Editorial

Citation

Hobson, A.J. (2014), "Editorial", International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 3 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-04-2014-0013

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Volume 3, Issue 2.

It gives me great pleasure to once again introduce a new issue of the International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education (IJMCE) which comprises a truly international cast of authors, spanning Australia, Canada, Ireland, the USA, New Zealand and (if we include my Commentary) England. In the first of our five research papers (Dialogic peer coaching as teacher leadership for professional inquiry), Jenny Charteris and Dianne Smardon discuss findings of a qualitative study of a school based, teacher professional development project involving nine groups of peer coaches across five New Zealand schools. The authors show that through engaging in collaborative peer coaching and dialogic feedback, in which they are positioned as experts in their own practice, teachers gained a transformative space in which to articulate their thinking and were able both to influence each other's professional learning and develop their own leadership capabilities. On the basis of their findings, Charteris and Smardon suggest that dialogic peer coaching can support the development of high capacity leadership in schools, and thus propose the notion of dialogic peer coaching as leadership.

In the second paper (Collaborative application of the Adaptive Mentorship© model: the professional and personal growth within a research triad), Lorraine Godden and colleagues discuss an action research study of establishing a mentoring culture within a research triad. The triad consisted of a university professor together with a doctoral student and a master's level student who served as research assistants on a large-scale, pan-Canadian document analysis research project. The author-participants utilized the Adaptive Mentorship© model (Ralph and Walker, 2010) to document and analyze their experiences of working on the research project and their interactions as a triad, and found this to be a valuable tool for supporting their social competence-based and experiential needs. Importantly, they also concluded that their commitment to collaborative mentoring for the duration of this project was a key factor in enhancing their working environment and professional growth.

In our third paper (Measuring and exploring factors affecting students’ willingness to engage in peer mentoring), Noufou Ouedraogo and colleagues discuss findings of a mixed method study of a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) programme of a North American university, through which they explored key factors associated with the success of student peer mentoring and students’ willingness to mentor their peers. The authors found that key factors impacting the effectiveness of peer mentoring included achieving a good fit between mentors and mentees, a low ratio of protégés to mentors, and an understanding of and willingness to address each student's specific needs. They also found that students’ willingness to mentor their peers was significantly affected by organizational culture and altruism. On the grounds that peer mentoring can ease students’ transition from high school to university, guide them through university programmes and help their transition from university to workplace, the authors argue that business schools should embrace and promote a culture of mutual help and voluntary student peer-mentoring, and seek to identify altruistic students as prospective peer mentors – recommendations which may be of interest and relevance in other contexts.

In the fourth paper (The challenge of work-based learning: a role for academic mentors?), Simon Stephens and colleagues discuss findings from a case study of an undergraduate work-based learning (WBL) programme in Ireland involving a higher education institution and a large multinational organization. They report that the success of WBL is associated with the relationships that form between employers, employees and academics, and argue that the deployment of academic mentors can help to address challenges which are common in WBL programmes and, in particular, help translate academic knowledge into workplace practice.

In the fifth and final research paper of the Issue (Bridging the gap for beginning teachers: researcher as mentor), Lisa D’Souza provides a fascinating account of the benefits of an unintended mentoring relationship between researchers and beginning teacher participants in a five-year longitudinal research project in the USA. Based upon the analysis of extensive qualitative data relating to two beginning teachers, and drawing on the concepts of legitimate peripheral participation, communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), it is argued that the beginner teachers’ relationships with the researcher – their single constant source of support throughout the five-year period – helped them to close the gap in learning between the relatively theoretical world of teacher preparation and the practical world of classroom teaching. The success of the relationship is attributed largely to the establishment of trust, itself related to the relationship's long-term and non-evaluative nature and frequent contact between the two parties.

I hope that you will enjoy and learn from the papers. On behalf of the authors and the editorial team at IJMCE, I wish to acknowledge the generous and invaluable support of the anonymous members of our reviewer panel, who helped strengthen the manuscripts prior to publication.

I close this issue of IJMCE with a Commentary on a significant and inevitable consequence of the peer review process: why many (indeed most) manuscripts submitted for possible publication in IJMCE are not accepted. In this I provide an overview of IJMCE's review and editorial process, before proceeding to report the outcomes of an analysis of 25 “reject” decision letters and (where applicable) accompanying reviews sent to corresponding authors between April 2013 and February 2014 inclusive. The analysis highlights 16 separate factors which have contributed to reject decisions, with some more significant than others. I hope that the paper will be both helpful to potential future contributors to IJMCE, and of interest further afield.

Andrew J. Hobson

References

Holland, D., Lachtcotte, W., Skinner, D. and Cain, C. (1998), Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Ralph, E.G. and Walker, K. (2010), “Enhancing mentor's effectiveness: the promise of the Adaptive Mentorship© model”, McGill Journal of Education, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 205-218