A mentor is a qualified mental health practitioner, namely in this instance a nurse who facilitates guides and supervises the learning experience and assesses the student’s competences in practice. This longitudinal study examines the perceptions of mentorship in clinical practice from nurses, as they move from students to recognised professionals with authority to advise and assess students’ competence in practice. This ethically approved study mainly uses qualitative methods. Initially it involved interviewing eight completing mental health nursing students, and 270 mainly qualitative questionnaires were sent to qualified mental health nurse mentors in clinical practice. The final data collection of the study involved interviewing six qualified nurses/mentors who were originally the students in this study. Existential phenomenology was a valuable means of interpreting the perceptions of both the students, qualified nurses and the mentors. This ontological perspective explores the consciousness of the self, operating within a collective consciousness of their world. The data analysis initially followed Van Manen’s holistic approach; then extracting essences, identifying themes and then synthesizing essences. This was then followed by an existential processing of the data from the first and second interviews. The results reveal that the students believe that mentoring is an absolute necessity for their practical training; but the mentoring experience is precarious due to the numerous barriers. The results also highlighted incidences where students who experience ineffective mentoring are inspired to become much more effective at mentoring, because they do not want their students to experience the poor mentoring they had received. The participants in this study said students who are not competent are still passing practice, and the craft of mental health caring is not taught to an appropriate standard. However, learning from the experience of the transitional process was also revealed, and how the development of the self affected the perception of mentoring.

This study considered the effects of mentoring on protégés’ beliefs in their abilities to be leaders and on their development of interpersonal skills. This study explored, in 260 business graduate students, the relationship between (a) mentoring and leadership self-efficacy and (b) mentoring and political skill. Participants completed surveys including the Self-Efficacy for Leadership Scale, the Political Skill Inventory, and the Mentoring Functions Questionnaire. Comparisons between non-mentored and mentored individuals showed that having a mentor is associated with increased political skill (p < .05) but not increased leadership self-efficacy (p > .05). Among mentored individuals, higher quality mentoring relationships are associated with significantly higher leadership-self efficacy (p < .01) but not with significantly higher political skill (p > .05). The presence of a mentor is important for protégé development of political skill, but the quality of the mentoring relationship is important for protégé development of leadership self-efficacy.

Studies have shown that mentoring is a viable form of professional development.Faced with large numbers of retirements and a projected increase in student enrollment, the issues of recruitment, retention and revitalization of current faculty are at the core of this study. There is little empirical research on the phenomenon of structured or formal mentoring in higher education from the perspective of both the mentee and the mentor.The purpose of this study was to identify, describe, and analyze the perceived benefits that both senior or more experienced faculty mentors and junior or new-to-the institution faculty mentees at a large urban research university received from participating in a structured faculty mentoring program.A nonexperimental, descriptive study was designed to explore these issues. The method used to collect data was a survey questionnaire. Utilizing both descriptive and correlational statistics, the most notable findings revolved around the significance of sharing aspects of institutional culture by older, more experienced faculty members. Independent samples t-tests performed on ten subscales by participant type were significant at the p≤0.05 level. Specifically, mentors gave higher ratings for Scale 3, Institutional Culture and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities. Mentees gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility elements.The findings also indicated that women gave higher value to the personal, psychosocial aspects of being involved in the structured mentoring program than men. Women gave higher ratings for Scale 5, Psychosocial Compatibility and Scale 8, Psychosocial Compatibility and Activity Elements.Correlations for faculty members years of experience at this institution as well astheir total years of being faculty members in higher education found faculty members at the current institution with greater years experience was positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .33). Total faculty years in higher education was also positively correlated with Scale 3, Institutional Culture (r = .40) and Scale 10, Value of One-to-one Activities (r = .27). The findings also suggest areas of emphasis administrators might use in designing and implementing faculty development activities that involve formal mentoring by more experienced faculty in order to obtain the greatest benefit for all participants.

