Building Relationships in Mentoring

Building Relationships in Mentoring
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Introduction
The term “mentoring” refers to a component of professional discourse related to initial teacher education (ITE); the concept refers to the services of a senior teacher as a consultant to guide students in their practical teaching practices. A teaching mentor is an experienced and seasoned teacher who provides teaching students an opportunity to work in the field along with him so that he can guide them in methods to accomplish their goals (Pachler & Field, 2001). Hence, a mentor endeavors to provide support, training, and education to students and assess their performance. However, the traditional concept of mentorship has focused on developing a relationship between a novice and a trainer between the teaching students and mentors; this relationship falls into the apprenticeship model of mentoring (Pachler & Field, 2001). This traditional model does not provide equal learning opportunities for teaching students based on equality and partnership.
Building better relationships with mentees and professionals in the field has been a great challenge for a mentor willing to supervise teaching students. Improved relationship between them is imperative to enhance the output of teaching training. Better mentoring relationships facilitate the development of professional and personal affinities between trainee and trainer staff (Hobson et al., 2009). In the same way, one can accomplish better collaboration between mentor and mentee and a more joyful learning and training experience. Building relationships on these grounds also encourages even senior teachers to participate in mentoring and enrich the novice teacher with their key insight (Hobson et al., 2009). Therefore, for an effective mentorship, one has to find ways to develop better relationships with teaching students and colleagues working at the workplace and outside.
New research and improvisation in the domain of mentorship have developed a new mode of mentorship, which facilitates building better relationships between mentors and teaching students. This model is called the convergent role of mentor and teaching student, which is based on the principle of co-tutoring; this model discourages differentiation of responsibilities and promotes better working and learning relationships (Pachler & Field, 2001). This model also substantiates the notion that reshaping relationships between mentors, mentees, and other relevant professionals is the need of time. Therefore, the current discussion provides an in-depth understanding of the challenges a mentor faces in developing a better relationship; it also aims to find different modes of mentorship that can improve these relationships. Finally, it explores various benefits a stronger and equal relationship between mentor and mentee can offer both participants.
Discussion
Problems Associated with Poor Mentoring Relationships
As the introduction indicates, mentoring involves observation of peers and seniors of mentees to assess and guide them for improvement in their professional performance. In this regard, a technique called Peer Observation Technique (POT) is a unique methodology that aims to improve the outcome of mentorship (Karagiorgi, 2012). This technique involves using a senior or peer teacher to observe the class performance of a fellow teacher or teaching student; POT facilitates the mentee to get positive and constructive feedback from peers, which improves his professional performance (Karagiorgi, 2012). Hence, POT is a useful technique to enhance a mentor's and mentee's professional relationship.
Based on experts’ opinions, POT provides multiple options to develop healthy professional and personal relationships in various contexts. For instance, for providing opportunities to acclimatize to a new environment for new teachers, POT can offer a critical opportunity for professional reflection (Karagiorgi, 2012). This technique can also provide job-embedded activity to on-the-job teachers as they gain significant professional skills after getting feedback from seniors acting as mentors (Karagiorgi, 2012). Due to its effectiveness in providing opportunities for professional development, POT has gained the attention of scholars, and this trend is indicated by an increase in the number of publications on POT in recent years.
Scholarly studies have identified a unique and directly proportional relationship between POT and the development of professional practice in teaching students. In this regard, one scholar comments that peer observation is a powerful vehicle that improves teaching students’ professional capabilities as peer response imparts confidence in novice teachers and transforms their professional perspective (Karagiorgi, 2012). Based on these positive aspects, experts regard POT as a hallmark of change in teaching perception as it promotes the courage to challenge the accepted outdated norms and wisdom (Karagiorgi, 2012). These features of POT make it one of the best platforms for developing an effective mentor-mentee relationship.
