Uncovering the cultural dynamics in mentoring programs and relationships: enhancing practice and research

Citation

Beverly J. Irby (2015), "Uncovering the cultural dynamics in mentoring programs and relationships: enhancing practice and research", International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 159-164. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-04-2015-0012

Frances K. Kochan, Andrea M. Kent, and André M. Green, editors of Uncovering the Cultural Dynamics in Mentoring Programs and Relationships: Enhancing Practice and Research, have provided a timely, compiled edition on an important aspect of mentoring – that of culture in mentoring. Kochan, the lead editor, a dynamic scholar of mentoring, and an internationally recognized award winner for her personal mentoring of others, indicated that there are multiple purposes of this book:

• “To share information about mentoring programs and practices from a global perspective that researchers may find of value;

• To serve as a resource for those training mentors or mentees to enable them to gain an understanding of the individual, organizational, and societal factors that must be considered in the mentoring process;

• To serve as a textbook for those teaching courses or providing training in mentoring;

• To support individuals who are engaged in mentoring relationships, or wish to create them, to become aware of cultural issues that might support or hinder their success;

• To provide details about programs and practices for those wishing to develop mentoring programs in a variety of cultural settings;

• To support individuals who are engaged in conducting research on mentoring relationships or programs and who are focusing on the cultural aspects of these endeavors; and

• To add to the research based on the topic of the interrelationships between culture and mentoring” (p. xiii).

Most importantly, Kochan, in her introduction to the book, eloquently stated the primary message of the book and that is “that cultural traditions can enrich our lives and that, while we should be aware of and eliminate those that hinder and control people’s minds and hearts in negative ways and limit their ability to succeed and become”; “[…] we should also seek ways to cherish those that connect people, expand ideas, cultivate the imagination, and foster the human spirit, and integrate them into the way we define and implement mentoring programs and relationships” (pp. ix, xiii ).

The three sections of the book, Exploring Culture within Mentoring Relationships, The Impact of Organizational Culture on Mentoring, and The Influence of Societal Culture on Mentoring, contain contributions by 37 authorities on mentoring from ten countries, including 11 states within the USA. The authors are from Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, India, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, and the USA (Alabama, Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington).

Readers of this book not only engage in a culturally relevant experience as they thoughtfully consume the words about mentoring relationships, but are also drawn into a meaningful and authentic link to social justice. Furman (2012) noted that “social justice focuses on the experiences of marginalized groups and inequalities in educational opportunities and outcomes” (p. 194), while Grant and Sleeter (2007) noted a link between social justice and “[…] critical consciousness, and inclusive practices” (p. 116). Critical consciousness is an authentic route to humane interpersonal skills and interconnectedness among individuals, cultures, and societies (Freire, 1970). Inclusive practices take into consideration cultural responsiveness which should avoid practices in mentoring that homogenize people and that do the same for relationships between the mentor and the mentee. The contents of this enlightened book demonstrate the positive, yet complex issues that must be brought forward and resolved in terms of the interplay between culture and mentoring in order to benefit value-added, responsible, and socially just mentoring.

Green, one of the editors of the volume, leads the first section of the book, Exploring Culture within Mentoring Relationships. The chapters in this section provide excellent examples of authentic mentoring relationships within a variety of cultural contexts. In the leading chapter of this section, Unterreiner, De Four-Babb, Kern, and Wu present mentoring relationships from a woman’s perspective within an informal peer mentoring international collaborative. They state, “We have learned what it means to act and to cross the boundaries of our individualized experiences of being a woman faculty to establish an alternative culture of women faculty” (p. 19). In the next chapter, Morreale and Hagenbuch bring focus to the mentoring of disadvantaged students. The authors provide a framework for mentoring, tutoring, coaching, and supporting such students in higher education reminding the reader that, “It is not enough to open through access higher education. We must accept the element of responsibility for those students as a community, so that they can take full advantage of the opportunity of education and the personal and social benefits it can provide” (p. 36). George, in the subsequent chapter, presents how understanding the demographics of mentors in business schools may influence the relationship of the mentor-mentee dyad. She indicates that mentoring relationships may be able to be established between the dyads based on demographic profiles. In the following chapter, Marina discusses the conflicts and complexities surrounding the mentoring of students of color in graduate school. Furthermore, she brings forth mentoring as a spiritual endeavor. She articulates, “Anyone can mentor and possess or attain keen listening skills, foresight, and even empathy, but the cultural connection is not easily duplicated” (p. 73). The final chapter in this section was authored by Reeves, who investigates the concept of cross-cultural mentoring with regard to immigrant mentee participants in an educational mentoring program for entrepreneurs. She explores how the mentor in the dyad was underprepared to manage cultural diversity and personal ethnocentric viewpoints. When she discusses cross-cultural mentoring, she poignantly advises researchers, “It is possible that the mentoring profession may never agree upon a common or delineated use of the term, and the multidisciplinary use of the term does little to provide clarity. For this reason, it is incumbent upon researchers to clearly outline who participants are, where the mentoring is taking place, and to what end” (p. 94).

