CLOSING THE DIVIDE: THEORY AND PRACTICE IN MENTORING

Abstract

In recent decades mentoring has been identified as an effective workplace learning activity for men, women and minority groups in a variety of public and private sector settings. Although it has received a great deal of coverage, researchers have yet to reach any consensus over a functional or scientific definition. A number of authors have commented that the definitional problem of mentoring can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that missing from so much of the mentoring literature is a lack of grounding in appropriate theory. The purpose of this study, then, is to examine a substantial database of mentoring literature drawing from education and business related studies in an attempt to. 1. Examine the extent to which theoretical frameworks are evident in over 300 pieces of empirical research in mentoring; 2. Identify the range of theoretical perspectives which have been put forward to explain the mentoring phenomenon; and 3. Devise a model of mentoring which draws upon both theoretical literature and findings from empirical literature in an attempt to 'close the divide' between theory and practice in mentoring.