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Alternative Mentoring Types

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Alternative Mentoring Types

Carol A. Mullen

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 Kappa Delta Pi Record, 52: 132–136, 2016
Copyright © Kappa Delta Pi
ISSN: 0022-8958 print/2163-1611 online
DOI: 10.1080/00228958.2016.1191901

Alternative
Mentoring Types
by Carol A. Mullen

Abstract
Reaching beyond traditional mentoring models in education, this essay describes eight expanded and
transformative forms that diversify, enrich, and improve relationships, environments, and systems.
Key words: alternative mentoring, traditional mentoring, types of mentoring

Carol A. Mullen is Profes-
sor of Educational Leadership
at Virginia Tech and a U.S.
Fulbright Scholar. Her books
include The SAGE Handbook
of Mentoring and Coaching
in Education (Sage, 2012)
and, with coeditor Christopher
Tienken, Education Policy Per- gued, traditional mentoring entails one-way learning
ils (Routledge & Kappa Delta
Pi, 2016).
Email: camullen@vt.edu
M
any educators in higher educa-
tion and school systems alike
find themselves in mentoring
situations unlike traditional men-
tor–mentee relationships. Reach-
ing beyond traditional mentoring models to explore
other types can broaden the conversation about the
benefits and possibilities of alternative mentoring
in education. This essay categorizes these alterna-
tives into eight types and describes what makes a
mentoring relationship strong.
Traditional Mentoring
Before discussing alternative mentoring, let us start
with what is more familiar. In traditional mentoring,
a mentor and mentee share a learning experience
over many years. Usually younger and far less expe-
rienced, the mentee gains from the knowledge of
the mentor and gets career guidance—the “stuff” of
mentoring. There may be some emotional and cog-
nitive support, but that occurs within a hierarchical
relationship of a senior (mentor) and a subordinate
(mentee). Framed around the mentees’ goals and
acquiring skills, gaining mastery, and developing
maturity, traditional mentoring generally has a
place in learning, whether in the academy, schools,
corporations, or communities, and whether for
mentored subjects who are students, faculty, teach-
ers, employees, or youth.
However, as education researchers have ar-
only and fosters conditions that keep the mentoring
bandwidth narrow and limit the potential for inclu-
sivity and change. By perpetuating the status quo,
these mentoring relationships lack mindfulness of the
value of reciprocal learning and growth; transpar-
ency around issues and dynamics of power, author-
ity, and control; and the role of privilege, exclusion,
and oppression in serving some populations at the
expense of others (e.g., Johnson, 2016; Reddick &
Young, 2012; Schunk & Mullen, 2013).
Alternative Mentoring
The nature of mentoring has changed significantly
since the Middle Ages when men learned their trades
in apprenticeships. Contemporary alternative forms
of mentoring present new ways of approaching the
implied senior–subordinate relationship for faculty
mentors who chair theses, work with interns, and
guide university students on teaching and research.
Alternative mentoring allows for unveiling burdens
of power and authority, and thereby opening up
topics that are otherwise unquestioned in traditional
mentoring (Mullen, 2005).
In contrast with traditional mentoring, in alter-
native mentoring, learning partners are primed to
“explore the fullest dimensions of thought” (Cole,
2008, p. 18). At the P–12 level, peer mentors may
assume an equal responsibility for teaching and sup-
porting one another, and, as their mindful partner-
ship deepens, may even switch roles of mentor and
mentee. Climates of thoughtfulness extend beyond
learning skills and strategies, encompassing critical
and creative thinking and reflective inquiry. As such,
a college student’s thesis question would propel
earnest inquiry into new terrain. Besides this, in a

