Mentoring in Education

An International Perspective

Cedric Cullingford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317097266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Mentoring has become a hot topic in a number of professional spheres in recent years, but its most important and longest-established location is in education. However, this volume is the first wide-ranging academic critique of the concept and its application. Offering both a critical and a practical stance, the authors examine the historical and cultural aspects of mentoring and the motivations behind it. They also explore the effects on the individuals involved and on the system, and examine the different approaches to the idea and implementation of mentoring. Drawing contributions from Europe, the USA and the Middle East, this work considers a wide range of empirical studies of mentoring from those countries that have invested in it, including case studies and analyses of current practice. The book makes a major contribution, not only on account of the international perspective it provides but also through analysis of cases in order to establish the difference between the much-vaunted theoretical advantages promoted by policy makers and the everyday realities and complexities that arise in a scheme entirely dependent on personal relationships.

Chapter 1
Mentoring as Myth and Reality: Evidence and Ambiguity

Cedric Cullingford

The idea of the mentor is an attractive one. It conjures up the dream of someone showing a special interest, of someone being a personal source of information and of knowing what needs to be done. If the role of the teacher could be described in this way there would be no further interest in mentoring, but we know that teachers are overburdened with delivering the formal curriculum, organising people and materials and without the time to spend with individuals. Although mentors are always an addition to the teacher rather than a replacement, they seem in the climate of the time to be used as a panacea for all kinds of problems.

One reason for the fashion of mentoring is that the mentor appears to be a metaphor that reflects the self-imposed troubles of the time. When we trace the changes to the status and performance of teachers over the past twenty years we see a well-documented shift of emphasis to their professionalism. Certain aspects have been enhanced. These include the self-management of finances, the responsiveness to inspection, the league tables, the standard assessment tests, the targets and the instructions on how and what to teach. The assumption is that teachers ‘deliver’ the prescribed curriculum in ways that are carefully managed and controlled. What is played down is the view of teaching in all the pastoral aspects, the relationships with pupils, the personal nurturing and the autonomy of being able to respond to individual needs. It should be no surprise that it is in this climate that mentoring has come to the fore. Mentoring emphasises all those aspects that teachers used to cherish, and which are now taken on by ancillary workers, classroom assistants and others whilst teachers are re-branded as managers.

The idea of the mentor, therefore, brings out a long established tension. There has always been a debate about the differences between teacher centred and learner centred education. Whilst at the earlier stages of learning the teacher, as the prime source of information and instruction, is assumed to dominate, such a model cannot survive when the learners themselves become autonomous and particularly when they themselves train to be teachers. The concept of learning by precept and example, of being instructed to develop certain practices and fine tune a personal style of delivery, brings in the instructor, the coach, the advisor, and, of course, what we now term the mentor. The attention is no longer on a class full of children but on the individual. No amount of taught lessons, reading, listening and obeying, are thought to be enough in themselves, even if they were for pupils in school. Personal support and instruction take over.

There is a strong tradition on mentoring in teacher education although the nomenclature has been subtly different. Students would have carefully controlled and extended periods of teaching practice (sic) which were monitored and supported by ‘supervisors’. These supervisors were the experts in pedagogy and in the subjects to be taught. They had experience and recognised expertise either of a specialist or a generic nature. Their role was clearly defined, but at the heart there was a clear tension which lies at the heart of mentoring. The supervisors were there to support, to give advice, to demonstrate, to share ideas and to encourage. At the same time their role was to make judgements. Was this student capable of teaching well? Should she pass the teaching practice? Who were the strongest and the weakest students? In the privileged role of observer and supporter, the supervisors also had to make judgements. This could be a delicate matter and demanded extremes of sensitivity and tact. At what point would it be appropriate to warn the student that she had to improve or fail? Would that undermine her confidence entirely? Or would encouragement lead to a false sense of complacency?

This ambiguity of role was accepted as a central part of the precursors of mentoring. It was also seen in the operations of local education authorities in their relationships with established teachers. The advisors were there to raise standards by enhancing good practice. At the same time their duty was to report if schools or teachers were deemed to be unsatisfactory. The advisors were also inspectors and the ambiguity of role was neatly summarised by the way in which different local authorities sometimes called them advisors and sometimes inspectors (Winkley, 1985). On the one hand the advisors were in a confidential position, sharing good practice privately and delicately with teachers who needed help. On the other, the inspectors were reporting and exposing those on whom their judgements fell.