This qualitative study used a phenomenological approach to determine the mentoring process Black mentors used when mentoring White beginning teachers. Five mentors and their six mentees were surveyed and interviewed to find how cross-race mentoring processes in an urban school district in the Commonwealth of Virginia work. Seven themes emerged from the study: (a) perceptions of the mentoring process; (b) perceptions of classroom management; (c) perceptions of school quality; (d) perceptions of urban teaching; (e) perceptions of White advantage; and (f) presence of White privilege.

M.Ed. (Inclusive Education) / This study explored the nature of support for Reception Year teachers of learners with severe intellectual impairment at Lerato Special School (pseudonym) which is in the southern suburbs of Johannesburg in South Africa. As a past Reception Year teacher at this school, I experienced numerous challenges in teaching these learners, which prompted me to research more in this area. I experienced challenges such as overprotection of the learners by their parents, language barriers, lack of parental support, high learner-teacher ratio and health problems. From the focus group interview conducted, these were the same challenges experienced by the Reception Year teachers of Lerato Special School. As a result, I embarked on this study to find out from these teachers the extent of support that they are receiving and still require for them to be able to execute their duties to the expected standard in terms of teaching these young and inexperienced learners to their maximum potential development. The Education White Paper 6 (DoE, 2001) outlines four levels of support for both teachers and learners. At the national level, policy is formulated, and it is implemented at the provincial level (Landsberg, 2011). The district level provides co-ordinated professional services in supporting teachers, drawing on expertise in specialised schools through the district based support teams (DBST). Lastly, at the institution level the school based support teams (SBST) support teachers and learners directly. Teacher support teams are a way of supporting individual teachers who request support over a teaching concern relating to special educational needs (Cresse, Norwich & Daniels, 2000). The focus of district and institutional level support should be on differentiated teaching strategies, overcoming barriers, curricular adaptation, flexible teaching methods, individualised learning support material and assessment concessions. Since teachers are the primary agents for achieving such specialised education for intellectually impaired learners, the teachers should be fully supported in their endeavours. Yet, it is my experience in this special school that teachers are not being fully supported, particularly, teachers who are teaching severely intellectually impaired children between five and ten years old ...

In the 1830s, students at Oxford University began using the word coach as a slang expression for a tutor who carried a student through an exam (Coach, 2011). Nowadays, the word is seen as a metaphor for a person supporting another person to achieve an imagined goal (Johansson &amp; Wahlund, 2009). Hilmarsson (2006) says that everyone acts as a coach from time to time, and Strandberg (2009) argues students in Sweden today want to be coached. However, it is hard to find schools where they claim they practice coaching. Because the word coach is ubiquitously used, many who today work with coaching are in fact inappropriately trained (Grant, 2010; Williams, 2008). Thus, by using a questionnaire as well as interviewing two students and a coach, I wanted to investigate whether coaching made any difference to how students perceived their English learning. 63 students and one coaching teacher participated in this study, where the findings demonstrated that there were other aspects which had a higher impact on students‟ perceptions of their English learning than the terminology used to describe the educational method practiced in their particular school.

