National Board-certified (NBC) teachers are recognized as accomplished teachers who have met the National Board's stringent standards. These teachers are encouraged to serve as mentors to novice teachers and veteran teachers in candidacy for National Board Certification. This study identified and compared the career and psychosocial mentoring functions that NBC teacher mentors and non-NBC teacher mentors perceived they provided to their protégés' at the elementary grade levels. National Board-certified protégés' perceptions of having the functions provided were compared with those of their teacher mentors and with the protégés' of non-NBC teacher mentors. The research was conducted in a large urban school district in Florida and included 190 participants: 95 mentors and their protégés'. The teacher mentors' perceptions of having provided the mentoring functions were assessed using the Mentoring Functions Scale for the Mentor, and the protégés' perceptions were measured with the Mentoring Functions Scale for the Protégé. Both instruments were adapted for this study from a previous mentoring scale for the protégé developed by Noe (1988). Results for the study indicated no statistically significant differences between the NBC teacher mentors and the non-NBC teacher mentors in their perceptions of having provided the functions. Significant differences were found between NBC teacher mentors and their protégés on the exposure-and-visibility function, between non-NBC teacher mentors and their protégés on the challenging assignments function, and between all mentors and all protégés on the challenging assignments function. Implications for teacher mentors, administrators, and scholars are provided. These include developing or updating existing mentoring programs to include the career and psychosocial functions studied in this research, providing mentors and protégés with information about the functions in order to assess the existence of specific functions, expanding professional development time to address functions that may have been inadequate, and possibly limiting the number of protégés with whom teacher mentors interact and guide.

In the psychology of religion, prayer is one area which has received relatively small attention in the past. In the case of Muslim prayer, with a few exceptions, the field is yet to be explored. This convergent parallel mixed-methods study examined the relationship of Muslim prayer acts and perceived psychosocial functions and meaning-making functions. The data was gathered using semi-constructed interviews as well as standardized instruments: Brief RCOPE, Sense of Coherence (SoC) and CD-RISC 2 resilience scale. The participants consisted of twelve males and four females currently residing in the central parts of Sweden. Focus was placed on the five daily prayers (Ṣalāt), the supplication prayer (Duʿāʾ) as well as the constant reminder of God (Dhikr). The theoretical parts focused mainly on meaning-making, coping, and ritual theory. The research question of this study was: “What role or roles do Muslim rituals, with a focus on prayer, have in the psychosocial functions and meaning-making functions in everyday life?”. For the Brief RCOPE questionnaire, the results included relatively high scores for positive coping and relatively low scores for negative coping (Positive Coping max: 28,00; min: 20,00; average: 23,75; range: 8,00. Negative Coping max: 15,00; min: 7,00, average: 10,19; range: 8,00. Religious coping on a general level max: 1,00; min 2,00, average: 1,06; range: 1,00). For the Sense of Coherence (SoC) scale, the results included different scores, in total medium to low (max: 75,00; min: 44,00; average: 56,00; range: 31,00). In the case of CD-RISC 2 resilience scale, the results were diverse with both high and low scores (max: 8,00; min: 3,00; average: 5,56; range: 5,00). From the interviews, several findings emerged including the centrality of prayer in the informant’s lives. Meaning-making emerged as a central part concerning all forms of prayer. The Muslim identity was also seen as absolutely central in their life. When performing prayers in line with the informants’ own theological understanding, this produced very positive feelings. When not performing the prayers, this resulted in negative feelings and anxiety. The latter also related to a more or less constant stress of not being a good enough Muslim and therefore ending up in Hell after death for most of the informants. The religious community was seen as very positive since many of the informants struggled with what they thought of as Un-Islamic values and behaviors present in the surrounding society.