In a time in which formal inspection has become so dominant, the role of the advisor has been removed. The role of the neutral observer is no longer carried out by an outsider but, if it is carried out, by the teachers themselves. The mentoring that takes place nowadays is nearly always a matter of induction, of easing a new entrant into a profession, into the established practices of the work place. The new teacher in school or college is assumed to need mentoring or induction. Again, the fact that it is possible to slip from one concept to another raises the question about ambiguities of the role. ‘Induction’ is the introduction of a new member of staff into the rules, the practices, the culture and habits of the institution. Here the ‘mentors’ are the gatekeepers. The new member of staff has to learn to conform, to fit in to the established practices or s/he will fail. Conformity is clearly important.

The concept of mentoring conjures up support and encouragement for the autonomous individual, of the light touch of advice rather than the heavy hand of induction. And yet mentoring is mostly used by established teachers and experienced professionals to enable someone new to fit in. This is, of course, a very subtle process. C.S.Lewis in the Screwtape Letters gives a good account of the way in which an individual can become caught up in the tone and attitudes of an organisation, gradually learning the assumptions, the shared values and the inner circles of private judgements, and being proud to be part of it, whatever the nature of the organisation. These are called ‘Communities of Practice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991). When they are described and analysed it is clear that success lies in conformity to the shared language and attitudes. The private and arcane habits are what bind people together in the ethos of the organisation, and these are repeated without irony and without any sense that there is any danger in it.

The mentor as the agent of ‘induction’ has a complex role to play, but sometimes the needs of conformity dominate. The best example of this in the wider practices of official schemes is called ‘engagement mentoring’ (Colley, 2002). In the ‘Connexions’ programmes the role of the mentor became increasingly clear. Whilst cajoling and helping individuals, the practice was to control the individual to comply with the requirements of the State, or to ‘reengage disaffected young people in formal labour markets…to engage their commitment to employability’ (Colley, 2003). There was no question of the young people finding alternative ways forward. The duty of the connexions mentor was to create a personal trusting relationship, ostensibly helping the individual, so that he or she would learn to fit in to the requirements of the community and the demands of employability.

This side of mentoring, of controlling, ordering and making a person conform, by giving instruction and advice, has always been with us. There has always been a tension in the role of social workers, or anyone employed by the State to help the poor, the disadvantaged, and the disaffected. They possess the power of the political and constitutional organisations that employ them. And yet they often see themselves as working on behalf of the ‘victim; the victim of the very same State. They try to encourage the individual to extract from the State all that he or she can. It is as if such social workers are employed to attack the very system that they represent (Hoggard, 1970). There are many examples of gamekeepers and poachers finding their ostensibly separate roles actually interdependent.

Such role conflict is less of a problem if the mentor sees the job as one of enabling conformity, of induction into new systems of organisation. Whilst the personal connection with the individual is attractive, the most instructive information is the insight given into the practices of the community. The age old notion of the mentor might have embedded within it something personal, but it has also rested on the notion of power. The mentor is the expert, the person with experience, the patron. Until recently there have always been acceptable notions of control. The mentee would have sought out only those who had greater experience, greater power and greater influence. The original root of the word ‘mentor’ is ‘monitor’: the etymological significance is of ‘counsel’.

Counselling has many associations, from the all powerful legal counsel to the personal unpacker of ones private life when going for counselling. To point out the ambiguities and complexities of the terminology is not playing with words or ideas but exposing the complexities of actual practice. The difficulties of mentoring are real and they derive from the lack of clarity about the role. Stemming from the powerful ’monitor’ are three different experiences, those of the teacher, those of the sage and those of the advisor. Of course roles overlap and positions change, but all these different interpretations of personal positioning are about the central issues of power and control. The sage is deemed all knowing, and the one to whom people deliberately go for help. The sage is chosen, not imposed. The teacher is there to instruct, to direct, to tell, and is inevitably someone met because they are in that role rather than sought out. The advisor is supposedly the expert, used for particular purposes, as a consultant, with a brief. The advice is professional and based on matters of fact rather than conduct.

