Short-term positive shifts in attitudes, behaviours and academic outcomes are common in teen-adult mentoring partnerships.
Studies show the effects of a successful mentor-mentee partnership become apparent within a year. Because a teen’s brain is busy lopping off unused neural pathways and strengthening ways of thinking, the teenage years are a great time to establish good habits and personalised life-long skills, behaviours and attitudes to help them cope with a variety of issues.
A teenagers’ developing brain tests out its decision making skills and learns about risk and harm through experimentation. During this time, teens develop habits and personality traits that can carry on into adulthood, impacting their future lifestyle and chances of employment. This impact can be positive or negative, depending on the influences a teen is exposed to.
In their year-long study, Karcher et al. (2002) found that all mentored youth improved their sense of connectedness not only to their school, but their parents and their future, most importantly. The study also demonstrated that students with mentors felt they improved their academic achievement, while students who were not mentored reported that their sense of connectedness and achievement declined.
Mentors can help a mentee help shape their character. It is well known that the personality traits that appear in our teenage years are predictive of a wide range of outcomes, including academic success and risk of unemployment.
Part of the process of mentoring involves the mentor sharing their life’s values, meaning and purpose, which has been shown to influence mentees’ values and attitudes, key aspects of their personality (Liang et al. 2016). As a result, teens with a mentor engage in less risky behaviour (Sulimani-Aidan 2018), show greater “behavioural competence” (Liang et al. 2016) and practice “new, more adaptive and functional behaviours” (Karcher 2014). Teens with mentors often adopt coping strategies to combat stress, changing “their behaviour and mental status for the better” (Sulimani-Aidan 2019).
Practicing socio-emotional skills is embedded in the mentoring partnership. So it comes as no surprise that students with adult mentors are far more likely than those without to demonstrate strong socio-emotional skills, which for teens, according to the OECD, are:
- curiosity
- grit
- social engagement
- belongingness
- academic buoyancy
(Salmela-Aro & Upadyaya 2020)
Academically, mentors have been shown to be “a positive role model to demonstrate the value of education” and building that into the students’ sense of self (Fruiht & Wray-Lake 2013). Students with mentors are empowered with new tools and confidence to take control of their own learning (Irving, Moore & Hamilton 2003), with one study show drastically improved academic and school related outcomes in 52% of the young people (Dubois et al. 2011) and another showing students’ improved perception “as more capable in the academic context” as a result of a mentor’s “social approval and support” (Marino et al. 2020). This is particularly the case with mentors who have strong educational attainment, which is “strongly associated with positive changes in youths’ educational expectations” (Chang et al. 2010).
Overall, mentors can help teenagers face challenging conditions to focus on a brighter future and overcome adversity (Chang et al. 2010).
Please read my next blog to find out more about the life-changing long-term impacts of adult-teen mentorships.
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References
Chang, E.S., Greenberger, E., Chen, C., Heckhausen, J. & Farruggia, S.P. 2010, ‘Nonparental Adults as Social Resources in the Transition to Adulthood: NONPARENTAL ADULTS AS SOCIAL RESOURCES’, Journal of Research on Adolescence, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 1065–82.
Salmela-Aro, K. & Upadyaya, K. 2020, ‘School engagement and school burnout profiles during high school – The role of socio-emotional skills’, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 943–64.
Karcher, M.J. 2014, ‘Cross-Age Peer Mentoring’, Handbook of Youth Mentoring, SAGE Publications, Inc., 2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks California 91320 United States, pp. 233–58, viewed 13 January 2023, <https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/hdbk_youthmentor2ed/n16.xml>.
Liang, B., Lund, T.J., Mousseau, A.M.D. & Spencer, R. 2016, ‘The Mediating Role of Engagement in Mentoring Relationships and Self-esteem among Affluent Adolescent Girls’:, Psychology in the Schools, vol. 53, no. 8, pp. 848–60.
Marino, C., Santinello, M., Lenzi, M., Santoro, P., Bergamin, M., Gaboardi, M., Calcagnì, A., Altoè, G. & Perkins, D.D. 2020, ‘Can Mentoring Promote Self-esteem and School Connectedness? An Evaluation of the Mentor-UP Project’, Psychosocial Intervention, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1–8.
DuBois, D.L., Portillo, N., Rhodes, J.E., Silverthorn, N. & Valentine, J.C. 2011, ‘How Effective Are Mentoring Programs for Youth? A Systematic Assessment of the Evidence’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 57–91.
Sulimani-Aidan, Y. 2018, ‘Present, protective, and promotive: Mentors’ roles in the lives of young adults in residential care.’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. 88, no. 1, pp. 69–77.
Sulimani-Aidan, Y. 2019, ‘Challenges in mentoring at-risk young adults: caseworkers’ perspective’, Journal of Social Work Practice, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 297–309.