Cross-Cultural Mentoring in Tertiary Education: Enhancing Self-Efficacy in Online Teaching Through Collaboration and Openness in Professional Learning

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter re-imagines continuing professional learning and development for tertiary educators through cross-cultural mentoring through the lens of the authors’ experiences with the UNESCO Open Education for a Better World mentoring project. Professional learning occurred while engaging in the actions and processes in this mentoring project, thus improving self-efficacy, as the mentor and mentee collaboratively developed an online, open-access course on ‘Instructional Design’. The authors’ experiences of cross-cultural mentoring are informed by the theory of self-efficacy, thus highlighting mastery experiences, social persuasion, social modelling, and choice processes that impact continued professional learning and development. Framed by research on boundary crossing, the authors share their story of cross-cultural mentoring as an approach for re-visioning open, collaborative, continual, online professional learning and development.KeywordsContinuing professional learning and developmentOnline teachingHigher educationUNESCO open education for a better worldCross-cultural mentoringInstructional design