132 KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD • JULY–Sept 2016


reflective learning partnership, participants would
be asking, “What does it mean to be an effective
mentor?” and “What does it mean to be a motivated
mentee?”
Alternative mentoring fosters the capacity to
imagine new professional relationships and selves.
Conversational triggers for relationship building
might be “What fulfills you?” and “How can you
make a positive difference in the world?” At the
micro level, mentors and mentees learn together
using platforms that extend the reach of their teach-
ing and learning (see Schwanenberger et al. [2013]
on innovative uses of technology media within a
mentoring group). At the macro level, alternative
mentoring is a big idea behind the transformation of
power-burdened relationships into high-functioning,
healthy configurations for which disruption of out-
dated norms is expected.
Beyond traditional mentoring, I have classified
eight types of alternative mentoring from the educa-
tion literature (which itself is populated by single-type
studies and various names for each type): formal
mentoring, informal mentoring, diverse mentoring,
electronic mentoring, comentoring or collaborative
mentoring, group mentoring, multiple-level comen-
toring, and cultural mentoring.
Formal Mentoring
Formal mentoring is planned, structured, and
intentional. It has stated goals and, importantly,
sponsorship by mentors, a program, and an organi-
zation. Schools, universities, and agencies that offer
formal mentoring programs aim to promote the
success of college students, teachers, and youth. A
formal relationship as such involves the development
of a novice teacher by a veteran teacher through
coaching and other alternative mentoring, which,
while ideally beneficial, may or may not be sustained.
Thus, sustainability haunts formal mentoring.
Often when the originator of a mentoring program
leaves the organization or a change occurs in leader-
ship and direction, the formal program loses steam or
vanishes altogether. Viable programs that are strong
and ongoing in P–12 schools and higher education
attest to the transformative power of mentoring in
WWW.KDP.ORG
organizations and cultures (in such areas as improved
retention, satisfaction, and morale), which in turn
support relationships (Single, 2008).
Informal Mentoring
Informal mentoring, by contrast, happens when
a mentor and mentee meet naturally in the work-
place or elsewhere (Allen & Eby, 2007). Mentoring
occurs, largely because of the chemistry sparked,
benefiting a faculty member and advisee, a veteran
teacher and new teacher, or other pairing. Left to
chance, though, mentoring may not happen. Yet,
when it comes to retention, satisfaction, and morale,
informal mentoring can have more benefits than
formal mentoring (Mullen, in press).
Reverse mentoring, where professionals are
mentored by younger counterparts and in the
process retooled, is informal, although it can be
formalized (Murphy, 2012). This approach has
traction, particularly in corporations. In academia,
consider that professors have been learning for a
long time from students with the know-how to
integrate technology into teaching and build online
relationships. In schools, novice teachers may bring
digital awareness to the veteran teacher, a diversity
consciousness, or new types of professional develop-
ment training—all emerging in mentoring research
and practice.
Diverse Mentoring
Formal mentoring programs often create
matches according to people’s similarities and pref-
erences, usually professional or academic interests,
but also age, gender, and race. Informal mentoring
also shows a preference for similarity in matching
(Johnson, 2016), a prevalent orientation in mentor-
ing situations called “identical mentoring” (e.g.,
Sedlacek, Benjamin, Schlosser, & Sheu, 2007).
In contrast, what I call diverse mentoring focuses
on “cross-sex mentoring” (Johnson, 2016, p. 175)
and “race-conscious mentoring” (Reddick & Young,
2012, p. 419) whereby mentor and mentee pairs
differ demographically (e.g., gender, race). It is un-
realistic as well as unreasonable to assume that only
female mentors can mentor female colleagues or that
KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD • JULY–SEPT 2016 133
 Mentoring
only mentors of color can mentor colleagues of color.
