Vocational Education Commons^™

Nurturing Mentorship Relationships Through Inquiry-Based Dialogue, Rhiannon M. Maton, Kathy Mantas

The SUNY Journal of the Scholarship of Engagement: JoSE

Mentorship is an established practice supporting learning in applied and experiential education. Although scholarship acknowledges that effective mentorship involves both process and relationship (Kwan & Lopez-Real, 2005), little is known about what allows for the development of positive and productive relationships between mentees and their mentors. This essay looks specifically at the mentorship of preservice teachers, and posits that at the heart of developing productive mentorship relationships is inquiry-based dialogue, an interpersonal method of fostering critical reflective dialogue through nurturing, thoughtful, inquisitive and non-hierarchical communication. The authors, who were partnered as mentor-mentee in a preservice teacher in-school immersion experience …