In the second section of the book, The Impact of Organizational Culture on Mentoring, Kent, as editor, assumes a point of view in which the organization, culture, and mentoring are combined for analyses. I applaud this section since it is certainly a much needed area for research as little has been done before now on the combining of the three concepts – organization, culture, and mentoring. In the first chapter of this section, Bang, Wong, Firestone, and Luft present their investigation of the organization of an online mentoring program in terms of fluidity of interactions and transparency of cultures in school organizations. The authors consider the importance of aligning the cultures of both mentoring programs and school organizations: “Designers of mentoring programs, both electronic and face-to-face, should address potential disparities between the cultures of their programs, and the cultures of the schools involved, in order to intelligently anticipate and mitigate inevitable conflicts” (p. 125). In the next chapter in this section, Reali, Tancredi, and Mizukami provide a view of the cultural dynamics of a professional learning community. They observe that organizational and professional cultural dimensions are critical in successful mentoring activities, and they indicate that mentors in their study “went from a passive position as a recipient of knowledge to apply their learning with their mentees to a proactive stance in which they were engaged with and involved in the creation of theory and the application of practice” (p. 167). Craig, in the third chapter in this section, presents research on a mentoring program that engages probationary teachers in Scotland. She included the use of digital recording in an effort to personalize the relational aspects of mentoring processes. She also situates her research in context of the culture of the organization, and she realizes that mentoring is established within context. She notes, “mentoring programs emerge and take shape from the multiple daily interactions between persons rather than being “abstract,” “material,” “reified”, and “individually” oriented.” (p. 163). In the next chapter, Ambrosetti, Dekkers, and Knight report their research on a collaborative mentoring model in a teacher education program in Australia. They indicate that a “supportive, collaborative culture emerged” in this model for the participants, via socialization and the development of relationships (p. 180). These authors remind readers of how important relationships are in mentoring and how important socialization is and that time to engage in the two is critical. They state, “Mentoring is not value-free, but rather is developed in cultural practices. Building a collaborative culture requires considerable effort and organization to evolve” (p. 180). The final chapter in this section was written by Kilburg. He presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of mentoring programs over an eight-year period and within nine school districts. This study is unique in that it is likely the only published longitudinal study of mentoring teams in schools. In fact, this study is brimming with newly found information that has implications for assisting leaders in establishing mentoring teams in schools. He conveys that there must be collegiality, considerations of power, change, and trust, an understanding of stakeholders’ mindsets of mentoring, and institutional understanding between teaching and learning connections in order to create a culturally proficient mentoring program, and foundationally, he tells leaders they should consider culture as they develop mentoring programs. For example, he says, “[…] those in authority first need to determine how the mentoring culture will fit the existing culture” (p. 201).

