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TOPICS
1. Vistors Rate the Top Books on Mentoring
2. Exchange Links for Greater Visibility and Community
3. List Your Mentorship Training Events and Conferences
4. Two Key Studies from Mentoring Research
VISITORS RATE THE TOP BOOKS ON MENTORING
Our website <www.mentors.ca> maintains an up-to-date list of the best works on mentorship and includes brief reviews of each book or video. We also provide links to sources for book or video purchase and we keep track of the sales for all the works listed on our site.
For 2002 the most popular book as determined by visitor purchases at Amazon.com or Amazon.ca was The Mentoring Pocketbook by Geof Alred, Bob Garvey, and Richard Smith. This book is a pocketful of proven tips, tools, and techniques for mentors and partners. It is an excellent book for experts or beginners as well as mentors and those seeking a mentor. Its formatting makes it easy and quick to read while at the same time providing readily useable ideas, activities, and concepts. The authors pay great attention to successful mentoring relationships, including the various roles, necessary qualities, and developmental stages, and they include an issues and questions section that covers not only concerns common to both mentors and partners, but also challenges faced by program coordinators. The authors place mentoring within the context of learning and show the reader how to use a simple process to make progress in any mentoring relationship. This book can be carried in a pocket and the authors have wisely included some blank pages for notes.
This book can be purchased from Amazon.com or from Amazon.ca.
Note: Purchase of this book (and any others listed on the Peer Resources' site) using these links will generate a commission to Peer Resources. We donate the fees received to a non-profit program that provides clothing for homeless youth.
EXCHANGE LINKS FOR GREATER VISIBILITY AND COMMUNITY
We currently provide a description of your services on our website. Our primary intention is to help visitors find quality services to meet their mentoring interests and goals. We are advocates for mentoring and we believe that promoting your services strengthens the support for effective mentoring relationships.
Would you be willing to provide a link to Peer Resources on your website? Mutual or reciprocal linking between like-minded organizations has become a common practice on the Internet. While it can increase your visibility and placement with search engines, our goal is to help Internet users find the best services that meet their needs.
If you are willing to provide a link to Peer Resources on your site, please contact Rey Carr at rcarr@mentors.ca.
LIST YOUR MENTORSHIP TRAINING EVENTS AND CONFERENCES
While mentoring occurs naturally in most organizations, specific challenges such as leadership succession, employee turnover, and ethical practice cannot be left to chance. Deliberate, systematic mentoring programs have shown considerable success in dealing with the contemporary issues faced by businesses, community organizations and educational institutions.
We invite you to list any national or international training events, seminars or conferences associated with mentoring that your organization provides. There is no cost or fee for the listing.
For examples of current mentorship seminars and workshops conducted by a variety of organizations, go to www.mentors.ca/mentorwks.html.
WHAT'S NEW FROM MENTORING LITERATURE
Peer Resources continually scans the professional and popular published literature to find articles of interest to people involved in mentoring. Two of several hundred recent additions to the searchable, annotated bibliography at <http://www.mentors.ca/SearchB.html> are:
Boyle, P. & Boice, B. (1998). Systematic mentoring for new faculty teachers and graduate teaching assistants. Innovative Higher Education, 22, 157-179.
Compared to spontaneous, natural mentoring, this systematic mentoring program yielded mentoring pairs meeting more regularly, over a longer period of time, and experienced a greater depth of involvement. The planned method also encouraged those individuals who might not have contact with mentors to become part of the program. The structured program also encouraged greater mutual learning with partners assuming broader roles as coaches and models. In addition the participants found that the matching system (MBTI) held little value and did not predict a successful match. Instead factors such as shared expectations and compliance with program structure had higher value for predicting the success.(RAC)
Sipe, C.L. (undated). Mentoring: A synthesis of P/PV's research: 1988-1995. Philadelphia, PA: Public/Private Ventures.
