Informal Mentoring Research Articles

The relationship among inner meaning of work, protean career, subjective career success

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among inner meaning of work, Protean career and subjective career success. More specially, This study investigated not only the influence of inner meaning of work on subjective career success that is mediated by protean career but also the moderating effect of career-supported mentoring on the relationship between protean career and subjective career success. To perform this study, online survey was conducted by korean employees who were working in various organization and received formal or informal mentoring. Data gathered from 191 employees were used for analyses. The results showed that inner meaning of work had positive effects on protean career as well as subjective career success. Also, protean career partially mediated the relationship between inner meaning of work and subjective career success. Career-supported mentoring moderated the relationship between protean career and subjective career success. The implications and limitations of this study and the directions for future research were discussed.

Perceptions and experiences of a gender gap at a Canadian research institute and potential strategies to mitigate this gap: a sequential mixed-methods study.

The gender gap in academia is long-standing. Failure to ensure that our academic faculty reflect our student pool and national population deprives Canada of talent. We explored the gender distribution and perceptions of the gender gap at a Canadian university-affiliated, hospital-based research institute. We completed a sequential mixed-methods study. In phase 1, we used the research institute's registry of scientists (1999-2014) and estimated overall prevalence of a gender gap and the gap with respect to job description (e.g., associate v. full-time) and research discipline. In phase 2, we conducted qualitative interviews to provide context for phase 1 data. Both purposive and snowball sampling were used for recruitment. The institute included 30.1% (n = 62) women and 69.9% (n = 144) men, indicating a 39.8% gender gap. Most full-time scientists (60.3%, n = 70) were clinicians; there were 54.2% more male than female clinician scientists. Ninety-five percent of basic scientists were men, indicating a 90.5% gap. Seven key themes emerged from 21 interviews, including perceived impact of the gender gap, factors perceived to influence the gap, recruitment trends, presence of institutional support, mentorship and suggestions to mitigate the gap. Several factors were postulated to contribute to the gender gap, including unconscious bias in hiring. A substantial gender gap exists within this research institute. Participants identified strategies to address this gap, such as establishing transparent search processes, providing opportunities for informal networking and mentorship of female scientists and establishing institutional support for work-life balance.

Content Analysis of a Facebook Group as a Form of Mentoring for EFL Teachers

Mentoring, a main constituent of teacher education, has taken new shape in recent years, with educators incorporating technology and social media into their practices. This study investigated the use of a Facebook group as a form of informal mentoring among teachers with reference to qualitative and quantitative data collected from the entries, responses and comments of group members. Findings included a list of mentoring topics along with the number of comments and words for each entry. In this way, we were able to analyse quantitatively the contents of each mentoring topic and provide as qualitative evidence clear examples from member comments and exchanges. The findings revealed that EFL teachers shared experiences and knowledge on various topics such as pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, content knowledge, resources and career development.

The relationship among Inner meaning of work, Protean Career, Subjective career success: The moderating effect of Career-supported mentoring

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among inner meaning of work, Protean career and subjective career success. More specially, This study investigated not only the influence of inner meaning of work on subjective career success that is mediated by protean career but also the moderating effect of career-supported mentoring on the relationship between protean career and subjective career success. To perform this study, online survey was conducted by korean employees who were working in various organization and received formal or informal mentoring. Data gathered from 191 employees were used for analyses. The results showed that inner meaning of work had positive effects on protean career as well as subjective career success. Also, protean career partially mediated the relationship between inner meaning of work and subjective career success. Career-supported mentoring moderated the relationship between protean career and subjective career success. The implications and limitations of this study and the directions for future research were discussed.

Community leadership and engagement after the mix: The transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park

The CAD$1 billion transformation of Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood from Canada’s largest public housing site to a mixed income community is likely to inform the next several decades of public housing redevelopment policy both nationally and internationally. This paper focuses on the process and impacts of large-scale redevelopment, in the context of attempts to build a physically and socially inclusive neighbourhood incorporating non-market and market housing in downtown Toronto. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 32 Regent Park community leaders and other key decision makers, the paper explores how resident engagement and leadership development opportunities impact redevelopment processes in mixed income initiatives. Results focus on three key emerging areas of both strength and concern: (1) efforts to build community alongside the redevelopment as an integral, evolving and place-specific strategy; (2) the impacts and challenges of both a strong institutional environment in Regent Park and a sense of weak institutional memory; and (3) formal and informal leadership and mentorship opportunities and their contribution towards the development of engagement and cohesion in Regent Park. The opportunity for low-income housing initiatives to support knowledge building and learning, preservation of institutional memory and local leadership development is significant in the context of examining physical and social redevelopment.

