Mentoring for Transformation

Developing Cultural Intelligence and Empathy Through Diversified Mentoring Relationships

“…We believed that meeting and meaningfully interacting with a refugee from an area in crisis would have put a spotlight on the privileged lives these college students lead and enable them to see the world via a lens through which they would not otherwise have looked. However, the refugee protégés in the program share the difficulties they have endured to widely differing degrees, so some mentors may not have had the opportunity to bear witness to their protégés’ worldviews as did others (Hinsdale, 2015).…”

“…Positive contact increases empathy toward the out-group and acceptance of its perspective, and the effects are far greater for privileged groups than for lower status groups (Pettigrew, Tropp, Wagner, & Christ, 2011). In the case of formal mentoring relationships, all of Allport’s conditions are met with the exception that mentors and protégés are seldom of equal status in a mentoring relationship (Hinsdale, 2015). However, recent research confirms that the four conditions, while beneficial, are not necessary for demonstrated positive effects of intergroup contact (Pettigrew, Christ, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2007; Pettigrew et al, 2011; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).…”

“…However, recent research confirms that the four conditions, while beneficial, are not necessary for demonstrated positive effects of intergroup contact (Pettigrew, Christ, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2007; Pettigrew et al, 2011; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Indeed, in the context of mentoring, Hinsdale (2015) argues that mentors of others with cross-cultural differences can learn to “negotiate blind spots so [that they] might learn to apprehend what [they] cannot see” (p. 132)—that is, witnessing and being “open to being changed by the [protégé]” (p. 121). Such mentors can “attune [themselves] to what is beyond recognition, what [they] cannot understand, even as [they] recognize the truth of the [protégé’s] experience” (p. 124).…”

Getting to Know Your Students and an Educational Ethic of Care

“…This provocative conversation needs to occur across the academy. I believe that the extra-classroom concerns they raise are an excellent balance to examining an ethic of care as an intra-classroom experience within the context of formal learning in courses (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007), within related advising responsibilities (e.g., Holmes, 2004), and within academic mentoring (e.g., Hinsdale, 2015). In many ways, Chory and Offstein have extended our concern for pedagogical caring and pedagogical respect from the Hawk and Lyons (2008) article to follow trends now salient in the increasingly boundaryless faculty–student relationship experience.…”

“…I think it would be helpful to readers if Chory and Offstein specified how we might better understand implications for relationships with our students among the domains that encompass the “academic” and “non-academic” arenas in which a pedagogical ethic of care is a faculty obligation and can successfully emerge. These include the core domains of the teaching and learning processes and assessments in the formal classroom context and the secondary domains of advising (e.g., Holmes, 2004) and mentoring (e.g., Hinsdale, 2015), and even the context of faculty advising student academic organizations. Greater specificity for understanding these implications also extend to Chory and Offstein’s examples and discussions that illustrate critically important issues with which faculty must realistically and practically grapple.…”