Mentorship

In a higher education setting, a mentor promotes “critical thinking, the capacity for empathy, the power to take diverse perspectives, and the will to take positive action in a tentative world” (Parks Daloz, 452). They are guides on a student’s educational journey. Mentors should be focused on the development of the learner, aligning themselves with the goals of the student they serve. As learners enter a new educational environment, mentors can serve as “interpreters of that environment’ (453).

In supporting the students they serve, mentors help the student find their inner voice, provide a structure to guide the learning journey and encourage and validate the learner. Mentors also challenge their students by setting tasks that will force the student to stretch, by providing an alternative perspective to inform a student’s views and by helping students identify the underlying assumptions that may be clouding their thinking.

Application: NDSU Extension Service arranges a mentorship for new county agents and educators. I think this effort lacks the rigor Parks Daloz implies is needed for successful mentorship.

It’s difficult to think of examples outside of the workplace or college setting. In these environments the mentorship is often limited in length. A college student’s educational journey ends at graduation and in the workplace formal mentorships often end after a year or two as a new employee finds their bearings.

Rather than mentorship, I’d like to explore the use of stewardship. Stewards are peers that play many of the same roles that mentors do without the unequal power dynamic that comes with a mentor who is a faculty or staff member. Stewardship also suggests an open-ended relationship that does not end with graduation or successful orientation, but instead goes on as long as both parties want it to. In stewardship, it’s important that each steward also has their own steward. It helps stewards better understand their role and to empathize with the person they are stewarding.

Assessment: Folio (Nicholson, 2004, pp. 321-337)

I think a folio, described by Nicholson as a collection of all the evidence of learning, is one of the only assessments that can work for mentorship or stewardship because to presents learning as an ongoing journey. This perspective helps learners to see their experience as something more than a series of experience punctuated by an endpoint like graduation or achieving business “success.”

References

Nicholson, Barbara L. (2004). Course Portfolio. In Michael W. Galbraith (Eds.), Adult Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction (3^rd Ed.) (321-340). Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company

Parks Daloz, Laurent A. (2004). Mentorship. In Michael W. Galbraith (Eds.), Adult Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction (3^rd Ed.) (405-423). Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company.