Although POT offers a unique opportunity to build professional and healthy relationships for both mentee and mentor, its implementation does not produce the desired result. This trend reflects one aspect of a mentor's problems while building a healthy relationship with peers and mentees. In this regard, the finding of one study threw sufficient light on the issue; according to the findings, the study was conducted in Cyprus and involved seven primary teachers taking part in POT using informal exchange of expertise and casual visits to classrooms (Karagiorgi, 2012). The interviews revealed that despite applying POT, the teacher failed to develop better relationships with peers since they practiced superficial observation and lacked in-depth collegial reflection (Karagiorgi, 2012). This study highlights one aspect of the challenges associated with building relationships in mentorship.
The role of contextual factors in complicating the relationship between mentor and mentee is instrumental; therefore, to understand the challenges associated with developing a mentoring relationship, one must delve deeply into it. One of the key challenges associated with building better relationships is the lack of non-contact time availability to mentors and mentees. As a result, both fail to prepare for playing the role of a mentor and a mentee, respectively (Hobson et al., 2009). This dimension of mentorship critically deteriorates the development of a cordial and professional bond between mentor and mentee, and the resulting defective relationship mars the purpose of mentorship.
In many cases, mentors emphasize external demands and goals, such as wanting their mentee to stick to a prescriptive methodology and criterion for their teaching practices. In these cases, the mentors find it difficult to develop an amicable and productive relationship with the mentee (Hobson et al., 2009). The demand for adherence to a strict teaching criterion puts undue professional stress on the teaching students and limits opportunities to learn out-of-the-box teaching methods through non-formal interaction with their mentor (Hobson et al., 2009). This problem is most commonly observed during the mentorship involving senior teachers and teaching students.
Looking at the issue of building relationships between mentors and mentees at a professional level, one finds that a lack of healthy relationships may also affect the mentor’s professional performance. In this regard, the findings of one study provide a real-life example of the problem; this study used interviews of 10 mentors involved in the mentorship of novice teachers in North-East USA (Hobson et al., 2009). The study revealed that the mentorship experience did not improve the mentors’ professional capacity regarding changes in their thinking or practice since they were not involved with their mentees in a healthy and non-professional relationship (Hobson et al., 2009). This finding exposes another drawback of not maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship between mentors and mentees.
When mentors develop a healthy and non-professional relationship with teaching students outside the classroom, this blending provides novice teachers a stimulus to advance in their careers. The findings of some studies indicate that in many cases, mentors do not address the psychological and emotional well-being of their mentees; this loophole in their relationship generates a negative impact on the mentee's professional development (Hobson et al., 2009). In other cases, some associate teachers, while mentoring the teaching students, go very hard on them and dissuade them from adopting a teaching career instead of promoting their confidence and courage. To illustrate, observation of a pre-service education program in Canada revealed that mentors gave the teaching students a tough workload, which caused excessive anxiety in teaching students (Hobson et al., 2009). This finding verifies that building a good relationship is necessary for maximum output from mentorship.
Some mentors remain very conservative during their mentorship as they do not let the mentees show their true potential; for this purpose, they develop an authoritarian relationship with their mentees. Accordingly, in this kind of relationship, the mentor does not provide sufficient autonomy to the mentee; as a result, the defective relationship leads to the lesser professional development of mentees, and they suffer from a lack of self-confidence (Hobson et al., 2009). Therefore, building a strong and positive relationship demands providing greater professional autonomy to teaching students so that they practice their innovative ideas in the field and develop remarkable professional capacity.
A study conducted in England to assess the impact of overprotective mentorship on primary-phase teachers offers much to contemplate regarding the effectiveness of a good relationship between mentor and mentee. According to the findings, mentors prefer to assign “low-risk” activities to their mentees since they have developed an interest in the mentees, which may add to the professional achievements of the mentors (Hobson et al., 2009). This relationship between the mentee and mentor produces insufficient professional skills as the mentee never gets to develop professional skills in a challenging environment (Lee & Feng, 2007). This example exposes the negative impact of developing too many personal relationships with a mentee, harming their professional growth.
