Defining mentoring: a literature review of issues, types, and applications

This literature review of contemporary mentoring delineates mentoring definitions and anchors these with explanatory discourse. Select empirical studies spanning 1983-2019 were analyzed, with a focus on education across grade levels. Alternative mentoring issues, types, and applications, also located, are integral to this discussion. While researchers describe what mentoring is, it is also important to clarify what it is not. Traditional definitions of mentoring have been losing traction, with mentoring alternatives forging new possibilities within changing learning and work environments. Contexts of mentoring include a personal-professional relationship to an educational process; an organizational, cultural, and global context; and a systemic reform strategy that builds human capacity. This complex definitional terrain is situated within theoretical mentoring frameworks. Mentoring as deep, equitable learning with social transformative value is illustrated. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and other educational examples serve this purpose. Challenges to the field from alternative mentoring theory are discussed for transparency around meanings of mentoring and contributions that advance socially just relationships, organizations, and cultures. The article provides a timely and needed framework to discriminate and differentiate mentoring from other developmental relationships.