Although mentoring practices are widely recognised in educational settings, mentoring by the principal alongside other mentors remains largely unrecorded, making the formation of their identities as mentors an important area of inquiry. This self-study examines the evolving mentorship identity of a Salesian educator who served as a school and college principal and as an educational researcher engaged in a national mentoring mission. Six episodes of formal mentoring across institutional and national contexts, along with mentees’ feedback, were collected to reflect on mentoring experiences and contributed to the thematic analysis. The study is grounded in Bandura’s (1997) self-efficacy theory, the prepare-support-growth lens from the National Mission for Mentoring (NMM) in India, and in alignment with the Salesian educational philosophy. The findings revealed three themes that illuminated the process of mentoring identity formation: mentoring as accompanying presence, mentoring identity and leadership formation, and mentoring as a dialogic and transformative practice. The dual vantage point of practitioner and researcher enriches reflexivity and reveals how mentoring identity is shaped. This study presents a contextually embedded model for mentorship development, illuminating the development of mentoring identity through mentoring practices and feedback.
Augusty Ta (Mon,) studied this question.
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