Consequently, Reddick and Young (2012) advocated
on behalf of the right of underrepresented groups to be
mentored and within progressive institutional contexts.
While some mentees (e.g., college students and
faculty) want mentors who are the same ethnicity or
gender as themselves, mentoring research suggests
benefits of mentor–mentee diversity (Johnson, 2016).
One takeaway is that it is the quality of the mentoring
interaction that matters most to mentee growth and
success for the college student or faculty member who
is being mentored in a diverse situation (Schunk &
Mullen, 2013). The mentee can also be a new or expe-
rienced teacher or school leader in a diverse mentoring
situation, as in the teacher inquiry study of mentoring
conducted by Groundwater-Smith (2012); 10 experi-
enced teachers from New South Wales, a diverse group,
participated in the project from schools with diversity in
socioeconomics, gender, religion, and location.
Electronic Mentoring
Technology—especially the Internet—has rapidly
changed the way we interact in many domains, and
mentoring is no exception (Single & Single, 2005).
Mentoring occurs remotely through email, synchro-
nous chats, and other social media, and via online
platforms and calling technologies.
With electronic mentoring (also e-mentoring),
higher-education faculty, education leaders, and vet-
eran teachers have a reach that spans some countries
with an availability that’s theoretically 24/7. Yet, suc-
cess relies on the mentee’s readiness as well as training
to learn remotely and solve technology problems. A
more existential sort of limitation to e-mentoring is
the potential loss of the personal connection from
face-to-face mentoring and the chemistry that keeps
it going. I say potential because e-mentoring doesn’t
have to be dispassionate or sterile: Remote doesn’t
have to mean removed. A key to instilling a human
side of e-mentoring is using high tech–high touch that
creatively adapts telecommunications to mentoring
interests and needs.
In high-tech contexts, high touch acknowledges
that mentors must be alert to the need for human
contact and establishing confidential, safe spaces for
134 KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD • JULY–Sept 2016
mentees. An aspirational goal of e-mentoring is to
imitate the best of face-to-face mentoring, with
human beings productively interacting in a live
electronic situation, ideally compensating for the
lack of “physical co-presence” and privacy necessary
for “conversations about sensitive issues” (Pachler &
Redondo, 2012, p. 469). Having awareness of hu-
man complexity and empathy can empower online
conferencing, coaching, and information sharing, all
of which help create dynamic, trusting relationships
that promote learning and success.
Comentoring or Collaborative Mentoring
Comentoring or collaborative mentoring unites
individuals in a mutually beneficial relationship. They
may have operated initially as mentor and mentee,
but later became comentors. Or they may have
started out as peers. Either way, it’s dynamic two-
way learning built upon reciprocity and grounded
in such differences as knowledge and expertise,
and status and rank. Comentoring pairs share goals
and aspirations, values and ethics. P–12 teacher
collaborators, for example, may share a commit-
ment to effectively serve children and youth from
impoverished circumstances to overcome adversity.
Perhaps they would develop alliances to attract
support in needed areas from agencies, or perhaps
they would guide students’ motivation to learn and
succeed and, moreover, to envision a positive future
for themselves. Beyond the relationship, comentor-
ing teachers impact school communities through
vigorous practices of advocacy-oriented vision and
collaboration (Mullen, 2005, in press; Portner, 2008).
Bona, Rinehart, and Volbrecht (1995) intro-
duced collaborative mentoring to their undergradu-
ate classes in an ethics intervention; by pioneering
the concept of comentoring, they gave a name to
this type of mentoring and its possibilities for cultural
and institutional impact.
Group Mentoring
Mentoring groups can help offset dissatisfac-
tions with traditional mentoring while supporting
multiple perspectives on issues and a team-based
approach to decision making and project develop-

