Flexibility as a Seventh Assumption in Knowles’ Andragogy: Strategies for Online Doctoral Teaching and Mentoring

ABSTRACTThe increase in online graduate programs and the online mentoring of student research have led to the need to identify challenges faced by online mentees and successful strategies used by online mentors during the dissertation process. Based on semistructured interviews with ten graduates, strategies for online mentoring and areas of support valued by online doctoral students during the dissertation process are presented in this article.

AimsThe (ICHG) started a new mentorship scheme for students and professionals with an interest and a passion for global child health. Mentors are paired with mentees around the world aiming...

The implementation of distance - online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak prompted an online student internship in the Higher Education Institutions. This required an adjusted mentoring strategy suited to the training needs of the student interns amidst the academic shift. This study explored online mentoring through the lenses of the 11 student interns. The student interns' participation was based on purposive sampling and the number of participants was determined based on data saturation. This study utilized Husserlian phenomenology as a design and Colaizzi method in analyzing the data. Significant statements from the narratives were extracted and coded, and themes were formulated. The online mentoring as presented in themes includes communicating vision, putting an online system in place, adjusting online strategies, employing effective problem-solving methods, creating a strong virtual support, and transforming the student interns. These themes were utilized in creating the transformative online mentoring model. It was found out that effective online mentoring requires improved strategies that need to be implemented to ensure quality internship and pre-service education. It was recommended that teacher education programs must prepare pre-service teachers with digital and virtual skills prior to their student internship.

The implementation of distance - online learning during the COVID-19 outbreak prompted an online student internship in the Higher Education Institutions. This required an adjusted mentoring strategy suited to the training needs of the student interns amidst the academic shift. This study explored online mentoring through the lenses of the 11 student interns. The student interns' participation was based on purposive sampling and the number of participants was determined based on data saturation. This study utilized Husserlian phenomenology as a design and Colaizzi method in analyzing the data. Significant statements from the narratives were extracted and coded, and themes were formulated. The online mentoring as presented in themes includes communicating vision, putting an online system in place, adjusting online strategies, employing effective problem-solving methods, creating a strong virtual support, and transforming the student interns. These themes were utilized in creating the transformative online mentoring model. It was found out that effective online mentoring requires improved strategies that need to be implemented to ensure quality internship and pre-service education. It was recommended that teacher education programs must prepare pre-service teachers with digital and virtual skills prior to their student internship.

Since the U.S. recession, restructuring of the economy highlighted the growth of contingent workforces that provide flexibility, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness in organizations. Academe with limited resources increased reliance on contingent faculty (also known as part-time and adjunct faculty) for teaching. Contingent faculties who teach online for colleges and universities have received little attention in terms of their needs and interests. This article focuses on these invisible and voiceless faculties and presents a meta-synthesis of research that addressed contingent online faculty and mentoring strategies and programs.

This study investigates the impact of mentoring as a teaching strategy toward students’ speaking skill. The participants of this study were 24 students of English Education Study Program in a private university in Yogyakarta. A mixed-method was used in the study. The instruments to obtain the data were test and interview. The quantitative analysis revealed an improvement in students’ test score, while qualitative data from interviews provided insights into students’ perceptions and experiences with mentoring. The result shows an improvement on the speaking skills in the mean score from 2.77 to 3.18. It indicates that mentoring strategy positively impacted students’ speaking skill, particularly on the aspect of accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary. The interview also resulted in positive perception of the students in increasing students’ confidence and critical thinking.

Fundamental for mentoring a preservice teacher is the mentor’s articulation of pedagogical knowledge, which in this research draws upon specific practices, viz.: planning, timetabling lessons, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, questioning, classroom management, implementation, assessment and viewpoints for teaching. Mentoring is haphazard; consequently, mentors need a pedagogical knowledge framework and a repertoire of pedagogical knowledge strategies to guide a preservice teacher’s development. Yet, what are strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices? This qualitative research investigates mentoring strategies assigned to pedagogical knowledge from 27 experienced mentor teachers. Findings showed that there were multiple strategies that can be linked to specific pedagogical knowledge practices. For example, mentoring strategies associated with planning for teaching can include co-planning, verbally reflecting on planning with the mentee and showing examples of the mentor teacher’s planning (e.g. teacher’s plans, school plans, district and state plans). This article provides a bank of practical strategies for mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices to assist a preservice teacher’s development.

This study aims to develop and implement coaching and mentoring strategies for teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogy using GROW model in Jose Panganiban National High School. It measures teachers’ performance in terms of applying knowledge within and across curriculum teaching areas, using a range of teaching strategies that enhance learner achievement in literacy and numeracy skills, and ensuring the positive use of ICT to facilitate the teaching and learning process, before and after the implementation of coaching and mentoring using the GROW model. It identifies coaching and mentoring strategies to be designed and implemented for the content knowledge and pedagogy of teachers; determines the significant difference between teachers’ performance before and after the implementation of coaching and mentoring; gauges the level of effectiveness of the coaching and mentoring strategies in terms of goal setting, reflection, feedback and support, action planning; determines the challenges encountered; and designs an intervention to improve the proposed coaching and mentoring strategies. Using qualitative and quantitative-experimental design, the study involved eight proficient teachers with no more five years of teaching experience who served as mentees, and eight highly proficient teachers as mentors. The study reveals a significant difference between the teachers’ performance before and after mentoring and coaching. Findings further show that that coaching and mentoring using GROW model is extremely effective in terms of goal-setting, reflection, feedback and support, and action planning. Lack of time was deemed to be a challenge commonly encountered by the respondents. To fill the gaps, the researcher proposes an intervention called Project COACH: Collaborative Opportunities for Advancing Classroom Teaching Horizons aiming to provide continuous support and assistance to all proficient teachers and promote the use of GROW model in coaching and mentoring.