The Influence of Societal Culture on Mentoring is the final section of the book and was edited by Kochan. She states that the chapters in this section add to “our understanding of the way in which societal mores can hinder and foster human growth and […] can limit or expand human growth, development, and success” (p. 207). Lunsford and Ochoa lead this section with their chapter on an examination of the societal impact of culture on mentoring programs and on relationships within them. Their work is presented as an investigation of teacher attitudes and ways of knowing in a teacher mentoring network. They take on an ecological perspective in the context of the US/Mexico borderlands. They state that “an ecological systems approach highlighted the need for more activities on border culture at the individual, micro, meso, and ecosystem levels to encourage discussions about borderlands culture in mentoring relationships” (p. 226). In the next chapter, Suh and Dagley focus on US future school counselors and teachers who had participated in mentoring in an international immersion program in Korea. Upon return, the educators became transformative mentors in their schools in terms of international issues. Definitely, such a transformative mentoring model integrated into the international immersion program became a powerful model for change within a community. They aver, “teachers and counselors are exemplary transformative mentors. Few adults in a community can touch so many parts of the community, and affect so many lives on a regular basis as teacher and counselors” (p. 249). These authors suggest that universities alter the name of their study abroad program to a transformative mentoring international immersion program. In the next chapter, Fransson presents a comparison of Finnish and Swedish educational culture and the impact of national mentoring approaches. Fransson demonstrates, in detail, how culturally embedded prerequisites have influenced and shaped the development of different mentoring systems in Finland and Sweden. Noted are the prerequisites such as “how culture influences the concrete conversation between mentor and mentee […]” (p. 254). Mooney Simmie and Moles, in the next chapter, share the impact that a nationally mandated teacher education mentoring program in Ireland had upon teachers’ classroom and school-based practices. They used a sociopolitical lens related to two pedagogical frames of reference. They report that the technocratic power-laden policies in mentoring confine teachers’ thinking and actions and do not move teachers toward creative thinking and collaborative inquiry. They state, “If mentoring in contemporary Ireland is to become more than simply reproducing existing inequalities in education, we need to find ways to conceptualize and communicate mentoring practices that take the sociopolitical perspective into account” (p. 290). In the next chapter, Gerber presents the lack of African values infused into mentoring programs within the nation and stresses that this has lessened the value and importance of formal mentoring programs in Africa. She urges the need to question mentoring activities that foster power differentiations and the following of rules of community and thoughtful reflection. Gerber indicates, “Mentoring is a pivotal tool in African higher education and workplaces since it assists organizational transformation and global competiveness. Mentoring strategies enable organizations to empower employees to add value to their working relationships in ways that do not ordinarily occur in organizational structures between employees and their managers” (p. 305). In the next to the last chapter in this section, Dawood, Konza, and Rolfe focus the reader on the importance of integrating cultural values into mentoring activities. These authors share their research with Aboriginal peoples in Australia and their study of cultural factors that contribute to and hinder Aboriginal success. They also note the cultural issues that must be addressed to assure that mentoring programs and professional development are valuable. They promulgate that, “Mentoring programs for Aboriginal people are not taken lightly. The value they offer can make significant differences in people’s lives and careers and have a ripple effect that spreads the benefits beyond the immediate participant […] Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can mentor Aboriginal people. The effectiveness of mentoring partnerships is enhanced with the awareness and application of cultural influences; and above all, self-determination, respect, relationships, and responsibility are core to supporting Aboriginal people” (pp. 322-323). The final chapter of this section and of the book by Campbell and Palmer is a beautifully crafted narrative about Aboriginal children in Western Australia. In Campbell and Palmers’ words, “This project is partly a story about finding ways to encourage literacy development for Aboriginal young people. Partly it is a story about how to use creative ways to protect and transmit heritage values across generations. It is also a story about how to produce wonderfully beautiful and high quality art and creative products for distribution across a global audience. In addition, it is a rich story of mentoring and the lessons that can be learned about fostering respectful relationships and working with Indigenous communities” (p. 335). This is a most uplifting way to end the text on cultural aspects of mentoring. As these authors state, “It is mentoring at its best” (p. 341).

This book will be a fine resource for researchers, students at the graduate level, or practitioners in the field. The word cloud as shown in Figure 1 demonstrates that this book is about people, cultures, relationships, programs (as organizations), research, practices, understanding, schools (as organizations), students, teachers, mentors, mentees, and, of course, mentoring. The editors did just what they set out to do – compile a book that references culture and mentoring within programs.

There are several ways that this book is set apart from others. First, to my knowledge, this is the inaugural work published in a volume on cultural mentoring. Second, it introduces three concepts together that have not heretofore been widely discussed and researched – that of organization, culture, and mentoring combined. Third, it is a resource for researchers in order to have knowledge of what new lines related to cultural mentoring can be pursued. Fourth, it a vital source for graduate students studying to be culturally responsive in their roles in the workplace. Fifth, it is an excellent manual to guide leaders in workplaces, communities, and schools to incorporate the cultural dynamics of individuals and communities in developing relationships within existing or newly created mentoring programs. Sixth, the structure is facilitated by the section in each chapter noted as Lessons Learned. Seventh, I am reminded from this expansive, international context presented within the cover of this book that there is what I call, Mentor Capital – the professional and personal efficacy derived from the interactions of a dyad of people, particularly when there is mentoring of individuals for professional growth (for more information see Irby, 2015). Mentor Capital has, in economic terms, specific returns on the investment of time of the mentor that is devoted to the mentee and is efficacious for both individuals. I see this book as a mentoring effort on the part of the editors who have invested their time to ensure a high return on the reader’s investment of time – it’s guaranteed.

Figure 1

Word cloud of synthesized book content

About the reviewer

Dr Beverly J. Irby is a Professor and the Chair, Educational Administration Programs, an Associate Department Head of the Department of Educational Administration and Human Resource Development and the Director of the Educational Leadership Research Center in the College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University (a UCEA Member Institution). Dr Irby is also the Editor of Mentoring and Tutoring Journal, Senior Editor of Advancing Women in Leadership Journal, Editor of The Handbook of Educational Theories and Texas State University System Regents’ Professor (Awarded 2009). Dr Beverly J. Irby can be contacted at: beverly.irby@tamu.edu