Mentoring for school leadership in South Africa: diversity, dissimilarity and disadvantage
Abstract
In South Africa, until recently, mentoring has not been formalized as part of school leadership induction programmes or of leadership professional development. However, the South African government identified mentoring as a distinctive aspect of its pilot leadership development programme for school principals. This programme signalled a shift from ad hoc and informal mentoring to building mentorship into school leadership development programmes. However, there is still no clear understanding about what constitutes effective mentoring models and the significance of similarity and diversity in a mentoring relationship. In this paper I draw from two dissimilar datasets to explore mentoring from an identity (gender and race) perspective. Using similarity-attraction theory, the paper highlights the complexity of mentoring models and suggests that higher levels of dissimilarity in a mentoring relationship may lead to disadvantage.Citation
Moorosi, P. (2012) 'Mentoring for school leadership in South Africa: diversity, dissimilarity and disadvantage'. Professional Development in Education 38 (3):487Publisher
Taylor & FrancisAdditional Links
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19415257.2011.637430Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1941-52571941-5265
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/19415257.2011.637430