Mentoring in Graduate Schools of Education: Mentors’ Perceptions

A sample of 1,088 professors in colleges and departments of education were surveyed to study mentoring relationships from the mentors’ point of view. About half of them returned the demographic instrument; half of these currently had mentees. Using O’Neil’s theory of mentoring, a Likert-scale instrument was developed. Results indicated that mentors feel mentoring is important to them as well as to their students. In a multivariate multiple regression, age was a significant predictor of mentoring score; sex and professorial rank were not significant. Younger professors reported more depth to their mentoring relationships, and older professors reported more breadth.