Making the most of mobility: virtual mentoring and education practitioner professional development

Abstract

Learning provision, including professional learning, needs to embrace mobility (of knowledge, cultures and contexts Á physical and cerebral) to enable education practitioners to interact locally and globally, engage with new literacies, access rich contexts, and to question, co-construct and collaborate. Virtual mentoring, also known as distance, remote, tele-, cyber-and eMentoring, offers a level of flexibility that enables mentors and mentees to maximise these concepts of mobility. There are Professional Learning and Development (PLD) initiatives that offer contextualised, individualised learning experiences via mentoring partnerships and Communities of Practice (CoPs), but not so many that have focussed on virtual mentoring and online CoPs. This article describes a Virtual PLD programme that has been offered in Aotearoa New Zealand from 2009 to date and discusses findings from the associated research study, including benefits that can be specifically equated to the virtual nature of the mentoring and access to the online CoP. Also reported are shifts in mentees' self-efficacy and perceptions of changes in professional practice.

Digimentorointi osana työelämäläheistä jatkuvan oppimisen ekosysteemiä

“…Työelämän toimintatapojen muuttuminen ja oppimis-ja asiantuntijuuskäsitysten uudistuminen vievät mentorointia vääjäämättä kohti uusia toimintatapoja (Irby ym. 2017;Owen 2015;Grindrod 2016). Erään yrityksen edustaja kuvaa muutosta seuraavasti: "Osaaminen [--] ja osaamisen kehittäminen on ollut hyvin paikallista [--] sellainen [--] ei enää toimi.…”

“…Näin se muuttaa mentorointikulttuuria entistä yhteisöllisemmäksi ja laaja-alaisemmaksi. Mentorointiprosessien jättämät digitaaliset jäljet ja avoin eli anonyymi mentorointi verkossa puolestaan tekevät mentorointia läpinäkyvämmäksi (Owen 2015;Irby ym. 2017).…”

A Journey from within: The Virtual Mentoring CASE Model

“…working with Google Apps for Education) or knowledge set. The non-directive nature of the developmental approach provides opportunities for education practitioners (or small groups) to work with a mentor (mentor) in a collaborative, egalitarian, culturally responsive, supportive relationship where the desired outcome is positive change (Owen, 2015). The mentor works with a mentee to comprehend their situation, recognise suitable strategies and understand the implications of implementing those strategies.…”

“…Virtual and face-to-face professional learning provision, in particular mentoring, have differences (Owen, 2015). Therefore virtual mentoring requires a model that recognises and supports, while also making the most of, the differences.…”

Exploring Emerging Mentoring Practices in New Ecosystems of Learning in Finland

“…Challenges to mentoring set by rapid changes to work and the creation of new occupations must be articulated. In this state of change, we strive to update learning and expert thinking (Hakkarainen et al, 2004) on the one hand, and on the other meet the challenges and derive the maximum benefit from the affordances created by digitalisation (see Owen, 2015). Updating mentoring for the digital age is ever more rigorously founded on a constructivist dialogue (Crow & Grogan, 2017), in which competence is built and professional development promoted by acting together and crossing borders between HE and working-life.…”