Mentor Training: Trainer Manual

This training package includes three training modules – Program Assessment, Mentor Recruitment, and Match/Retention of best practices

Ensuring quality in online career mentoring

This article explores the issue of quality in online career mentoring. It builds on a previous evaluation of Brightside, an online mentoring system in the UK which is primarily aimed at supporting young people's transitions to further learning. The article notes that participants in Brightside's mentoring programmes reported satisfaction with their experiences, with many stating that it helped them to make decisions and to positively change their learning and career behaviours. However, the article argues that there are challenges in ensuring quality and consistency connected to both the voluntary nature of mentoring and the online mode. The article proposes a 10-point quality framework to support quality assurance, initial training and professional development for online mentors

The social and emotional dimensions of schooling : a case study in challenging the ‘barriers to learning’

The educational landscape in England and Wales is shaped by demands made on head teachers, teachers and pupils to perform within a ‘field of judgement’ dominated by clearly defined outcomes of academic success (Ball 2003). This puts schools from challenging socio-economic contexts where there are potentially ‘barriers to learning’ at a considerable disadvantage. This paper draws on case study data from an English secondary school in an area of considerable deprivation. The empirical focus revolves around school participants’ perceptions and understandings of the social and emotional dimensions of schooling. The emphasis on the relational and emotional work undertaken by teaching staff underpins the case study school’s approach to challenging the barriers to learning. A number of themes and concerns are reported in this paper including relational work in school which extends into the community, the school as a sprawling network of communication and the heighted role of the emotions at a number of levels in school. In drawing on interview data from teachers, school managers, pupils and parents we are developing a model of schooling that approximates to Fielding’s (2006) conception of a ‘people oriented learning community’

Peer Mentoring and the First Year Experience

The transition from secondary level learning to independent study can be difficult to negotiate and many students also experience emotional pressures as they adjust to a busy social environment at college (McAleavy, Collins and Adamson 2004 ; O’Reilly 2008). Many third level institutions are exploring ways to improve the first year experience and one such approach that has gained increasing interest in recent years is the provision of peer mentoring. This paper outlines and evaluates a pilot peer mentoring programme that was conducted with first year business students (n = 112) from three separate courses at a third level institution in Dublin, Ireland. Three first year groups were chosen for participation in this study due to on-going low levels of engagement and high levels of attrition. A novel 360o approach was formulated, whereby students where provided support by mentors, lecturers and support staff. In order to measure the efficacy of the programme, feedback was elicited from participants and key academic variables (GPA and attrition rate) for participants and a matched sample that did not receive coaching were also compared. Results revealed that GPA increased significantly for one of the three student groups involved and that the attrition rate decreased significantly for one of the three groups

"Teaching #BlackLivesMatter: Countering the Pedagogies of Anti-Black Racism, A Collaborative, Crowd-Sourced Syllabus"

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: “Teaching #BlackLivesMatter” was an event organized by the Mentoring Future Faculty of Color group at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, that explored “how to address racialization and state power as scholar-teachers, working at the level of both immediately executable plans for teaching/research, and longer term strategies for making the academy accountable to racial violence.” In order to extend this conversation to as many voices as possible, the organizers set up an open syllabus using Google Docs. Contributors are invited to share resources, activities, discussion questions, and assignments related to teaching anti-racism. The use of simple technology helped advance the group’s objectives for the event and enabled it to reach a wider audience. This syllabus includes many activities, assignments, and readings that anyone can use in the classroom. It also provides a model for creating a collaborative syllabus, something educators may wish to try in their own classes

Public sector mentoring scheme: exploring the development and delivery of mentoring programmes through a multi-stakeholder perspective

Power Point presentation on Public Sector Developmental Mentoring Scheme given at the 19th Annual Mentoring and Coaching Conference, 2012