Mentoring Process
Learning of Expertise
Mentoring process as part of the course learning of expertise
Students will participate in the process of mentoring for the spring period as they will be working as mentees in their 1st year of studies and as mentors in their 2nd year of studies.
Mentoring takes place in collaboration, and each student has a lot of responsibility: this is a very self-directive process, requires active participation, collaboration and learning!
Mentoring is an old practice, but still important. The interest in mentoring as a learning process and a possibility for growth in the business life, and education sector seems to be growing.
As experts in learning, you will need to not only know the research of mentoring, but acquire skills on how to actually implement a mentoring process successfully
Conceptualizing mentoring
”--- ongoing personal and professional development that can lead to fundamental changes in values, in skills knowledge and understanding.” (Fletcher, 2012)
Enquiry process, where mentee and mentor are engaged in studying educational practice and ongoing professional development potentially comes out.
§Usually takes place in work context, including apprenticeship model
§Mentoring relationship has a major impact upon the mentoring process (Asada, 2012)
Usually in complex contexts
-Teach skills and facilitate new learning experiences
-Introduce novices to your colleagues who can provide new professional challenges and opportunities
-Help novices deal with the uncertainty: give confidence while carefully monitor their actions
-Help novices to make decisions
-Co-enquiry / collaboration: eg., participatory action research approach, address problems together
Mentoring
Fluid, interpersonal process in which both participants are active (interactive)
Reciprocal teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984)
Never look same in the different situations
Is not a technique that can be applied same way
Scaffolding strategies
(van de Pol, Volman, Beishuizen, 2010)
Competencies of mentors
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
ability to understand yourself and your strengths, highly self-regulative (cognitive, emotional, motivational), goal-oriented, aware of personal learning, ability to work with different people
STRATEGIC VISION
ability to identify key trends in external environment, able to focus on goals
RISK-TAKING AND CREATIVITY
able to identify creative responces to challenges and can tolerate ambiquity and chaos.
COMMUNICATION
ability to nurture partnership that is mutual and equal, great communicator and active listener; nurture team performance and give the lifelong gift of confidence
INSPIRATION
Change-agents, positive and constructive tone
(see, Dracup, 2004)
From novice to expert and master
(Chi, 2006, adapted from Hoffman, 1998; Dreyfus, 1980)
Earlier research
For succesfull mentoring process mentors should offer challenges for novices, and provide rich and reciprocal interaction. Instead of replicating exciting practices new knowledge and practices should create together. (Asada, 2012)
Novices understand concepts in superficial level and see knowledge as a static object. Experts (mentors) should focus their mentoring on using knowledge flexibly, intentional actions and ability to predict (be proactive). Understanding central concepts and ability to put them into practice is important for development. (Meyer, 2004)
Novice-expert consultation meetings are opportunities for novices to acquire useful information and create new knowledge. Increasing the experts’ problem understanding appears to be a key task for novices to ensure successful consultation.
Experts and novices had different roles, but they both contributed to the discussions
Importance of common grounding!!
(Deken, F. Kleinsmann, M., Aurisiccio,M., Lauche, K., & Bracewell, R., 2012)
Take into consideration the learning sciences:
Collaborative learning in mentoring and shared expertise
Creative collaboration
Goal-oriented and self-regulative (shared regulation) process
Intrest, motivation and engagement
Karen Russell
MENTORING PLAN
27.1.2015 14.30.-18.00.
24.2.2015 14.30.-18.00.
31.3.2015 14.30.-18.00.
14.4.2015 14.30.-18.00.
28.4.2015 14.30.-18.00.How to plan the mentoring process
1. Background for the mentoring
What is the context? Why does mentoring take place?
For whom is this done and what for?
Assess, explain and justify the need
Notice that the need must be agreed with the mentees
2. Aims and objectives of the mentoring process
àName and explain clearly the main goal and sub goals for the process
Notice, that this is important to do in collaboration with the first year students
3. Pedagogical design of the process
What is the theoretical background, which learning theories can be connected to it?
àHow is educational technology connected to this process?
4. Implementation and the timetable
Explain the procedures that you will use to reach your goals
How do you plan to implement the process?
Define your challenges and prepare for the risks
Schedule your implementation: outline the process piece by piece and define a sub goal and deadline for each piece
5. Resources
Define the literature and other references you will use, use of each member of the group, and technology resources you may need
Remember also time resourcing and management
6. Monitoring and Evaluation of the Process
How do you plan to monitor and evaluate your work?
For further information and documentation
The entire process should be documented in the wiki.
Teachers
Pirkko Hyvönen (Phd, Adjunct Professor, Post-doctoral Research Fellow)
Aino-Maaria Palosaari (MA, coordinator)