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 / Early career academics in South Africa enter a higher education system with a historical legacy of division along lines of past discrimination and apartheid. The higher education system has been undergoing profound transformation in the last decade through the promulgation of the SAQA Act (No 58 of 1995) and the Higher Education Act No 101 of 1997. Although numbers of black students at historically advantaged, predominantly white higher education institutions have increased dramatically in the past decade to over 50% in some cases, the change in the academic staff at these institutions has not been nearly as rapid. Less than 30% of the academic staff is black, even at institutions which consider themselves to be progressive. The argument in this research is that the professional socialisation and development of early career academics in all South Africa universities is generally neglected or receives scanty attention and that the professional development in teaching which they receive at entry-level, is minimal. Although mentoring as a professional development strategy has been shown in many studies to have a positive impact in careers at entrylevel, South African universities are not doing enough to support and develop early career academics and consequently the transformation of higher education is being retarded by institutional lack of support. The case of the University of the Witwatersrand illustrates the situation common in many higher education institutions. The purpose of the study is to investigate mentoring as a transformation strategy for the professional development and socialisation in the career development and management of the early careers of entry-level academics to higher education in South Africa where transformation of higher education is a critical issue on the national agenda. In this study there are 28 early career academics in formal mentoring relationships as a result of specially designed mentoring programmes or academic internships which have been established since 1999. They were interviewed in-depth for their interpretations of their experiences in formal mentoring programmes where almost all the mentors are white and the majority of mentees belong to different cultural groups. The findings in the study show how necessary it is for early career academics to be paired with mentors who are aware of the functions and roles of mentors in higher education and who are seriously committed to fulfilling those roles themselves or in conjunction with others in their networks. One new career development function and one new psychosocial function of mentors were added to a model of existing functions derived from the literature. Transformation is an important new function of mentors and their function as role models is emphasised by the context of this mentoring research. Mentoring may be lauded as the panacea for transformation in higher education but unless mentors are adequately trained, supported and monitored, and are committed to transformation, the strategy is not likely to meet with success. Mentoring in cross-cultural contexts in higher education in South Africa is also likely to be only partially successful because too little is being done to address the effects of institutional and covert racism which lingers on. A wide spectrum of recommendations is made for making mentoring work in higher education institutions. These range from broadly based macro interventions at national and institutional levels, to quite detailed micro interventions at the individual level. Without a systematic and committed thrust throughout the sector to accelerate transformation, the whole sector is likely to languish and busy itself with meeting legislative demands for equity compliance and quality assurance drives without addressing the fundamental issues of developing those young academics who are instrumental in transforming the system. / WS2017

Thesis (M.M. (Business Executive Coaching))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2015. / The study explored the CEO transition process that takes place in the handing over of the organisation from the outgoing CEO to the incoming CEO and how executive coaching can facilitate the transition process. The past two decades have seen a reduction in the tenure of CEOs. In addition the transition period has contracted. This means that the incoming CEO is often faced with many challenges that may have been alleviated in a longer or more structured transition process. As CEO succession has a major impact on the organisation, and is disruptive in itself, executive coaching might present an opportunity to manage the transition and improve the settling in and effectiveness of the incoming CEO and thereby the performance of the organisation. . Friedman and Olk (1995), Garman and Glawe (2004) and Vancil (1987) defined a structured CEO succession and transition process in organisations. The transition process is conceptualised as a settling-in period where the designated CEO and outgoing CEO work together in a dual capacity whereby the organisation would slowly be transferred from one to the other over a period of months or even years (Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2001). The Chairman plays an influential role in selecting the incoming CEO (Dalton & Dalton, 2007b; Engelbrecht, 2009; Fredrickson, Hambrick, & Baumrin, 1988) and in supporting the incoming CEO in his/her initial appointment period (Kets de Vries, 1987). There are various factors that determine the selection of an insider CEO or outsider CEO based on the performance and future strategy of the organisation (Dalton & Kesner, 1985; Friedman & Olk, 1995; Khurana, 2001; Ocasio, 1999; Zajac, 1990). The selection of the incoming CEO is important as it impacts the market value of the organisation and creates disruption within the organisation (Grusky, 1963). The incoming CEO, whether an insider or outsider CEO appointment, experiences many challenges when taking up the position. These challenges include delivering continuous growth, improved performance and profitability of the organisation (Bower, 2007; Giambatista, Rowe, & Riaz, 2005), managing key relationships with the Chairman, Board of Directors, Shareholders, key customers and suppliers as well as the management of people within the organisation. Other challenges are of a more personal nature, such as self-doubt and balancing work-life (McCormick, 2001; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998; Stock, Bauer, & Bieling, 2014). Many of these challenges can be attributed to the reduced transition period that an incoming CEO has (Charan, 2005). iv There are various support structures available to the incoming CEO to supporting the incoming CEO in his/her initial appointment period. These include the Chairman, mentors and executive coaching. Various coaching models were considered in supporting the incoming CEO through the transition period and the challenges experienced (Bond & Naughton, 2011; Passmore, 2007; Saporito, 1996). The aim of exploring executive coaching models was to recommend a coaching framework that could be used in the CEO transition process. The research methodology used in the study was qualitative. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken in order to gain insights from the lived experience of CEOs, Chairmen and Board of Directors of organisations (Ponterotto, 2005; Wimpenny & Gass, 2000). Further to this an analysis of the CEO turnover in the Top 40 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was undertaken, which served to triangulate the results from the respondent interviews. It was found that there was both planned and unplanned CEO succession in organisations and this impacted the transition process and period that took place between the outgoing CEO and the incoming CEO. Planned CEO succession usually arose from the planned CEO retirements and allowed for a long transition period. An unplanned CEO succession arose from the untimely resignation, retirement or death of the existing CEO. This left the newly appointed CEO taking the position with a very short transition period, if at all. Following from the planned and unplanned CEO succession there was found to be a mismatch between the theory of the CEO succession and transition processes and the practice thereof. This seemed to be more evident from a South African perspective as most of the literature on the subject of CEO succession and transition processes was internationally based with very scant South African literature available on the topic. Executive coaching can provide the structure for the incoming CEO to orientate him/herself to the organisational dynamics, setting the vision and strategy for the organisation as well as the effective execution of that strategy. Further, executive coaching can assist the incoming CEO in the personal challenges of leadership, managing people and stakeholders as well as self-doubt and work-life balance that the newly appointed CEO may experience.

