The Wiley International Handbook of Mentoring

8Mentoring in a Globally Active Learning Context: Initiation, Engagement, Implementation, and Aftermath

Carol A. Mullen

Virginia Tech, USA

This chapter is about creative and cooperative mentoring that unfolded within an overseas college environment. Pedagogic ideas and results are conveyed narratively and visually. Graphics of the storied phases depict the most relevant aspects of this narrative. Takeaways for readers, who will encounter a story arch of internationally embedded educational experience, are as follows:

• In the Active Learning (AL) literature, creative engagement and cooperative learning have high relevance for student growth and success.
• As per cultural mentoring research, creating new kinds of relationships on behalf of mentees monitors systemic issues and fosters their development.
• Peer‐based mentoring is essential for undertaking creative and collaborative work.
• The original Global Active Learning (GAL) Framework proved useful for describing the international experience as four phases.
• Researcher‐generated graphical depictions (one table, two figures) visually convey relevant aspects of the GAL phases.
• Creative education programming with Chinese teacher education students yielded meaningful and informative results, and has merit.
• The study elicited results in creativity and creative endeavor within a Chinese context, not at arm's length (as in through a survey instrument), but rather close up and personal.

AL is vital for facilitating mentoring development ...