Mentoring and Community Acceptance

In response to a recent post…

Malderez (2009) says, “…a mentoring process as being supportive of the transformation of development of the mentee and of their acceptance into a professional community…It is this process of one-to-one, workplace-based, contingent and personally appropriate support for the person during their professional acclimatization (or integration), learning, growth and development, which is referred to as Mentoring.”

So, how would one define “acceptance into a professional community”?  And what is exactly, “professional acclimatization”?

I would argue that neither of these two notions have much to do with mentoring.  Mentoring is less about helping someone else enter a group, community, or school , and is more about facilitating another educator’s personal growth.  The individual (i.e., mentee) will decide on what communities to participate in, which people to interact with, and which technologies to use to make it all happen.  So in essence, everyone the individual interacts with has the potential to serve as “mentor(s)” depending on the situation at that particular moment.