Beyond Teaching and Mentoring

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0787956171

This issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learning presents highly effective strategies of learner centered mentoring-the emerging philosophy that focuses on the learner and the process of more active and collaborative learning. As a result of rapid changes reshaping higher education, educators face continuing challenges to meet their responsibilities and must reevaluate their interactions with students, both inside and outside the classroom. Drawing from practical experience as faculty and administrators in a variety of disciplines, the authors offer guidelines to meet these challenges by optimizing student learning through classroom activities as well as peer, faculty, and professional mentoring. They address mentoring techniques in technical training; undergraduate business, science, and liberal arts studies; health professions, international study; and interdisciplinary work. Focusing on the effect of changing demographics, diverse student populations and student expectations on mentoring, the authors also provide tools particularly useful for faculty whose own education and experience have occurred in institutions with relatively homogenous populations. In the transition to a learning-focussed environment with the student at the center of the endeavor; educators will find this issue a helpful tool as they continue to play an evolving role in humanizing the educational environment.