We acknowledge at once the differences between those people deliberately sought out and those imposed, those who are there to help the individual wherever s/he wishes to go and those who are there to induct them into a community of practice. From the point of view of the mentor, the differences can lie simply in the extent to which the task and the outcomes are clear. Unlike the mentor, the coach has a specific aim, a target that is clear and which is exactly what the individual wants, using the coach clearly as a means. Whilst the coach gives goal directed advice it is the unambiguity of the target, uncomplicated by personal issues, or social pressures, that make it different. There might be all kinds of psychological pressures on the individuals involved, and they might draw on experience, but the task itself is clear and obvious. A trainer is someone who is employed to help focus on a personal target, whether this has athletic or Californian overtones. They are the means to an end. This is partly why the distinction between ‘training’ and ‘education’ is such a sensitive one to those involved in University Education Departments. The choice by the Government of the ‘Teacher Training Agency’ as the sobriquet gave a clear signal of its attitude. The teacher is a functionary who is there to learn and apply clear and measurable skills. The subtlety of personal development and individual sense of purpose, education in the broader sense, is another matter.

This brings us back to the mentor, the metaphor for making up for the deficiencies of mechanistic models, and also of making the same models function more smoothly. There have been a number of typologies of mentoring suggesting a steady progress from the apprenticeship model, copying a good or bad example, through the competency model, a systematic training, to the reflective practitioner model which emphasises the ultimate autonomy of the mentee (Schoen, 1983). Most people’s experience will lead them to question whether there are clear differences and whether the original idea of reflective practice has actually made any progress. No one would question the desirability of thinking on the job, but whilst this was envisaged originally as being freed from academic institutions it is these same institutions that are most keen on promoting reflective practice as an idea (Pollard, 1987).

The mentor almost always has an official purpose and official status and this is where the difficulties lie. At one level the idea of the mentor is to give a more personal, more directed shape to induction. The mentor is the person whose advice is to be sought. The mentor is supposed to be on the side of the individual rather than the institution. No-where is this clearer than in the delicate relationship between a research student and what is still called their supervisor. The best of supervisors are akin to the concept of mentor. They help the student to direct their work and discover what they are searching for. They do not impose a prescriptive methodology. They are there to support and advise, always with comments unique to the case and always consistent in their help.

And yet, there is no question of where the ultimate power lies. The tutors, to use another term, would be of no credibility if they did not have authority, and the accumulated knowledge derived from previous experiences. As in the case of the teaching practice supervisor, the offer of support, encouragement and praise is not enough in itself (even if preferable to the opposite). Advice which is sought out is always of most use, but the advice means something because it carries weight.

In the relationship between research student and supervisor, the crucial point is the locus of control. Who essentially owns the thesis and its ideas? Is the student encouraged to develop the ideas or are ideas thrust upon him? The subtleties of support are more difficult to attain than the imposition of leadership. The crucial point is the attention paid to a student’s encouragement to learn rather than the management of the supervisor’s ideas. The writing of an individual thesis is clearly a learning process that needs encouragement and support. It reminds us of the essential if subtle difference between learning and being taught.

Learning does not necessarily thrive in a system which is ‘top down’ that is centrally directed and controlled. If the social context is not right no amount of managerialist pressures on the performance of staff will see significant improvements (Lupton, 2005). This is why the concept of mentoring has attracted both those who would seek out an antidote to the systems of imposition, and to those who realise they need an extra more subtle weapon for the system’s success. Mentors are those who mitigate the worst effects of the education system and they are also the ones who make sure it works. Mentors are teachers and social workers in disguise, as well as being sucked back into the mainstream.

In the present state of the education system there is a clear difference between the policies, as measured against targets and reported in terms of outcomes, and the messy everyday reality full of complexities. Whole school measures are weighed by those involved against the individual cases of personal need, triumph and despair. There is a whole unofficial sub-culture of working practices that illustrates what is called ‘underground working’. A long term funded project called Transforming Cultures in Further Education found that Further Education Tutors survive and do a good job but ‘only by doing things for and with students that they are not officially supposed to be doing’ (Wahlberg et al, 2005). Thus the system survives despite itself. Is this what mentoring is about?