ment. If mentoring is considered a learning process,
then mentoring groups can protect, sponsor, nur-
ture, advise, and befriend. Group mentoring values
how learning is achieved, not just what is learned
(Mullen, 2005). A school example is a professional
learning community where teachers as action re-
searchers establish contexts for inquiry, collect
and analyze data, and collaboratively reflect and
problem-solve, primarily to benefit student learning
(Groundwater-Smith, 2012). In such collaborative
mentoring groups, values and attitudes matter, in
addition to skills and knowledge.
Collaborative mentoring groups and networks
are not new. A longitudinal diverse mentoring group
in higher education is Writers in Training—or WIT.
Responding to institutional barriers to mentoring,
a faculty chair created this education cohort with
the purpose of developing doctoral students (i.e.,
experienced teachers and school leaders) into re-
silient scholar–practitioners, capable of overcoming
programmatic isolation and failure (Mullen, 2011).
In another form of group learning, mentoring teach-
ers distribute information from training sessions to
colleagues. This cascading method provides support
for skill-building and knowledge sharing, but not for
values, ethics, and attitudes. Deemed a “technicist
view of teaching,” the approach lacks attention in
some crucial areas (Groundwater-Smith, 2012; Ken-
nedy, 2005, p. 240).
Gaining in popularity, another type of group
mentoring brings together educators and interested
parties through web logs and social media such as
Facebook and LinkedIn. Online forums offer a com-
munity conversation that crosses the boundaries of
participants’ school systems and disciplines to tap
strengths and qualities. This mentoring process is less
known in the literature, despite its use as a means
of informal mentoring among marginalized popula-
tions to transcend barriers such as chilly workplace
climates (Schunk & Mullen, 2013).
Multiple-Level Comentoring
Transformation of an organization, such as a
public school, through mentoring is not limited to
classrooms or groups. With multiple-level comentor-
WWW.KDP.ORG
ing, mentoring takes place at various levels of an or-
ganization through teams, with membership ranging
from teachers to leaders and students (Mullen, 2005,
in press). The idea here is that entire organizations,
not just individuals and groups, are the target of
renewal through mentoring. Change-oriented orga-
nizational leaders can manifest this powerful vision.
Cultural Mentoring
Cultural mentoring nurtures cross-cultural re-
lationships within international environments using
social media. A fairly recent type with myriad pos-
sibilities for profound teaching and learning across
cultures, cultural mentoring promotes democratic
values, such as equality, justice, and freedom (Ko-
chan & Pascarelli, 2012), while fighting against the
narrow-minded regionalism and xenophobia that
hinder learning between cultures and perpetuate
stereotypes and suspicion.
Exemplary Mentors and Mentees
Another pivotal question for mentoring these days
is, “What makes an effective mentor or positive
mentoring experience?” Effective mentors must
be highly motivated to mentor others, and they
need to know how to address the career and psy-
chosocial aspects of mentoring with each mentee.
The career function of mentoring can over-
shadow psychological dynamics that include dis-
tress and anxiety. Goals like completion of degrees
or work projects, and progress toward promotion
all too often are the focus of mentoring, ignoring
the social and emotional development of mentees
that make them more complete professionals. Tak-
ing this holistic view of mentoring is all the more
difficult with e-mentoring, where Internet-based
communications can replace emotionally satisfy-
ing face-to-face visits.
Modifying a relationship to fit mentees’ goals
and needs, effective mentors do not limit their role
to mentoring checklists, rubrics, and templates, or
even office hours. Such mentors also communi-
cate the results of their efforts, typically to leaders
and colleagues via their organizations, especially
within their disciplines and, increasingly, in policy
KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD • JULY–SEPT 2016 135
 Mentoring
Author’s Note
For a live radio broadcast with
the author on this topic, go to
http://bit.ly/Mullen_interview
136 KAPPA DELTA PI RECORD • JULY–Sept 2016
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arenas, thereby expanding the professional and
public conversation of mentoring while helping
improve policy and practice.
Motivated mentees are not on the sidelines;
they actively seek out mentors. They have wisely
researched their prospective mentors prior to
pairing to find out who they are and what they
do. They don’t leave this to chance or hearsay.
Fully committed to the experience of learning,
they are reliable and trustworthy, and pull their
weight. Readiness and receptivity are disposi-
tions that serve them well; so are being curious
and self-directed—all of which support lifelong
learning. They process instructions and advice,
asking questions and seeking clarification.
Such mentees are not needy or overly
dependent. While maturity is certainly a plus,
growth happens through effective mentoring.
Discovering not only what they can get, but also
what they can give, can lead to a fulfilling co-
mentorship and subsequent mentee leadership.
An example is the novice teacher who is
guided by an effective mentor to move beyond
basic competency in the classroom. Becoming
self-empowered as a lifelong learner, the mentee
begins to develop capacities for taking responsibil-
ity for problem-solving and reflecting on decisions
made, for thinking critically and creatively about
pedagogical actions, and for imagining future
scenarios of teaching and learning (Portner, 2008).
The struggle of adversity and becoming the best
version of one’s self is at the heart of mentoring.
Transformation beyond the self to positively affect
society and change is a hoped-for outcome.
Closing Thoughts
The trend toward burgeoning forms of alter-
native mentoring is encouraging when con-
sistent with democratic values, an uplifting
attitude, and an ethical mindset. Mentoring
that promotes life-altering outcomes for people
strengthens communities when infused with
a healthy societal or global vision. For these
reasons, I am particularly excited by the trends
toward collaborative mentoring that facilitate
profound connections, and cultural mentoring
that opens up the world in entirely new ways.
And I welcome the support that e-mentoring
provides, where breakthroughs facilitate diverse
relationships beyond boundaries and where
these keep our world safe. Mentoring trends
can benefit humanity. Uniting people in pow-
erfully transformative relationships is a force of
change that can broker peace among nations.
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