendency to view mentoring as a developmental relationship in which the mentor shares knowledge and expertise to support the mentee’s learning and professional development.

As this meta-synthesis literature review is focussed on articles published in a single journal on mentoring, it has limited scope. However, the range of countries in which the authors of the reviewed empirical studies reside (13 countries), and the diversity of papers included in this review allowed the author to summarize and synthesize unique information for researchers and practitioners who are seeking to understand the process, outcomes and issues related to mentoring for the professional development of educators.

The review provides information for those seeking to study and implement mentoring programmes. It focusses on mentoring for professional development of educators, identifies primary concepts in the literature reviewed and highlights new research areas in mentoring in education.

This literature review discusses mentoring definitions from 37 different papers and contributes important knowledge to produce a picture of the intricacy of mentoring. Complex issues linked with mentoring are addressed, generating a critical systematization of mentoring research likely to have a lasting influence in the field.

This chapter offers an original conceptualization of co-mentoring – situated in the wider literature – together with evidence of its impact and factors facilitating impact across applications of co-mentoring in transnational schooling contexts. Co-mentoring is an alternative to more traditional, hierarchical, and unidirectional approaches to mentoring in education. Extending the extant literature on collaborative mentoring (or “comentoring”), co-mentoring is a collaborative, compassionate, and developmental relationship – informed by specific approaches to mentoring and coaching – that is intended to support participants' professional learning, development, effectiveness, and well-being, and potentially improve their workplace cultures. Detailing three different applications of co-mentoring across the United Kingdom and United States, the chapter evidences the realization of these intended outcomes (professional learning, etc.), and highlights factors found to be instrumental in facilitating the positive impacts of co-mentoring. We end with recommendations for undertaking research and practice that build human and organizational capacity through co-mentoring. A takeaway is that intentional approaches to co-mentoring can have value for participating parties and broader impact, as well as wide applicability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes of a formal university mentorship program that paired junior and senior (third and fourth year) undergraduate student mentees with mentors from industry. Specifically, the researchers examined the effects of mentorship on mentees’ psychological sense of community at the university, and job search self-efficacy (confidence).

The researchers used a mixed-methods design that incorporated survey data and qualitative data from interviews and focus groups. Where relevant, mentees were compared to a control group of students who did not participate in the mentorship program.

The results demonstrate that the mentees accrued several benefits from participating in the mentorship program. For mentees (but not the control group), job search self-efficacy increased over time as a result of participating in the program. Mentees valued receiving practical career-related support such as opportunities for networking, resume development and job interviewing skills. Mentees also gained a more realistic view about the workplace and their potential career options, and received important psychosocial support from their mentor.

Results suggest that junior and senior undergraduate student mentees gained professional and career-related benefits including increased job search self-efficacy from participation in a mentorship program that paired them with mentors from industry. In addition, the qualitative results indicate that mentees reported psychosocial benefits including an increased sense of connection to the university. Altogether, results indicate that undergraduate students experience positive outcomes from participating in mentorship programs designed to prepare them for the transition from university to the workplace.

In 2016, the National Standards for School-based Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Mentors were published in England. The purpose of this paper is to critique these standards through a comparison of how others have framed and defined the role of the mentor, drawing on equivalent standards already published in nursing (2008) and social work (2012).

An analysis of three sets of professional standards was conducted by adapting the “constant comparison” approach in which the researchers sought to combine a form of inductive coding with comparison across the texts. This enabled the identification of a number of common themes and omissions across the three sets of standards.

The analysis revealed the ITT mentor standards provide a comparatively limited account of the role of the mentor, particularly in relation to the process of assessment, the power dynamics between mentors and student teachers, and the school as an institutional site for professional learning.

The study’s originality lies in the inter-professional comparative analysis, which revealed a number of potentially contentious issues not immediately apparent from a close textual analysis of the ITT mentor standards.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins of a co-constructed peer-mentoring model designed by and for early-career faculty representing historically underrepresented groups in the field of educational leadership. The model, which includes components of the multicultural feminist model of mentoring, pays specific attention to early-career faculty development and well-being and outlines the need for and benefits of peer-mentoring programs.

This qualitative study details the experiences of the development and implementation of a peer-mentoring program based on a review of literature that points out the need to provide mentoring opportunities for early-career educational leadership faculty, from historically underrepresented populations, and further posits peer-mentoring as an avenue to enhance faculty development and well-being.

Faculty representing historically underrepresented groups often experience challenges related to their identities, alongside the general pressures of working toward tenure. Peer-mentoring groups provide support with which to navigate these challenges. Peer-mentor groups are a supplement to other professional groups and interactions within departments and institutions.

The model has implications of being able to prepare institutional leaders to work toward institutionalizing mentoring programs that take into consideration invisible labor while promoting professional growth and personal wellness, thereby increasing the satisfaction and retention of faculty.

This peer-mentoring model can be used as a tool to leverage collective support, rather than emphasize individual success. As a support vehicle, it can foster a cultural change within the field of educational leadership that supports collaboration over competition.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the operating factors influencing a cross-organisational mentoring initiative created to support leadership development. The research provides insight on participants’ views and mentoring practices around planning and preparation of mentoring relationships, to inform future training of leaders.

The research is inductive in nature, using an exploratory approach via a two-stage qualitative analysis. The qualitative data were gathered via interviews with the initiative partners and questionnaires distributed to all mentors and mentees involved. Data were gathered at the outset of the initiative and one year later.

Emergent themes revealed that centrally driven criterion-based matching was deemed effective, with skills and experience of mentors perceived as more important than seniority. Support from senior management was of paramount importance at all stages. Clear personal and professional objective setting was vital at the outset of the mentoring relationship; however, a degree of fluidity in direction occurred over time. Planned periodic meetings to share experiences, aid reflection and gather feedback from individual mentors and mentees groups was requested. Finally, while the mentees should drive the process, it was recognised that mentors may be required to take the lead initially.

It is recognised that wider generalisations are limited; the initiative would require replication with a number of different participants to increase validity. However, as the research is exploratory in nature, there is value in the initial research findings with potential for replication within other organisations and for other cross-organisational mentoring initiatives.

The research provides a number of useful themes which practitioners could use to explore the creation of a cross-organisational mentoring scheme and provides benchmarking indicators for this.

This is an innovative approach to leadership training that can be seen in the limited literature and theory related to cross-organisational mentoring as a leadership training tool that the design team, a partnership of HR academics and HRD professionals, were able to access.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extant literature with regard to the role of mentorship in promoting the well-being of early career teachers.

This paper was comprised of a review of the current literature. Key terms were used to identify initial sources. The search was narrowed further by using the Boolean operator AND to link key terms.

Much of the literature exploring mentorship and induction focuses on the formal structures and the targeted learning outcomes of the processes. However, the emotional and personal support afforded new teachers through the development of relationships with mentors is being recognized as contributing high value to the continued retention efforts. Although there are promising practices with regard to induction programs and formal mentorship arrangements in some schools, these practices are very scattered and may not even be equally well established within one school district.

Implementation of models that are focused on personal and professional support of new teachers could provide an avenue of research examining teachers’ perceptions of well-being and resiliency. Longitudinal, pan-provincial and pan-national research is necessary for developing more support for systemic implementation of mentorship models.

While there is research identifying existing programs and induction models, this paper uses the lens of early career teacher well-being to point out promising practices and additional considerations for adopting a holistic approach to mentorship. This mentorship model may result in better personal and professional outcomes for new teachers.