Education Commons^™

Mentorship Modes: Strategies For Influencing Interactive Learners, Brad Gyori

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

In the age of the Internet, students are clamoring for immersive and participatory learning experiences, but how can teachers share autonomy without losing control of their classrooms? In an effort to address this important question, this article suggests three mentorship modes that educators can employ in order to effectively engage with today’s interactive learners. Lecture-based instruction is a single mode form of teaching in which information is disseminated by a lone authority-figure. In contrast, learning-centered mentorship is a three-mode process in which autonomy is shared and authority flows in multiple directions at once: bottom-up (modeling), laterally (collaborating), and top-down (organizing …