Digital liaisons virtual uncommons: Connecting information and people in order to enhance lives via digital librarianship

ABSTRACTDigital librarianship is a rich space in which new practitioners often find their feet on the job, picking up needed skill sets and adapting to new technologies on the fly. Creating a space for peer information sharing and mentorship is particularly important for this community. Virtual chat sessions and unconferences are two innovative ways to connect established practitioners with less experienced students and professionals in supportive, collaborative environments. By combining these two formats, it is possible to create a more inclusive space for mentorship and peer information sharing. We propose hosting a virtual uncommons that transcends geographical locations and other physical barriers. The digital liaisons virtual uncommons (DLVU) will feature leaders in digital libraries who will act in a mentoring capacity by responding to questions posed by new information professionals throughout a series of virtual chat sessions and an in‐person unconference session. In the DLVU, students and early career professionals will be able to connect with peers and mentors in the field of digital librarianship. The virtual uncommons will be a space for informal mentoring and serendipitous networking. This session will be composed of a series of Twitter chats under the hashtag #SIGDLchats and a reflective panel structured as an attendee driven unconference in which panelists serve as moderators.

Women mentoring in the academe: a faculty cross-racial and cross-cultural experience

Two women faculty members, one White from the southeastern United States and one Black African from Zimbabwe, purposefully explored their informal mentoring relationship with the goal of illuminating the complexities associated with their cross-racial, cross-cultural experience. Concentrating on their four-year mentor-mentee academic relationship at a predominantly White institution (PWI), these women employed a dialogic duoethnographic methodology to uncover emerging, nuanced characteristics contributing to the positive nature of their mentoring experience. Calling upon a seminal nine-function mentoring framework focused on advancing mentee personal growth and professional advancement, the authors, engaged in critical interplay of dialogic considerations of their mentoring experiences, relationship, and literature. The authors revealed a distinct cross-cultural and cross-racial journey where each, as participant researcher, uncovered a deeper appreciation for the importance of engaged dialog. Emerging is a complex interplay of understandings about trust, care, and power dynamics as factors in defining mentoring relationships that work for good.

Benefits of Mentoring Programs for Child Welfare Workers: A Systematic Review

ABSTRACTWith the growing awareness of the need for effective child welfare workforce retention interventions, this review systematically evaluates the ways in which child welfare workers benefit from both formal and informal workforce mentoring programs. Of the 136 documents identified, six met inclusion criteria for the study. Although synthesis of the data demonstrated a lack of consistency across studies, results of varied statistical analysis presented evidence that mentoring programs result in positive personal and career benefits to child welfare workers. These results are relevant to practitioners and administrators who are interested in retaining a competent and stable workforce through effective interventions.

Developing and Sustaining Effective Faculty Mentoring Programs

How do faculty and universities benefit from mentoring, and what sorts of mentoring programs and policies are most effective? This article reviews existing research on mentoring in higher education and develops a conceptual framework that captures a theory of change regarding expectations about the impact of mentoring on faculty career development and scholarly productivity. We surveyed faculty in U. S. public affairs programs to learn about individual and institutional experiences with mentoring and mentoring programs. We found that informal mentoring is prevalent, as are formal mentoring programs. In line with previous research, we found that both mentees and mentors believe that mentoring is useful for helping mentees with teaching, research, and career planning and that visible support for mentoring is important for its success. Guided by our findings, we offer recommendations for developing and sustaining effective faculty mentoring programs.

Sharing knowledge and power in adult amateur choral communities: The impact of communal learning on the experience of musical participation

Abstract This article is based on the findings of a qualitative investigation of factors influencing confidence levels amongst adult amateur choral singers. The research aims were: to explore the lived experience of choral singers; to examine the main influences on their perceptions of their voices and performance ability; to identify factors affecting their confidence as singers; to extrapolate strategies designed to manage confidence issues amongst amateur choral singers. Three focus groups, involving eighteen singers in total, and sixteen individual interviews were carried out, providing over 40 hours of recorded verbal data. Peer interactions were widely reported as having a positive effect upon perceived performance quality, the enjoyment of the choral experience and confidence levels amongst participants. Trust and rapport, musical and moral support, encouragement and validation, peer modelling and informal mentoring all emerged as important aspects of singer to singer interaction in choral rehearsal and performance.