This paper summarises a research-intervention in a setting of vocational education and training (VET), where mentoring schemes for faculty managers are changed by participants themselves. Participants comprise mentees, who are faculty managers in VET, and their mentors, who are more experienced colleagues in the same institution. Informed by Marx’s conception of dialectical contradictions, with a theoretical framework of Cultural and Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), and using a Change Laboratory methodology, participants envision, negotiate, and enact change to mentoring activity. In this study, technology enhanced learning (TEL) is of interest to participants in two interrelated domains of work and learning: TEL describes their own development, including the mentoring schemes examined in this paper; and TEL describes the pedagogical development of faculty and students in VET, the development of which is their managerial responsibility. By collaboratively exposing and aggravating contradictions in their past, present and future activity, participants recognise local dilemmas as manifestations of contradictions in mentoring. The paper examines how they trace primary contradictions of use versus exchange value: a tension in capitalist economies, between inherent worth and exchange as a commodity. Double stimulation tasks enable these participants to collaboratively expose, model and call upon contradictions to enact change. The changes to mentoring activity are modest yet expansive for mentors and mentees, indicating the developmental potential of primary contradictions: countering the pretence of managerial consensus in mentoring relationships; challenging business-focused outcomes of mentoring schemes; and confronting top-down coercion during mentor-mentee interactions.Keywords: Activity theory; Change Laboratory; mentoring; primary contradiction; TEL; TVETPart of the special issue Activity theory in technology enhanced learning research <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.cbaae672>

This survey research study analyzed responses from 143 mentors from around the world participating in a global higher education initiative. Results confirmed the effectiveness of four mentoring domains identified in the literature, reporting the most success from providing emotional and psychological support for students. This article provides mentoring strategies including student goal setting, identifies characteristics of an online role model, and shows the importance of online mentors’ confidence in students gaining technology skills. The study has additionally contributed to the literature supporting (a) benefits of online mentoring for nontraditional students, (b) influence of technology on mentoring challenges, and (c) role assumption in online mentoring. Additionally, the study provided a literature review of the background of online mentoring and mentoring practices, the benefits and challenges of online mentoring, and lessons learned from research. This work presents a comprehensive understanding of online mentoring, providing support for mentors seeking to improve their performance as well as recommendations for creating mentoring programs to improve organizations.

The Lived Experience of Being a Male Nursing Student: Implications for Student Retention and Success.

This study explores STEM faculty mentors’ use of multicontext teaching and mentoring strategies to increase underrepresented minority (URM) STEM participation through a guided research program at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). Results of narrative research show most faculty mentors in the program engaged in high-context learning activities, and they value the program for the intrinsic satisfaction of mentoring underrepresented students, their commitment to increasing minority participation in STEM, and the mutually beneficial research collaborations. Examples of high context strategies employed included real-world experiences, hands-on experiences, and multi-academic learning styles—allowing faculty and students to make more connections in the learning process.

An independent evaluation of E-College Wales was carried out in spring 2003, to assess and consider the vision of e-learning within the University of Glamorgan from the viewpoint of students and staff. One of the main findings from this evaluation was the need for an enhanced support framework that satisfied the needs of the student. Many students articulated the need for a mentoring system, designed to support first year students. This research paper will therefore evaluate the implementation of a peer assisted online mentoring scheme (PAL – Online), highlighting a gap in the current literature concerning student support in relation to e-learning and establishes a need for further investigation into how mentoring schemes such as PAL – Online can enhance the e-learning experience for both student and teacher.

PurposeThe author's purpose is to identify and analyze the progress of proposals and dissertations after mentor–mentee relationships rapidly transitioned to intensive online doctoral mentoring as a result of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19).Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory pedagogic research design was implemented in 2020 to examine the COVID-19 Dyadic Online Mentoring Intervention, a four-month individualized approach to mentorship. A survey was completed by mentees in an educational leadership cohort that revealed the benefits and drawbacks of technology for learning within online doctoral mentoring contexts. Additional sources of data were published literature, mentor's notes, email exchanges, and scholarly enrichment products.FindingsData analysis yielded three themes: (1) mentoring strategies were utilized; (2) the pandemic unsettled reality and (3) personal professional development opportunities were evident. Although life challenges were exacerbated by the pandemic, the online doctoral mentoring intervention met dissertation-related needs and supported academic progress in a Doctorate in Education degree program.Practical implicationsTechnology-mediated mentoring during crises involves more than modality changes. Faculty mentors should not be solely responsible for mitigating program and dissertation disruption. Academic cultures must support the adoption of pedagogic innovations like high-quality online doctoral mentoring.Originality/valueOnline doctoral mentoring structures utilizing synchronous and asynchronous technologies can help mentees make academic progress in a crisis, not only in “normal” times.

This pedagogical case focuses on the online mentoring of educational leadership doctoral candidates in a protracted crisis. Relevant theories and problems of practice in doctoral education are reviewed. The COVID-19 Dyadic Online Mentoring Intervention was a faculty mentor’s dyadic mentoring initiative for guiding 19 mentees’ social justice-oriented dissertations. Beneficiaries’ responses spanning 2020 to 2021 indicated that effective academic mentoring, progress, and success resulted from 10 online strategies they identified. The research-based support strategies and six-step intervention suggest positive impacts with electronically delivered mentoring that is culturally responsive. Takeaways and possibilities for university leadership faculties, doctoral students, and institutions are included.