Social Exchange Approach (SEA) was utilized as the guiding theoretical framework to look into teachers’ perceptions of the outcomes they expected to gain from the mentoring program in which they have been involved for three years. The SEA postulates that social relationships are the result of an exchange process that aims at maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. Briefly, the SEA posits that individuals engage in relationships that help them satisfy their specific needs and address specific issues (Homans, 1958). The successful and sustainable relationships are those that offer more benefits and opportunities and present fewer costs and risks. Commitment to maintaining relationships will depend on the expected and perceived outcomes. Likewise, lethargy and breaking up may be the result of disappointed or unmet expectations (Young & Perrewé, 2000). With regard to the mentoring practice, both mentees and mentors build social interactions through the receiving and giving behaviors based on expected and perceived benefits by each side.
Drawing on the above statements, mentees participating in the SBM program presumably seek something or expect some outcomes from the mentoring relationship. For each of the support behaviors enacted by the mentor, a mentee acts or responds in a certain way. Consequently, the perceived outcomes by the mentees
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In her seminal work on mentoring, Kram (1983) stated that the mentee-mentor relationship is built on the career-related and social support that mentees expect from mentors. Hudson (2004) and Hudson, Skamp, and Brooks (2005) drew on Kram’s idea of support as the major outcome of a mentoring endeavor, and he developed a model that elicits five factors pertaining to the perceived support in specific school-based mentoring