Résumé de section

  • In the Introduction to this course we quoted from a chapter by the National Academy of Sciences from The Science of Mentoring Relationships: What Is Mentorship?. The chapter is an important read, and identifies the two main features - psychosocial support and career development support:

    'Mentorship is a professional, working alliance in which individuals work together over time to support the personal and professional growth, development, and success of the relational partners through the provision of career and psychosocial support.'

    This table from the chapter lists the various mentorship functions - when you read the chapter itself you will see that the table also list the source of each of the functions:

    Support Functions

    Related Behaviors and Activities

    Psychosocial Support

    Psychological and emotional support

    Mentor encourages mentees, helps with problem solving, and uses active-listening techniques.

    Role modeling

    Mentor serves as a guide for mentees' behavior, values, and attitudes. Mentees benefit from engaging with mentor who shares values and deep-level similarity with them. Allows mentees to see themselves as future academics.

    Career (Instrumental) Support

    Career guidance

    Mentor provides support for assessing and choosing an academic and career path by evaluating mentees' strengths, weaknesses, interests, and abilities. Mentor's role includes

    • helping mentees reflect and think critically about goals;

    • facilitating mentees' reflection on and exploration of their interests, abilities, beliefs, and ideas;

    • reviewing mentees' progress toward goals;

    • challenging mentees' decisions or avoidance of decisions; and

    • helping mentees to realize their professional aspirations.

    Skill development

    Mentor educates, evaluates, and challenges mentees academically and professionally; tutors or provides training; and focuses on subject learning.

    Sponsorship

    Mentor publicly acknowledges the achievements of mentees and advocates for mentees.

    The chapter also lists a variety of mentoring relationships:

    'Mentoring relationships can occur in formal, structured, and intentional settings or as informal, organically developed relationships—sometimes structured, sometimes not—that a mentee develops with a more experienced individual with whom the mentee has regular contact (Inzer and Crawford, 2005). Mentoring relationship structures can include the following:

    • A single mentor working with a single mentee in a classic dyadic relationship
    • A group of mentors sharing their collective wisdom with one mentee
    • One mentor working with multiple mentees
    • Peer and near-peer mentoring structures
    • Online peer communities
    • Programmatic mentoring
    • Mentoring experiences delivered through carefully constructed short-term seminars, workshops, or presentations'
    For those with an interest in the theory of mentorship, there is more information in the chapter. However, for now, this sets the scene for further discussion of how to be a good mentor, and how to est up a mentorship programme.


    • Reflection on the science of mentoring Forum
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      Please reflect on the information in this section on the science of mentoring. Which aspect do you recognise as relevant to your personal interest in mentoring?