AND CONNECTIONS TO ACTION RESEARCH
The mentoring activity implemented can be divided into different phases, each containing different activities which are summed up in Table 1.
Table 1: Activities related to mentoring during the process of action research
Date Phase Task Product
September 2006 - Preparation Development of the support system, conceptualization of tasks and roles, involving
teachers Tutoring system plan
13 March 2007 Implementation 1:
2006/2007 academic year Meeting of mentors and mentees, fi rst contact Tutor’s handbook 24 April 2007 1. Consultation meeting for mentors: discussions of cases, diffi culties
encountered, troubleshooting and analysis Minutes of Meeting
early May 2007 2. Consultation meeting for mentors Minutes of Meeting
19 June 2007 Final meeting Programme: closing evaluation, discussion of follow-up proposals, aligning development ideas, sharing experiences
Summary of evaluation Teachers’ feedback 25 September 2007 Implementation 2:
2007/2008 academic year Meeting of mentors and mentees, fi rst contact Tutor’s handbook 15 April 2008 1st consultation meeting for mentors: discussions of cases, diffi culties
encountered, troubleshooting and analysis Minutes of Meeting
Early May 2008 2nd consultation meeting for mentors: results achieved, participation rate, evaluation of the involvement of teachers and students
Minutes of Meeting Teachers’
feedback
19 June 2008 Final meeting
15 September 2008 Faculty Council received a proposal for termination, decision taken
Faculty Council received a proposal for the mentoring system
During the preparation phase two issues arose: fi rstly, the personal support proposed needed to be separated from the already existing roles for personal development and support within the university structure; secondly, the new concept had to be formulated in terms of scope and profi le, as well as integrated into the training programme as a whole.
The fi rst issue brought along the question of terminology. Initially we chose the word “tutor”, however, it turned out that this term was already in use. During this period university regulations were being revised, and the modifi ed new regulations divided the fi eld of personal support of students into three areas of responsibility:
• Tutor1: teaching staff member responsible for the nurturing of talent
• Mentor2: teaching staff member assisting the practical learning of an undergraduate during his/her external educational traineeship
1 ELTE Organizational and Operational Regulations, Volume II. Student Requirement System. 26. § http://www.elte.hu/fi le/ELTE_SZMSZ_II.pdf Retrieved on 13 December 2010
2 ELTE Organizational and Operational Regulations, Volume II. Student Requirement System. 4. § 54 http://www.elte.hu/fi le/ELTE_SZMSZ_II.pdf Retrieved on 13 December 2010
• Thesis supervisor3: a teaching staff member assigned to a student accor-ding to exceptional study regulations or consultant teacher for one’s fi nal thesis
Since the scope of tutorship could not be extended due to the ongoing talent development programmes, we opted for the term mentor in the fi nal version.
As we will illustrate below, this term was not free of complications either, since it overlaps with many other responsibilities as well.
3 ELTE Organizational and Operational Regulations, Volume II. Student Requirement System. 150.
§ and 247. § 4. http://www.elte.hu/fi le/ELTE_SZMSZ_II.pdf Retrieved on 13 December 2010
4. THE MAIN QUESTIONS OF THE PREPARATION PHASE 4.1. Who is a mentor for our research?
While developing our own concept, many different personal support solutions were considered (Kopp 2007). Some of these systems were in practice in public education (such as the patron-system of the Alternative Secondary School of Economics (Juhász & Kálmán 2006), or the mentoring system of the Green Rooster Lyceum4, others were mentoring programmes in higher education, since several parallel mentoring programmes have been and are still running in Hungarian higher education:
• The Katapult Mentor Programme. In operation from 2005 until 2009, in this programme senior students assisted younger ones with information and support. The system included training and monitoring and is still operated by several Student Councils of higher educational institutions.5
• In many universities teachers act as mentors for nurturing talents, for example by organizing talent meeting points.6
• Local university students who assist grantees in the Erasmus-programme are also referred to as mentors.7
• Finally, the attention was directed to the mentorship system of teacher trainees within teacher training programmes. During their 6-9 month long professional traineeship (NÁDASI, 2010), teacher trainees are assigned a mentor who is a teacher employed in public education.
