Listening, Play, and Social Attraction in the Mentoring of New Teachers

Abstract

This study explores the roles of mentors and protégés as they manage dialectical tensions in a professional environment. Sixty-two first-year teachers in a county school district in the southeastern USA answered a questionnaire about their mentors' empathic and directive listening, playful communication, social attractiveness, and ability to help them manage dialectical tensions of socialization. Regression analyses revealed that both empathic and directive listening helped the protégé relieve these tensions. While playful communication did not directly explain relieving protégé's tensions, it did predict social attraction. These findings support cognitive reappraisal and Rogerian models of helping, underscore the importance of listening to effective mentoring, and suggest that mentors receive training in empathic and directive listening techniques.

The accommodation of contested identities: The impact of participation in a practice-based masters programme on beginning teachers’ professional identity and sense of agency

“…This access to professional, collegial networks solidified these nascent teachers' professional identity and, concomitantly, built their confidence, thus allowing them to take risks, be critical and share practice with colleagues without feeling exposed: Both qualitative and quantitative data revealed that the most highly regarded element within the Programme were the BTs' external mentors, with 90% of respondents agreeing that their mentor was either quite or very helpful in working through professional difficulties. What distinguishes this finding from previous research on the early years of teaching that have found mentors being similarly valued (Young and Cates, 2010;National College for Teaching and Leadership, 2015) was that in this instance these mentors were 'external' to the BTs' school. The externality of the mentor was fundamental to their role, and BTs' positive view of them, partly because they acted as brokers to the collaborative learning networks discussed earlier but mainly because their relationship with the BTs constituted a bounded and protective space outside the pressures and accountability mechanisms of their schools.…”

The Relative Effectiveness of Active Listening in Initial Interactions

“…Most observational research compares judgments of listening skills by outsiders (often the trainers themselves) or compares partners' perceived interaction/relationship outcomes pre and post active listening training. The majority of the remaining studies report associations between self and/or other reports of using active listening and some criterion variable (e.g., Drollinger et al, 2006;Young & Cates, 2010). To date, only four studies directly compare participants' judgments of interaction outcomes following confederates deployment of active listening versus another type of listening response.…”

“…Additionally, effective listeners generally project more positive impressions than ineffective listeners (e.g., Drollinger, Comer, & Warrington, 2006;Haas & Arnold, 1995) and are perceived to be more trustworthy (Ramsey & Sohi, 1997), friendly (Bodie et al, 2012), understanding (Cahn & Frey, 1989), and socially attractive (Weger, Bell, & Emmett, 2010;Young & Cates, 2010). Finally, good listeners produce more satisfying (i.e., rewarding) interactions between patients and their physicians (Henry, FuhrelForbis, Rogers, & Eggly, 2012), real estate clients and their agents (Amba-Rao, 1991), protégés and their mentors (Young & Cates, 2010), and between wives and husbands (e.g., Pasupathi, Carstensen, Levenson, & Gottman, 1999).…”

Mentoring as a strategy for empowering Education for Sustainable Development in schools

“…Long et al (2012), based on these criteria, made a well-documented literature review on induction and mentoring related to early career teacher attrition and retention. Time spent with a mentor (Piggot-Irvine et al 2009, LoCasale-Crouch et al 2012, mentors' qualities such as empathy (Young and Cates 2010), confidence, sense of humour, patience and tolerance (Reid and Jones 1997), unthreatening attitude and readily availability (Bullough and Draper 2004), and social, emotional and instructional support (Whitaker 2000, Nielsen et al 2006) are among the characteristics of an effective mentorship. In addition, the way that mentors and mentees are matched (Whitaker 2000, Piggot-Irvine et al 2009), the role of the principal, having a mentor from the same subject area and 718 C. Kadji-Beltran et al participating in networking activities with other beginning teachers (Ingersoll and Smith 2004) are considered important factors for successful mentoring.…”