Mentoring and Coaching for Leadership

The final essay submission makes up 50% of your mark for this module. You can take the formative essay abstract review submitted in December and combine this with your reflections as a mentor into one essay of 2000-2500 words. Incorporate any feedback on the essay abstract review.

You can re-present or edit your thinking based on the literature and lecture content. The key challenge is to introduce insights from your mentoring experience. Your weekly reflections should form the basis of this and enable you to “edit” rather than write everything from scratch. This is your fieldwork in a classic essay template (see bulleted list below and diagram on next page).
• Abstract (optional)
• Introduction (and Methodology)
• Literature
• Field work (reflections on your mentoring and how your learnings connect, support, or dispute the literature)
• Conclusions and recommendations
This template is not mandatory, but your essay should be fluent with a single clear narrative; it is NOT simply an edit of your reading of the literature with a separate account of your experience. Go back over your literature review and weekly reflections on Moodle to pick out the key points – what is recurring, what is unexpected?
A few notes on the field work (reflection and analysis):
• Be critical. The literature may not be “right” in your experience, so feel free to challenge this. You can also give your view on the overall program, e.g. do you think it works in schools and what would you do to change it? Yet you MUST evidence your thoughts through the literature or your practical experience.
• Include quotes and perhaps feedback from your mentees and be prepared to reflect on your own journey – it may help to talk to a friend about your mentoring. Consider what you thought when you embarked on the module back in September, when you started working with your mentee/s and what you think now. You should also look to relate this forward to your future application of what you have learned as well as how you think the mentee will benefit.
• For the analysis and reflection, remember that you are not telling the mentee’s story (although you can use this as context). We are interested in how you managed the coaching experience as their mentor and how you’ve grown and developed.

Mentoring and coaching is a broad subject, and many of you will focus on specific aspects or approaches to mentoring. This is fine, but make sure you articulate why you have taken this option and don’t be afraid to challenge the assumptions you made when you started mentoring.