These programmes were different from the model we wanted to implement on many counts, namely: in Hungarian higher education, in the case of mentors who counsel about the training programme, the activity is carried out by graduates; we feel that mentoring in the context of talent development by teachers could be covered by the term supervisor or tutor; while we could not fi nd an example for mentoring for general skills development in the Hungarian higher educational practice. The mentoring implemented by us differs from the above in that it is done by the teachers, it is aimed at remedial work on disadvantages and shortcomings, as well as the nurturing
4 http://wiki.zoldkakas.hu/Az_osztályfônök_és_a_mentor_új_szerepe_a_Zöld_Kakas_Líceumban (Retrieved on: December 2010)
5 For more information (in Hungarian): www.mentorhalo.hu
6 E.g. Debrecen University Regional Giftedness Point, Bibó István Szakkollégium http://geniusz-portal.hu
7 E.g. http://eltebtkkulugy.blog.hu/2008/02/19/mentor_alap; feek.pte.hu/kozep/index.php?ulink=2735
of talent, and the mentor is designed to develop generic skills in addition to specifi c, specialized fi elds of knowledge.
In addition to Hungarian practice, we examined some randomly chosen universities whose mentoring practice seemed similar to ours. The results of this are summed up in Table 2. The mentoring systems examined were different according to both their objectives and core activities: our programme is most similar to the mentoring practice of the University of Mannheim, where the mentor’s task is the monitoring of studies and the compensation of handicaps. In contrast, our system does not include a study contract, and the support of an individual study path and the monitoring of the outcomes of individual work are optional. We did not organize training or preparation for the mentors, but we had regular consultations with and for them. The monitoring of and refl ection on the mentoring process took place in these meetings, partly in the form of written refl ection.
It is not accidental that it should be diffi cult to describe what mentoring means, since today the term has become the generic term for activities directed at personal support. The generalization of the term dates to the 1960s, it is since then that the role of the mentor has appeared in the context of labour market entrants, the support for disadvantaged persons and individuals facing communication problems (Negovan 2006).
Today mentoring can be categorized into the following forms: assistance during studies, support for daily life management and at the workplace.
The defi nitions vary from one fi eld to another, but fi ve factors are included in all concepts:
1. The mentor is a more experienced/competent person.
2. The mentor enters a relationship of communication with a less experienced person.
3. During this relationship, s/he shares his/her accumulated experience.
4. The methodology is less formalized than in other competence-building contexts (such as a training course).
5. Through an interpersonal relationship, the mentor will try to prevent the negative effects of the lack of personal contact in the mentee’s general educational experience
All of these elements are present in our system of mentoring, leading us to the conclusion that the term was correctly chosen. Based on the above, we defi ned the concept of mentor in our research as follows: The mentor is a teacher who assists 2-3 undergraduates in planning their studies, and gives educational, professional advice to them during their whole study path.
Table 2: Mentoring solutions in some universities of the world Institution University of Hohenheim1 University of Mannheim2 Vienna University
of Technology3 Oklahoma State University4 Objective To follow & monitor studies To follow & monitor studies
Remedial work
Nurturing talent
Remedial work Personal development
Training the mentor Yes – preparation No data Yes – preparation Yes – preparation
Documentation
Monitoring modules of individual study (e.g. literature review, reference list, essay writing) Final text-based evaluation, refl ection Detailed evaluation of the success of the programme, follow-up
4.2. How did we select mentors?
Interested teachers and assistant teachers applied for mentoring tasks, while mentees were drawn randomly for each mentor. All graduates of the year participated in the process, which meant 1-2 mentees per mentor in year one, and 2-3 mentees in the second year. Both mentors and mentees participated on a voluntary basis.8
One disputable element of the mentoring process was the random pairing: undoubtedly, a solution whereby students choose their mentor would have been a more effi cient solution in developing a personal relationship – as evidenced by students’ feedback as well. The system of random pairing was born out of necessity: students get to know few teachers in their fi rst year, so we assumed this would lead to unequal distribution of mentorship duties among teachers and decided for random pairing. This problem, however, kept surfacing regularly during the process, as shown by the opinion of both students and teachers.
8 The problems and diffi culties arising from voluntary participation will be discussed at the results section.