Section outline

  • Welcome

    to this short, applied course for individual learners, and applicable for mentors or mentees within the Peoples-Praxis capacity building programme. 

    ⏱ 60mins 🧭 Self-paced
    Gain a certificate

    Who it’s for

    Anyone in public health (and allied roles) who is starting or refreshing their mentoring.

    Course aims

    Review the theory of mentorship and to help guide the process. 

    How it works

    • Work through course content online. 
    • Self-paced learning and activities.
    • Post to each forum and download files to receive a Certificate of completion.

    Navigation tips

    • Work through the topics on this page
    • Download resource documents and post to the forums to receive a certificate
    • To check your progress towards course completion and a certificate, view the block on the right hand side of this page

    About the course

    • The course has been developed by Peoples-Praxis, which offers mentorship and online courses for those in public health and related fields
    • The principles and practice of mentorship should be relevant across many professional areas

    Note: if you want to gain a certificate for completing this course, you will have to create an account and log in as a student.

    A quote from The Science of Mentoring Relationships: What Is Mentorship? might be a good way to introduce this course:

    'Over the past two decades, a paradigm shift has led to reframing mentoring relationships as definable, reciprocal, and dynamic. According to this new framing, effective mentoring requires complex skills that can be taught, practiced, and mastered, and it accrues measurable benefits for mentees and mentors. Mentoring relationships are now seen as collaborative processes in which mentees and mentors take part in reciprocal and dynamic activities such as planning, acting, reflecting, questioning, and problem solving.'

    This is backed up by a quote from Ten simple rules for establishing a mentorship programme:

    'Mentoring has traditionally been defined as a method of professional and personal development where a person with expertise in a particular field or area of research (the mentor) advises and guides someone (the mentee) in that particular area or on specific skills. Based on research over the past 20 years, the understanding of mentoring has evolved and it is now seen as a complex, collaborative, interactive process that may include more than 2 people.'
     
    Terminology can be confusing, and there may be overlap between mentoring, supervision, coaching or training. Mentor can be a noun - a person who is a trusted advisor, or a verb - to advise or train someone. A mentee is someone who is advised or trained by someone else - their mentor.
     
    A statement from the Peoples-Praxis website sums up an important approach: 'The Mentoring process should be led by the needs of the mentees. Both mentees and mentors should be committed and willing to make the time for the partnership between them. The relationship is reciprocal, both parties gaining from it and being open minded and ready to change.'
     
    Mentorship need not be confined to a one-on-one relationship, but can include a collaborative group process, as in the quote above. Again in the context of Peoples-Praxis, we see the possibility of mentors guiding a group of mentees through one of the courses on this site.
     

    Ways to navigate the course: Click on the hyperlinks to take you to a set of resources in each section. There is also a place for reflection - you can either reflect on your own, or join the forum to put your views and respond to those of others.

    Note: you can earn a Certificate if you access the resources and post a reflection in each Topic.

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.