One of the remarkable facets of the recent flurry of mentorship projects is how far they have spread. Whilst mentoring became significant in education at the time when Universities were disenfranchised and schools took over the main authority of training students and making judgments on them, the real impetus to the idea derived from Business and Community mentoring, in the ‘world of work’. The initiative was based on having Industry and commerce far more involved and influential in schooling. Given the shortages of time, mentoring seemed to be an answer. As in the Excellence in Cities initiative, learning mentors were appointed and everywhere found to be beneficial, especially if those involved had their personal characteristics deliberately matched (Beddowes-Jones, 2002). Peer mentoring, or buddying, not unlike the nineteenth century Lancasterian model in schools, has been heavily promoted. But no-where was mentoring so heavily endorsed as in the Connexions service which was to transform completely all the various responsibilities of social workers and which has subsequently been abolished. It is this initiative that highlights the tensions of mentors who are acting for clients ostensibly against the State and who are responsible for meeting their official targets. The selling line of mentoring here was typically to stress the stereotype of feminine caring and concern, but the reality was of gate keeping and preserving power (Colley, 2002).

Support and Assessment make uncomfortable bed-fellows. In those roles in which people feel most comfortable there is no feeling of having to make judgements or being responsible for the outcome. There is no doubt that many mentors feel uncomfortable and unsure, a fact that is corroborated by all the empirical research, but the fact is mostly hidden. That this is suppressed is itself a telling insight into the personal feelings of accountability and the sense that to confess to difficulties is akin to accepting blame.

The role of the mentor is not just complex but emotional. Mentors take the success or failure of their mentees personally (Bullough and Draper, 2004). They want to be liked and respected. They want to be appreciated. And yet all the research into the attitudes and feelings of mentors reveal that they feel isolated and undervalued. Whilst they often enter the role with interest and enthusiasm they soon find that they are caught up in responsibilities and demands that they were not expecting. Even those who did not have mentoring thrust upon them realised that they were subtly being held accountable.

Many schools and many colleges do their best to make systems of mentoring work. There are numerable case studies which show why and how the idea was taken up and which are written up as if such schemes were the answer to innumerable problems. But when one reads between the lines and when one puts aside the insight that mentors are propping up the existing practices or limiting the damage, it is clear that the personal costs are high. This can best be summarised in one case study which came to the conclusion that the mentoring system only worked on certain conditions. These were when the mentees had the following attributes:

• They used procedures

• They appreciated the mentor

• They were good at listening

• They were willing to ask for help

• They were willing to act on advice

• They could recognise their own mistakes

• They could reflect on their experience

• They were good with interpersonal skills

If these were the prerequisites for the mentee, what more could one need? What about those who did not fulfil this condition, those who needed mentoring or some intervention programme? Here we have a description of the perfect student in any circumstances, willing to learn and able to interact with others. One imagines that mentors are necessary because such perfect students are so rare.

Fortunately from the mentoring point of view, the ‘perfect student’ can also be a condition. Or, to put it another way, the student can be transformed by perfect conditions. Without pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Mentoring as Myth and Reality: Evidence and Ambiguity
• Chapter 2 A Decade of Change? Mentor Groups Acting as Communities of Learners
• Chapter 3 A Status Report on Teacher Mentoring Programmes in the United States
• Chapter 4 The Balancing Act of Mentoring: Mediating between Newcomers and Communities of Practice
• Chapter 5 Introducing Mentoring Systems in a Centrally Controlled State: A Case Study
• Chapter 6 Mentoring in the Induction System of Five Countries: A Sum Greater Than Its Parts
• Chapter 7 Learning Mentorship in the Primary School
• Chapter 8 ‘Sitting with Nellie’? Subject Knowledge and the Role of the Mentor
• Chapter 9 Mentoring in the Academic World
• Chapter 10 Mentoring New Academic Staff in Higher Education
• Chapter 11 Mentoring On-line: Rethinking the Tutor/Student Experience
• Chapter 12 Afterword
• Name index
• Subject index