Righting rewritings of the myth of Mentor: A critical perspective on career guidance mentoring

Abstract

Mentoring is now a favoured policy initiative in a number of countries, including Britain and North America, both as an element of professional development, and in addressing social exclusion. The former is of direct relevance to teacher education. The latter is a key issue affecting teachers today, as they have to liaise with mentors allocated to pupils and students. Yet the concept of mentoring remains confused. This paper reviews the literature, deconstructing its mythical representations and its celebratory bias. It applies, from a feminist perspective, the dialectical materialist method to the inter-relationships between essence and appearance in mentoring. It identifies four distinct historical stages in its development. These reveal that official concepts of mentoring have shifted from dominant groupings reproducing their own power, to subordinate groupings reproducing their own oppression. The conclusion suggests a research agenda for more detailed empirical investigation of mentoring in the field of teacher education.'Rough Guide' 1 (1) A 'Rough Guide' to the history of mentoring from a marxist feminist perspective HELEN COLLEYABSTRACT Mentoring is now a favoured policy initiative in a number of countries, including Britain and North America, both as an element of professional development, and in addressing social exclusion. The former is of direct relevance to teacher education. The latter is a key issue affecting teachers today, as they have to liaise with mentors allocated to pupils and students. Yet the concept of mentoring remains confused. This paper reviews the literature, deconstructing its mythical representations and its celebratory bias. It applies, from a feminist perspective, the dialectical materialist method to the inter-relationships between essence and appearance in mentoring. It identifies four distinct historical stages in its development. These reveal that official concepts of mentoring have shifted from dominant groupings reproducing their own power, to subordinate groupings reproducing their own oppression. The conclusion suggests a research agenda for more detailed empirical investigation of mentoring in the field of teacher education.

Is there a role for mentoring in Surgical Specialty training?

“…It should be remembered that mentoring is a powerful tool and so has the potential for harm if not used appropriately by sufficiently trained people. Colley's review of the myths around mentoring is a powerful read, looking at issues of feminism, class and social exclusion and some of the potential pitfalls and myths of mentoring (Colley 2001). …”

Where enterprise and equity meet: the rise of mentoring for women in Australian universities

“…This literature mainly gives descriptive accounts of specific programmes and is usually congratulatory or at least supportive of mentoring. There is only a very small critical literature that discusses harmful or problematic mentoring relationships, or the effects of the wider power relations in which mentoring is framed (Colley, 2001(Colley, , 2003. This paper is one contribution towards addressing that gap.…”

Action research for developing social workers' research capacity

“…However, definitions of mentoring are many and varied, and such definitional vagueness results in little clarity about antecedents, outcomes, characteristics, and mediators of mentoring relationships (Jacobi 1991 cited in Hansford, Tennent, and Ehrich 2003, 26). Criticisms of traditional mentoring models tend to be around issues of power (Colley 2001;Darwin 2000) and how institutional goals tend to drive mentoring towards the more controlling end of the spectrum (Gay and Stephenson 1998 cited in Colley 2001; see also Monaghan and Lunt 1992). Darwin (2000, 198) agrees arguing that 'traditionally the mentoring relationship has been framed in a language of paternalism and dependency and stems from a power-dependent hierarchical relationship aimed at maintaining the status quo'.…”