Bring on the mentors

One of the trade publications that arrived in my mailbox (the real physical one) last week suggested that the "guide on the side" which has been the bumper sticker summation of the pedagogy of choice (among progressive educators) for a generation should be replaced. Of course guide on the side replaced safe on the stage (which is still the pedagogy of choice for way too many "educators").

Mentor in the middle is the new bumper sticker worthy encapsulation of pedagogy. This seems a good model because as presented, the mentor in the middle plays a central role in guiding the studies of learners. Mentors play six roles in classrooms:

Facilitator- designing the course and syllabus

Coach- to identify necessary skills and ensure learners develop those

Artist- to combine traditional approaches and new insight into new creations

Critical reflector- to encourage metacognition

Model- to demonstrate

Scholar- to reflect the structure of the discipline



As I think back on the best teachers I had, I see these roles. As I think forward with these in mind, I am beginning to see a more sophisticated "individualized" education than we have known.

At the heart of formal education is the assumption that "this person has certain skills," and the skills are based in the accepted experience of the education. (I earned a PhD, do the assumption is that I can navigate the dissertation process which is about persistence as much as scholarship.) A criticism (which is often deserved) of guides in the dude is that those fundamental experiences are lost in interest-based education. (As a science teacher, I may be able to create a high- interest course on UFO's but it is likely to lack the grounding necessary to be called science.)

If educators accept the mentor role and all six of the roles it entails, I see a greater role for the curriculum. We no longer read and write and do math for our own pursuits but we become skilled in applying these skills to relevant and real problems, and we observe our teachers engaged in using those as well. That engagement by teachers in what they claim to be teaching (as a necessary skill) is the change captured in our transition from guide to mentor.


-- Gary Ackerman, Ph.D.