Schooling Options

Mentoring

In a mentoring arrangement the gifted or high-potential student is placed with an ‘expert’ or professional in the student’s specific area of interest. Mentors may be more general rather than academic in nature. Mentoring may also be arranged to support gifted and high potential students who may be at risk of disengaging at school and the mentor provides important support to the student endeavouring to ‘get back on track’.

There are some researchers who believe that a mentoring arrangement should not be entered into until the student has exhausted the resources at the secondary school level and until the student is perhaps ‘mature’ enough to maximise the time spent with the mentor. Normally, the student is exceptionally or profoundly gifted and with significantly advanced knowledge in the specific field.

Example

Generally, an expert in a talent domain takes school students with potential in this domain under their tutelage. As an example, a student with significantly advanced knowledge in aspects of biology enters into a mentoring arrangement with a PhD student, senior lecturer or professor in biology at a university.

The student’s interest area is often so specific as to be considered ‘exotic’ when compared to the regular curriculum. For example, a student with extensive knowledge of genetics and genetically inherited diseases exhausts the Year 12 biology teachers’ expertise and may be mentored with a researcher from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Contact may include discussion of advanced biological concepts, discussion about research interests or early career support to enter the field.

Key elements in the research

Mentors are an appropriate educational option for underrepresented gifted and high potential students, such as: students from different cultures; living in poverty; from rural areas; underachievers, and girls.

Formal Australian research into mentoring is limited although anecdotal research suggests this is a highly satisfactory option for the exceptionally gifted student; academic, social and emotional gains have been noted.

Consistently, studies of mentoring gifted minority and disadvantaged gifted students have found that the influence of a significant adult on a young person can be profound. In supporting Australian Indigenous students to complete high school, and aspire to tertiary studies, the mentoring relationship is considered as ‘one of the most significant factors which contribute to Aboriginal academic success’. (Forbes-Harper 1996, p 5)

For more information see the Mentor Guidelines (PDF - 240Kb)