One crucial aspect of the mentor-mentee relationship is that it sometimes becomes too technical and professional, and such a form of communication neglects the other useful aspects of teacher training. In this regard, one study posits that in some cases, the mentor only focuses on developing a relationship with the mentee based on technical rationality, such as classroom management, craft knowledge, and mentees’ teaching of subject content (Lee & Feng, 2007). Hence, in developing such purely technical relationship, they tend to overlook the promotion of reflective practices in teaching. This also discourages teaching students from assessing the principles working behind a teaching practice. Furthermore, such a relationship also avoids developing the capacity to address the issue of social justice and social reforms (Lee & Feng, 2007). This aspect of the mentor-mentee relationship negatively serves the purpose of mentorship.
These negative aspects of developing poor relationships between mentor and mentees result in negative outcomes, mainly teacher trainees’ withdrawal from the teaching practices. Such kind of mentorship results in teacher attrition as a friendly mentor's absence of psychological, emotional, and social support compels trainees to withdraw from the profession (Hobson et al., 2009). Using a restrictive range of mentorship results in the development of restricted professional capabilities in graduating teachers on various fronts (Hobson et al., 2009). As a result, the trainee teachers learn only how to practice conventional teaching norms and ethics and fail to develop their innovation.
Trainee teachers’ burnout is another negative outcome of the ineffective relationship between the mentor and the mentee; since the teaching students do not get the emotional and psychological support from mentors’ entirely professional attitude, they develop a negative perception of teaching (Bressman et al., 2018). In this way, the students of these teachers are more than likely to get uninspired teaching. Scholars have identified various effects that ineffective mentor-mentee relationship creates on young learners; one is thinking of teaching as an overwhelming task, and the other is taking classroom management as daunting (Bressman et al., 2018). These negative aspects of developing ineffective relationships lead to increased dropouts of young teaching graduates.
The cold and unemotional behavior displayed by the mentor during the mentorship compels the trainee teachers to feel more isolated; as a result, they feel isolated and helpless in their classrooms. The lack of emotional bond between the mentor and mentee also forces trainee teachers to feel that mentoring is insufficient to cater to their needs; consequently, they feel discouraged and leave the field (Bressman et al., 2018). Hence, based on these negative aspects of teaching, one can infer that developing or building healthy and positive relationships is an intrinsic requirement for effective mentoring. In mentoring trainee teachers, the role of a strong interpersonal relationship assumes further importance, as trainee teachers will be less likely to develop emotional teaching capabilities if they are denied strong interpersonal relationships at the training level.
Positive Prospects for Building Effective Relationships in Mentorship
Developing an effective and healthy relationship is an utmost requirement for a mentor as it positively impacts teaching students’ professional development and teaching practices. A willing and positive mentor allows the development and progress of a healthy collaborative teaching and learning experience for teaching students; as a result, the trainees become more confident in their teaching practices (Pachler & Field, 2001). After getting emotional and psychological support from mentors, trainee teachers develop effective communication skills; besides, they become more apt in using teaching resources such as cassette and video players, visual aids, overhead projectors, and computers (Pachler & Field, 2001). Without getting enough positive feedback and support from their mentors, teachers find it challenging to show confident teaching practices in the classroom.
With the help of advice, suggestions, demonstrations, and support from their mentors, trainee teachers can develop their teaching skills, which are otherwise hard to acquire. One of these skills is confident, fluent, and effective movement during class; another is effective voice modulation according to the situation and topic of discussion (Pachler & Field, 2001). This positive relationship between mentor and mentee instills self-confidence in teaching students, and they find it easy to use various innovative approaches to enrich their teaching methodology (Pachler & Field, 2001). In this way, building positive relationships with mentees makes them confident, professionally skilled, and innovative teachers.
In the initial stages of mentorship of teaching students, the mentor’s role remains limited to the realm of an advisor and supervisor of teaching students. However, as the collaboration matures, a strong need to develop deeper and stronger relationships arises and the mentor has to change his relationship with mentees and make them more proactive (Pachler & Field, 2001). For instance, while working as a mentor, a subject specialist must develop and promote his relationship with the teaching students by becoming more personal to their life and profession. In this way, the mentor modulates his relationship to promote proficiency in the subject knowledge (Pachler & Field, 2001). If he adopts only a professional attitude to improve mentees’ subject expertise, he cannot accomplish his goal.
An in-depth and multidimensional relationship between a mentor and teachi...