Abstract

This issue of Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning includes research from scholars representing California, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the United States as well as New Zealand and the United Kingdom. These international contributors mainly explore the benefits and outcomes of mentoring. Mentoring is beneficial in different ways to the individual mentor and the mentee (the protégé) as well as to various types of organizations. Mentors can obtain recognition by others, rewarding/learning experience, and improved job performance (Eby, Durley, Evans, & Ragins, 2006). Engaging in mentoring relationship, mentees can increase their employability, competence, motivation, and communication skills. Mentoring also brings benefits to the organization for which mentor/mentee work in terms of organizational change, effectiveness, retention, organizational learning (Yirci & Kocabas, 2010). Furthermore, mentoring relationship helps transmit organizational culture, value, and knowledge across a wide range of functions, groups, and generations; hence, sustaining organizational health (Wilson & Elman, 1990). Elshaw, Fass and Mauntel, in their article Cognitive Mentorship: Protégé Behavior as a Mediator to Performance, consider the impact of mentoring behavior to workplace performance. Using a mediation model, they explore the role of protégé and mentor cognitive skills as a predictor of performance. Their findings imply the importance of an organization drawing on and enhancing cognitive skills to foster positive interactions between mentors and protégés. In the article Design, implementation, and evaluation of a multi-disciplinary professional development program for research mentors, Brace, Baiduc, Drane, Flores, Beitel and Lo used a combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative assessment to explore the outcomes of graduate and postdoctoral mentors in STEM. They found mentors who participated in a year-long professionaldevelopment program gained confidence in their outcomes and skills, while other program objectives and skills were stagnant. In the next article, Getting to the Heart of IT: Understanding Mentoring Relationship Quality from the Perspective of Program Supervisors, Dutton, Bullen and Deane investigated mentoring relationships in a school-based mentoring program in New Zealand. They highlighted qualities and perceived influences of positive mentoring relationships, acknowledging the beneficial MENTORING & TUTORING: PARTNERSHIP IN LEARNING 2018, VOL. 26, NO. 4, 355–357 https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2018.1530090