The Wiley International Handbook of Mentoring

1Defining Mentoring: An Elusive Search for Meaning and a Path for the Future

Nora Dominguez¹ and Frances Kochan²

¹ University of New Mexico, USA

² Auburn University, AL, USA

In theoretical discourse, scholars tend to agree on essential qualities of mentoring but dispute the implications of their formal and specific articulation(s). General consensus proposes that mentoring is, in its most basic form, a developmental relationship grounded in and molded by philosophical, historical, and sociological factors (Clutterbuck, Kochan, Lunsford, Domínguez, & Haddock‐Millar, 2017; Mullen, 2012). There is also a basic tendency to personify mentoring as a relationship between an older, more experienced mentor and a younger, less experienced mentee; these relationships are often thought to serve varied purposes, such as developing the mentee's career (Ragins & Kram, 2007), fostering his or her personal development (Nunes & Dashew, 2017), or enabling him or her to adapt to another cultural context (Reeves, 2015). Researchers who examine the underpinnings of mentoring‐related research in some detail, however, consistently note that there is general disagreement about how it should be defined (Johnson, Rose, & Schloser, 2007). In effect, these discursive discrepancies suggest that, while mentoring is codified on elemental levels, it ultimately possesses multiple definitions that lack a common framework (Bozeman & Feeney, 2007; Dawson, 2014; Haddock‐Millar, 2017).

Purpose and Overview

The ...