Mentor Attunement: An Approach to Successful School-based Mentoring Relationships
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Mentor Attunement: An Approach to Successful School-based Mentoring Relationships Julia Pryce
Published online: 6 April 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012
Abstract Despite the ongoing popularity and appeal of youth mentoring programs across myriad of contexts, the achievement of high quality relationships between adult volunteers and school-aged youth remains a vital challenge to the work of youth development professionals. This paper outlines the role of mentor attunement in the experience of relationships between volunteer adults and youth in schools. Through an in-depth, inductive analysis of qualitative data, including on-site observation of relationship development over time, attunement at varying levels is illustrated. Implications for future research and program development are discussed. Keywords
School-based mentoring Attunement Mentoring relationships
Although mentoring represents a popular and widespread intervention (Rhodes et al. 2006), the experience of transformation aspired to by the iconic mentoring relationship represents an exceptional level of effort and commitment. In fact, research suggests that many youth mentoring relationships fall short; instead, many have limited positive effects or positive effects that are temporary (Spencer 2007; Pryce and Keller 2012). In particular, the results associated with school-based mentoring relationships, which typically involve weekly shared time at a school site between a volunteer adult and school student, remain mixed (Herrera et al. 2007). Not surprisingly, those most impactful relationships are affiliated with high quality relational experiences between the mentor and mentee. Research has begun to make inroads in understanding the components of this high quality experience (Ahrens et al. 2011), representing a significant advance in a J. Pryce (&) Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work, 820 N. Michigan Ave., #1211, Chicago, IL 60611, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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field of ever expanding popularity. Over the last two decades, mentoring has emerged as arguably the ‘‘single most publicly talked about, written about, and broadly popular social intervention to improve the lives of disadvantaged youth’’ (Walker 2007). As an intervention, mentoring resides securely within two often adopted paradigms of youth development, including positive youth development (Lerner et al. 2005) and developmental assets (Leffert et al. 1998). These paradigms approach youth development from a strength-based perspective, encouraging practitioners to explore internal and external resources available to youth in contributing to successful maturation over time. This emergence implores researchers to continue efforts to understand the mechanisms by which such an intuitively appealing intervention may hold promise for young and old, alike. However, obtaining such understanding is a difficult and murky process, particularly in cases in which observation of the relationship is likely to interfere in the relationship development itself. In
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