This mixed methods study investigated the self-reported frequency of professional development experiences mentors have had with their mentees and with other mentors and identified the self-reported beliefs they hold about mentoring. Quantitative data were collected through an online survey of teachers from one school district that had mentored at least one time within the past 2 years. Specifically, mentors were asked to report how often they engaged in specific activities with their mentees and with other mentors. Mentors were also asked to report the degree to which they believed given statements were true about mentoring (a) as a professional development experience for the mentors themselves; (b) as a way to improve mentors' own classroom teaching practice; and (c) as an avenue for leadership roles in schools. Qualitative data were collected through face-to-face interviews with mentors to better understand the quality of their experiences and to identify those experiences that were more powerful in terms of shaping their beliefs. In addition, data were analyzed to determine the relationship between the frequency of mentors' experiences and their beliefs. The results show that the frequency of experiences mentors have had with their mentees and with other mentors was positively and significantly related to their beliefs in 5 out of 6 cases. Mentors reported strong beliefs about mentoring as professional development for themselves, as a way to improve their own classroom teaching practice, and as a vehicle for leadership in schools. This study sought to put mentors in the forefront by exploring their experiences and their beliefs about mentoring. This focus on the mentor teacher and not just the mentee places this research at the core of improving teaching practice and viewing mentoring as an educative experience for veteran and novice alike. / by Tammy L. Bresnahan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

The primary goals of this qualitative case study were to analyze and evaluate the perceived benefits of a mentoring program on Latino mentees, mentors and school culture. A secondary area of interest was that of the interpersonal and programmatic dynamics that presented themselves during the implementation of a mentoring for urban Latino high school students. Data collection instruments included interviews, observations, questionnaires, journals and program documents. The findings suggest that mentors perceived the programmatic features of training, monitoring and Mentor Mingles as being very supportive of their mentoring role. Mentor qualities that fell into the Trust Theme, Personal Concern Theme, and Approachable Theme were considered to be very effective in building positive relationships with the mentee. The study found that there were four significant challenges that faced this mentoring program: time, financial resources, recruiting mentors and the building and maintenance of effective mentor/mentee relationships. Additionally the study found that Latino students had many perspectives on how to improve their high experience and build school culture. Implications for practice include ensuring that mentoring programs are built around programmatic features that constitute best practice; making mentors aware that certain qualities are more effective in building quality relationships with the mentee; developing strategies for the challenges of time, recruiting mentors, financial resources and building and maintaining effective mentor/mentee relationships; and developing the schools ability to assess school culture among certain student populations. Limitations of this study included the researcher's role as headmaster, researcher bias, small sample size and the relatively brief study time. Recommendations for future study include monitoring the mentored Latino students and reporting on their graduation rates, conducting an additional study with a control group of Latino students who do not have the benefit of participating in a mentoring program, studying the impact of family configurations as they relate to the success of the mentees, an analysis of the mentor's age and success of the mentoring relationship, a similar mentoring program study on a different ethnic group, and a study and analysis of students mentored by teachers as opposed to non-teachers. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration. / Thesis advisor: / Thesis advisor: / Thesis advisor: