Vygotsky Mentoring Theory

teacher and develop their confidence without being jusdgemental (as cited in Wang & Odell, 2002, p. 493). Although the mentee's emotional and psychological attachment to the mentor serves as an armor while coping with stressful situations in the classroom, this attachment is also proven to be detrimental for mentee’s further professional development as a teacher (Wang & Odell, 2002). As Wang's research has demonstrated, those student teachers whose mentors practised the humanistic mentoring style, eventually, lacked the ability to form their own teaching approach and ended up developing the practices and ideas “closely resembling those of their mentors but often differing from the reform-minded visions that they held before their internship”,

(2013) claim. Some researchers in mentoring (e.g. Fairbanks et al., 2000; Graves, 2010; Hudson, 2016) subscribe to the social constructivist theory of Vygotsky as a framework for mentoring, and take its basic principles such as “knowledge is constructed by learners, learning involves social interaction, and learning is situated” (as cited in Graves, 2010, p. 15) as a foundation for building mentoring relationship. Meanwhile, Richter et al. (2013) have generated their own framework, according to which all mentoring styles may fall under two categories, such as transmission-oriented mentoring and constructivist-oriented mentoring (p. 168). Transmission-oriented mentoring style is related to behaviorist learning theory, where knowledge is provided by the experts (mentors) to the “passive recipients of information” (Richter et al., 2013, p. 168), or novices. Therefore, transmission-oriented mentoring is heavily hierarchical, “manifesting the status quo” relationship (Richter et al., 2013, p. 168). In contrast, constructivist-oriented mentoring refers to the constructivist learning paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 1994), where both sides are engaged in active collaboration and learn throughout the process (Richter et al., 2013, p. 168). Moreover, as experiment has shown, those beginning teachers whose mentors were using a constructivist-oriented

(2005). According to their study, mentoring styles fall under three major categories, known as: responsive, interactive, and directive (Young et al., 2005, p. 174). Responsive mentoring style mainly hinges on mentor's guidance and direction when mentees need it, i.e. while facing problems or asking questions (Young et al., 2005, p. 174). The responsive mentor usually plays the role of a “teacher aide, advisor, cheerleader, resource or guide” (Young et al., 2005, p. 174, p. 175). As Young et al. (2005) elaborate, “the responsive mentor wants to be needed, but accepts that there is a time when a protégé will seek independence” (p. 175), thereby assuming that the mentee eventually will be given some space for the professional realization. Another, so-called interactive mentoring style, pertains all the traits of collaborative relationship, when both sides are counted as partners and “feel invested in each other, albeit in somewhat different ways” (Young et al., 2005, p. 176). Interactive mentor usually plays the role of “a friend, a colleague, and trusted advisor” (Young et al., 2005, p. 176), willing to be supportive and caring. At the same time, the main caveat of such relationship, as Young et al. (2005) warn, dwells in the mentor’s hesitation of giving critical feedbacks so as not to hurt the mentee’s feelings and not to sour the existing relationship. As opposed to interactive