Mentoring in Adult and Continuing Education

This chapter begins with a brief review of mentoring relationships, complexities, power relationships, and mentoring models that frame mentoring in formal and informal adult education contexts. Various types of collaborative mentoring relationships aid in psychosocial and/or career growth for both mentors and proteges such as peer mentoring, communities of practice, phases, and networks. Peer mentoring dyads or groups develop through friendships among colleagues who mentor each other peer to peer while providing psychosocial support and development as well as career learning, reflecting adult learning concepts and practices. Peer mentoring involves colleagues who share the same or similar roles or status in their lives or organizations supporting each other through sharing information and resources and providing feedback, assisting others in the peer or comentoring group to develop their skills, knowledge, and expertise. Since the proteges identify developers/mentors, the developmental network can transcend boundaries of particular organizations, bridging and perhaps even combining formal and informal mentoring networks.