Editorial overview: mentoring for professional development

Abstract

This issue of Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning Journal includes research from an ethnically and academically diverse group of scholars representing the Great Lakes, Midwestern, and Southern and Western regions of the United States, and Southwestern Asia (Turkey). Conceptually, the authors frame approaches to capacity building and individual development through measures of induction, coaching, and peer mentoring. While previous issues of Mentoring and Tutoring clearly delineate the nuances between induction processes, coaching and mentoring, and peer mentoring, the manuscripts published herein establish a researchdriven coherent analogy to improving professional practice through purposeful relationships, role clarity, and positionality (Abbot, Graf, & Chagfield, 2018). Improving professional practice is often akin to traditional models of professional development that focus on community issues and challenges rather than on specific and demonstrated needs. According to Templeton and Tremont (2014), improving individual outcomes in education is a dichotomy that must shift from the isolationism of understanding student needs to a more holistic process of responding to adult needs that in turn facilitate the creation of new knowledge structures in students. Similarly, induction, coaching, and mentoring (including peer mentoring), are more effective when they become collaborative exchanges of personalized learning and choice; innately tailored to meet the strengths and needs of the intentional educator seeking to impact professional practice. Therefore, improving professional practice must support individual development. Whether learning new skills or rethinking developed ones, building capacity is a cyclical and evolving progression toward life-long learning through immersion in supporting processes that addresses differing levels of readiness while being sensitive to those differences by finding resources to support each person’s developmental goals. Moreover, Irby, Guerrero, Lara-Alecio, Tong, and Rodriguez (2012) posits the cyclical nature of continuous professional improvement should be embraced by means of support systems that enable immediate feedback aimed at skill development. Thus, this issue of Mentoring and Tutoring shares voices bound by synergistic thinking, for which the foundational premise of intentionally investing in human capital becomes an empowering protocol for standard practice. In the lead article, The Impact of Program Design and Coaching Support on Novice Teachers’ Induction Experience, Kwok, Mitchell, and Huston surveyed over MENTORING & TUTORING: PARTNERSHIP IN LEARNING 2021, VOL. 29, NO. 2, 163–166 https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2021.1922152