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Dear Jean and Everyone,
A few further thoughts over
breakfast..
If we take the definition of mentoring as
facilitating significant life changes e.g career and coaching as more
geared to refining skills and reaching pre-specified ends (I am thinking
about the definitions in the National Framework from CUREE/TDA here)
then in mentoring both parties will very likely be focusing on enabling
significant changes in values in use.
Significant changes in
values-in-use is a long term project, in my view. (Any 'learning to
change is difficult, complex and takes time' [Allen, 2005]). The
first step it to know them, accurately. That involves significant
and ongoing self-analysis, and oten with some trusted and external
inputs to validate the internal view and analysis. And
values-in-use are deeply seated (embedded and out of ready conscious
sight). The second step is being sure about the purpose and
advantage of changing them. Then there is the work on shifting
such a meaning perspective (Mezirow) and risking intrapersonal
disintegration in the process (see The King and I, and 'Tis a
puzzlement.)
There is a likelihood that in
times of significant life change, values in use and espoused values will
a) come under the spotlight and b) develop/evolve i.e. undergo
change. Where values come under the spotlight there may be a
Hawthorne effect whereby values change because they are under scrutiny.
In times of substantial upheaval, values in use might become less stable
- anecdotal evidence is where mentors and mentees report that they never
thought they would react as they had in a particular situation. This
might reflect a lack of awareness of their values in use, which surface
in time of stress. Alternatively, it might be that both values in use
and espoused values are in actuality profoundly shifting.
I
suggest that when novice teachers are struggling for survival they may
exhibit 'entrenched values' clinging for security to values that have
enabled survival in the past or... they might adopt values from their
mentors (reinforcing cloning) or they may feel sufficienly confident
(perhaps based on surviving previous periods of instability) to tolerate
or maybe welcome 'fluid values' which can allow for shifts in
perception, position and even overt contradiction.
The 'model' I am working
with, with 'attitudes' being the outside ring, more on the surface, more
open to change, and often changeable by advertising programs, eg health
awareness campaigns, with 'beliefs' being the next more inner ring, and
less susceptible to change, eg religious beliefs, political attachments'
but capable of changing one's mind in response to thinking through
reasons or other challenges to attachments, has 'values' as the
innermost component of our complex. Values are much more
entrenched, and incongruent behaviour arises when values-in-use,
deepseated survival learning, come into conflict with 'beliefs' or
'attitudes'. The person of integrity is the one where there is
alignment of
values-in-use/beliefs/attitudes. |
