Posts

Creating a culture of belonging: How teachers and mentors can help students navigate the return to in-person learning

by Jean E Rhodes School closures and the loss of face-to face instruction remain persistent struggles as schools work to contain COVID-19. In recent months, researchers have begun to publish studies and reports that have explored the academic and social toll that these closures have taken on students academic and social-emotional well-being. In a new […]

The revolving door: Study explores ways to prevent volunteer burnout and attrition

Allen, J.A., & Mueller, S.L. (2018). The revolving door: A closer look at major factors in volunteers’ intention to quit. Journal of Community Psychology, 41(2), 139-155. Introduction: Volunteers provide an invaluable service to non-profit organizations and communities. Unfortunately, perhaps because of the voluntary nature of the role, there is a lot of turnover among volunteers. […]

Meet Professor Heidi Levitt, expert on therapeutic relationships

  Clinical psychologist Heidi Levitt discusses what’s helpful in relationships JR:  What would say are 2 or 3 core features that need to be present in all helping relationships HL: Empathy, Congruence/Genuineness, Mutual understanding of (and agreement with) what is ‘helping’ in that relationship JR: You observed that the therapist acted as a surrogate for others’ […]

What are the keys to successful mentoring? Study has some answers

by Jean Rhodes and Elizabeth Raposa In an article in the American Journal of Community Psychology we reported on some interesting findings that have direct implications for mentoring programs. The study was entitled, the Impact of Youth Risk on Mentoring Relationship Quality: Do Mentor Characteristics Matter?- and the short answer is yes! But let’s step back […]

Study finds that cross-race mentoring is associated with reductions in perceived racism

Liao, L. C. & Sanchez, B. (2015). An exploratory study of the role of mentoring in the acculturation of Latino/a youth. Journal of Community Psychology, 43(7), 868-877. doi: 10.1002/jcop.21717 Summarized by Jessica Cunningham Background: There is very little research focused on children from immigrant families in general, and even less research on how mentoring interventions […]

2020 Mentoring Summit presentations

The National Mentoring Summit in Washington D.C. took place in late January, representing a collection of leading researchers in the field coming together to share information on the latest in mentoring news and research. While not all readers may have been able to attend the summit, there is a way for you to have the […]

Young people play vital role in funding programs that impact them at Youthprise

By Stell Simonton, Youth Today Editor’s Note: Youthprise, a Minneapolis philanthropy organization, provides a range of services to youth in the local community. Not only do they work to serve youth, but they also work alongside young people at an administrative level by requiring half of the organization’s board members to be between the ages […]

What predicts mentor self-efficacy? Hint: it starts with “E”

summarized by Stella Kanchewa, Ph.D. Larose, S. (2014). Trajectories of mentors’ perceived self-efficacy during an academic mentoring experience: What they look like and what are their personal and experimental correlates? Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 21(2), 150-174, doi:10.1080/13611267.2013.813728. Problem: Previous studies have shown that mentor’s perceived self-efficacy (MPSE), defined as the “mentor’s level of […]

Research applies sociological concepts to mentoring programs

Stanton-Salazar, R. (2016). Contributions of social capital theory and social network models in advancing the connection between students’ school-based learning and community-based opportunities for pursuing interest-driven learning. Paper presented at Power Brokers: Building Youth Social Capital through Connected Learning. University of California, Irvine.   Summarized by Justin Preston In a paper presented in the Fall […]