Corrigendum

The Reading TeacherVolume 70, Issue 3 p. 351-351 CorrigendumFree Access Corrigendum This article corrects the following: Free Play or Tight Spaces? Mapping Participatory Literacies in Apps Jennifer Rowsell, Karen Wohlwend, Volume 70Issue 2The Reading Teacher pages: 197-205 First Published online: May 21, 2016 First published: 17 October 2016 https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1545AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat The authors of “Free Play or Tight Spaces? Mapping Participatory Literacies in Apps” in volume 70, issue 2, of The Reading Teacher regret that Jenkins (2009) was not correctly cited and quoted in the final proofs of the article's Connected subsection. The corrected text and the corresponding reference appear below. Connected Apps have connectivity if they link users to digital resources and to sharing on social networks. Participatory literacies are rooted in notions of connected learning, where users not only link to and navigate websites but also learn to participate in online cultures on vast digital networks that host affinity groups (Gee, 2003), in fan communities, or on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. These connections are expected to be reciprocal—members expect that when they post content to these sites, others will respond, comment, like, or follow. Jenkins (2009) defined a participatory culture as a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced members pass along knowledge to novices. In a participatory culture, members also believe their contributions matter and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least, members care about others’ opinions of what they have created). (p. xi) References Jenkins, H. (with Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A.J.). (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Volume70, Issue3November/December 2016Pages 351-351 ReferencesRelatedInformation

The learning and mentoring experiences of Paralympic coaches

BackgroundParticipation in the Paralympic Games has grown substantially, yet the same growth and development has not occurred with empirical literature for coaching in disability sport. ObjectiveThe purpose of the current study was to explore Paralympic coaches' perceptions of their learning and educational experiences, including their formal and informal mentoring opportunities. MethodsSix highly successful and experienced Paralympic coaches were individually interviewed in this qualitative study. The interview data were analyzed following Braun and Clarke's guidelines for thematic analysis. ResultsResults demonstrated that Paralympic coaches faced several challenges to acquire disability specific coaching knowledge and skills. These challenges led the participants to utilize an array of informal learning situations, such as actively seeking mentoring relationships when they first entered the field. After becoming expert coaches, they gave back to their sport by making mentoring opportunities available for aspiring coaches. ConclusionThe results of the current study address the value and importance of mentoring as a structured source of education and career development for aspiring Paralympic coaches.

Coworkers' Perspectives on Mentoring Relationships.

Research into workplace mentoring is primarily focused on the experiences and perceptions of individuals involved in the relationship, while there is scarcely any research focusing on the impact of mentoring relationships on their social environment. This exploratory research aims to give insight into how coworkers’ perceptions and experiences of informal mentoring relationships in their workgroup are related to their perceptions of workgroup functioning. The results of 21 semistructured interviews show that coworkers believe that mentoring relationships affect their workgroup’s functioning by influencing both their workgroup’s performance and climate. Coworkers applied an instrumental perspective and described how they think that mentoring relationships both improve and hinder their workgroup’s performance as they influence the individual functioning of mentor and protégé, the workgroup’s efficiency, and organizational outcomes. Furthermore, coworkers applied a relational perspective and described how mentoring relationships may influence their workgroup’s climate in primarily negative ways as they may be perceived as a subgroup, cause feelings of distrust and envy, and are associated with power issues. The results of this study emphasize the importance of studying mentoring relationships in their broader organizational context and set the groundwork for future research on mentoring relationships in workgroups.

Striving for a way out from a rock and a hard place

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to understand the dilemmas facing Hong Kong vice-principals in discharging their roles and to further explore their engagement in informal mentoring as a coping mechanism in the absence of a structured professional development program.Design/methodology/approach– The qualitative study was conducted in the form of in-depth face-to-face, loosely structured individual interviews with ten informants from a variety of personal and school backgrounds, contributing to a set of data that unveiled the basic themes.Findings– Three dilemmas facing Hong Kong vice-principals were identified: juggling administrative work with teaching, standing by management or siding with peer teachers, and forced innovation vs omnipresent conservatism. The findings also suggested that the informants tended toward external resources intentionally with a view to gaining emotional support as well as professional stimulation. They also engaged in informal mentoring, which took the form of observing principals’ behaviors, joining support groups organized by school governing bodies, and enrolling in academic programs offered by universities and/or professional bodies, as a way to resolve the dilemmas.Research limitations/implications– Informal mentoring has been identified as an effective approach for Hong Kong vice-principals to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to overcome workplace challenges and the feelings of loneliness experienced upon changing their role. The findings point to the importance of formalizing mentoring in vice-principal development programs.Originality/value– This study is the first of its kind to explore the impact of informal mentoring on vice-principals in Hong Kong where both dual-career track systems and a structured mentoring programs are missing.

