The Wiley International Handbook of Mentoring

2Epistemological Beginnings of Mentoring

Beverly J. Irby, Nahed Abdelrahman, Rafael Lara‐Alecio, and Tammy Allen

Texas A&M University, USA

The origin of the concept of mentoring evolved from Homer's Odyssey in ancient Greece. When Odysseus began his famous journey, he left his infant son, Telemachus, in the care of a companion named Mentor. This relationship came to define mentoring as a process where an older person helps to counsel and guide a younger person. Although mentoring began as a process by a known and trusted person, it has evolved into a variety of concepts and programs. More recently, mentorship has been defined as the relationship with which experience and knowledge are transferred from a more experienced and more knowledgeable person to a person who has less experience and needs guidance (Eby, Rhodes, & Allen, 2007; Gehrke, 1988; Healy & Welchert, 1990). Yet to understand mentoring in the current educational paradigm, we believe it is important to take an historical journey through its epistemological underpinnings. Therefore, the purpose of our analysis was to examine the epistemological origins of mentoring.

The Beginnings of the Use of Mentoring in Print

Writings on mentoring often include the first use of the term, mentor, which was in the eighth century BC when Homer wrote his legend of the Trojan War. The story, as was told, indicated that when he went to war, Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, left his infant son, Telemachus, and his wife, Penelope, under ...