Zooming Into Mentor-Mentee Relationship to Explore Mentoring Strategies
Motivated by the need to develop a clearer picture of mentoring, this chapter aims to zoom into the pivotal role of the “relationship” aspect in ensuring effective mentoring and what the good mentor attributes are. The chapter includes the short narrations of both the mentors and the mentees who were engaged in a pre-service teacher training course. Four mentors and four mentees have been asked to narrate their positive as well as any less positive experiences with their mentors/mentees during the course. As a result, both mentor and mentee “voices” were used as a stimulus for identifying effective mentoring strategies. The chapter ultimately aims to make noteworthy implications for enlarging our understanding of how mentoring might be most effectively used in teacher professional development ventures and how the relationship aspect might be useful in selecting the most effective mentors in different teacher education contexts.