The effect of gender match on beginning teacher mentoring processes and outcomes.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Within an academic setting, newcomers need the support of a well-established member of that group to learn the unwritten rules of the game. Many mentoring relationships are pairs of people with similar characteristics, such as gender, race and age. When mentors and mentees have dissimilar characteristics, they may face unique challenges. Conscious and unconscious biases may effect how the dyad interacts. The limited literature examining the impact of mentor/protege gender on the relationship that is initiated at the beginning of a teacher's first year is a cause for concern as entry-year matches are made, especially at the middle schools and secondary schools where the ratio of male to female teachers is more balanced. Licensure for teachers is now a high stakes endeavor in the state of Ohio; therefore learning about optimum mentor/mentee pairings is critical for school districts as they hire beginning teachers.
My study investigates the causal interactions and perceptions between mentors and mentees involved in a structured mentor/supervisor program in a middle school environment where there is a fairly balanced ratio of males and females for the benefit of this study. Mentors and mentees were paired as such: Female Mentor-Female Mentee; Female Mentor-Male Mentee; Male Mentor-Male Mentee; and Male Mentor-Female Mentee. Results show that perceptions developed in like-gender and cross-gender relationships between these pairs, will have an impact on the success of the beginning teacher in terms of their teaching ability and their professionalism.