Mentoring Relationship Quality Profiles and Their Association With Urban, Low-Income Youth’s Academic Outcomes

This study aimed to (a) identify mentoring quality profiles based on characteristics of informal mentoring relationships, (b) examine how mentor and youth demographic characteristics were related to the profiles, and (c) investigate whether the profiles were related to youth’s academic outcomes. Participants were 411 ninth-grade urban, low-income students. Mentors were comprised of older siblings, extended family members, and non-familial adults. Using cluster analysis, we identified two mentoring quality relationship profiles: (a) less close and growth oriented and (b) closer and more growth oriented. Boys were more likely to have less close and growth-oriented relationship profiles or to be in the non-mentored group compared with girls. Univariate tests showed differences among relationship profile groups and non-mentored groups on intrinsic motivation, educational aspirations and expectations, perceived economic benefits, and limitations of education and grade point average (GPA). The study reveals the importance of taking a within-group, person-centered approach when examining mentoring relationships.

Developing Quality Improvement capacity and capability across the Children in Fife partnership

A Project Manager from the Fife Early Years Collaborative facilitated a large-scale Quality Improvement (herein QI) project to build organisational capacity and capability across the Children in Fife partnership through...

Mentoring and Informal Learning as Continuing Professional Education

This chapter examines the role of mentoring in continuing professional education from a critical perspective, addressing informal and formal mentoring relationships while highlighting their potential to encourage critical reflection, learning, and coconstruction of knowledge.

What Makes Informal Mentorship in the Medical Realm Effective?

Informal mentoring is based on a natural match between a junior individual and a senior one who share mutual interests. It usually aids in the professional and personal development of both parties involved. We reviewed the literature regarding factors that make informal mentoring effective within the medical realm, by searching a major academic search engine, Web of Knowledge, for the term “informal mentor*”. Our main research questions concerned the factors that lead to a successful informal mentorship process. A salient finding arising is that the success of informal mentorships hinges on the communication skills of mentor and protégé, their level of commitment, and the chemistry between the partakers. Good informal mentorships impose requirements on both mentors and protégés and rest on shared expectations.

“A Circular Council of People With Equal Ideas”

Mentoring in music education programs is such a ubiquitous part of the process; it is sometimes overlooked or subsumed under other categories. The purpose of this article is to highlight mentoring relationships within an undergraduate music teacher education program. Formal, informal, vertical, and horizontal mentoring are examined from the perspectives of undergraduate preservice music teachers working in a community-university partnership. The data are culled from a 14 month, intrinsic case study of the University of South Carolina String Project, designed to examine the participant experience for all member groups within the string project—the undergraduate preservice teachers, the community students, and the faculty. Mentoring relationships are explored as a critical component of experience for the preservice teachers. Their voices are presented here to illustrate the value they placed on mentoring, as well as the challenges that emerged in construction of a mentoring mosaic as part of their preservice teaching experience.

Peer relationships and mentoring between LIS doctoral students: A qualitative approach

Despite the critical role of peers in the socialization of doctoral students, relatively few researchers have studied types of peer relationships and information exchanged between doctoral students. This study aims to explore doctoral students’ perceptions of their peer relationships and informal peer mentoring within a library and information science program. The authors applied Kram and Isabella’s peer relationship framework developed in organizational settings to examine peer relationship types of library and information science doctoral students. Interviews with 12 doctoral students reveal the existence of cohort, social/academic peer, and other peer groups, which can be mapped onto Kram and Isabella’s continuum of peer relationships, categorized as special, collegial, and information peers; however, this framework suffers from a limitation in explaining dysfunctional peer relationships identified in the study. In regard to differences between peer relationships and peer mentoring, respondents tend to perceive mentoring as a developmental function that takes place in peer relationships. Moreover, the authors propose five types of information exchanged between doctoral students, which are (a) basic, (b) administrative, (c) professional, (d) social, and (e) personal information, and they suggest that peer relationships influence the topical diversity and degree of disclosure in information exchange.