'Composition Matters: Multi-Context Informal
Mentoring Networks for Low-Income Urban Adolescent Girls Pursuing
Healthcare Careers' (May 2009)
An article by Packard, B.W., Kim, G.J., Sicley, M., and
Piontkowski, S., in Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in
Learning, 17:2, pp 187-200
The research reported here examines how the composition of
mentoring networks can affect the ways that mentoring helps
adolescent girls from low-income urban families overcome barriers
to education and employment. It builds upon recent studies showing
that support from multiple mentors in different contexts increases
mentees' access to social capital that can help them articulate and
reach their goals, in contrast to earlier approaches that
emphasized one-on-one mentoring relationships. It focuses on girls
aspiring to careers in healthcare, which has a healthy supply of
jobs and in which positive health outcomes are associated with
professionals being demographically representative of their
patients, thus support for ethnically diverse, low-income girls in
this career may have a significant impact on their future
outcomes.
Reviewing current literature in the field, the authors describe
two broad functions of mentoring: socio-emotional (such as
encouragement to attain career goals) and instrumental (such as
coaching or sponsorship). While young people from low-income
backgrounds often receive socio-emotional support from family
members, they may lack access to the instrumental assistance that
wealthier families are often able to provide their children.
Mentors from the school and wider community could therefore make up
for this gap.
The survey, undertaken in the USA, sets out to examine the
'constellations' of mentoring networks that girls access in
pursuing their desired careers. It surveys an ethnically diverse
sample of sixty girls aged 16-18, none of whose parents had
obtained a bachelor's degree. Two-thirds were eligible for free or
reduced-lunch programmes. Using an open-chart method, they were
asked to describe all the people ('sources') who were helping them
with their educational and career plans (rather than asking them
directly about 'mentors'). This is because young people may garner
mentoring functions from those not in a formal 'mentoring' role,
while named 'mentors' may not always provide these functions. The
results were then categorized into context (home/school/community),
function (instrumental/socio-emotional) and type of instrumental
function (academic/ college/ career). These categories were then
analyzed to identify correlations between the number of mentoring
sources, context, function and type. There are some limitations in
the method: while a demographically-representative sample,
participants were drawn from a career outreach programme and had
thus already made productive steps in pursuing a healthcare career.
It examines their views at one moment in time only, a year before
applying to college when decisions may alter. Most girls were
applying for female-dominated roles for which it may have been
easier to access support. Further channels of research are
suggested, such as how adolescents not engaged in outreach
programmes construct mentoring networks, and to address the
particular challenges for young people wishing to enter
non-stereotypical careers
The authors found that nearly one-third of participants drew
mentoring functions from multiple contexts, 25% of whom listed home
and school as their 'constellation'. 62% had mentoring from more
than one source i.e. more than one individual. 47% reported that
they had both socio-emotional and instrumental functions of
mentoring. As expected, individuals having more mentoring sources
also tended to have mentoring sources from different contexts, and
received both socio-emotional and instrumental functions of
mentoring. For example, 17% of participants with a single mentor
received both functions, compared to 56% of those with two
mentoring sources, 71% of those with three and 79% of those with
four or more. In addition, when individuals drew mentoring
functions from multiple contexts, they were more likely to receive
different types of instrumental mentoring (academic and career, for
example).
The majority (65%) of mentoring was derived from the home. The
authors note that nine participants had a parent working in
healthcare, and 60% had an extended family member in that field.
These family members gave field-related instrumental mentoring,
such as healthcare careers advice or workplace visiting
opportunities. In contrast, girls whose families were not working
in healthcare received instrumental mentoring of a different
nature, such as transportation to facilitate career research or
encouragement to complete academic assignments, showing that the
context and function of mentoring are related in locally-specific
but significant ways. Case studies illustrating the participants'
involvement in mentoring relationships are also given.
These findings suggest that diversely composed networks mentors
can help bolster the resources of young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds. Cross-context, multiple-sourced mentoring can, in this
way, increase the access to the social capital young girls need in
achieving long-term educational and career success. Different
individuals can provide different skills and resources that
contribute to both personal development and practical reaching of
goals. A key observation is the importance of family in providing
different functions of support, and programmers should thus try to
engage the whole family to secure greater chances of success in
mentoring, by recognizing the role of family members and others and
showing them further ways to link young people to career
opportunities.