Youth mentoring strategies and impacts on holistic competencies of secondary school students in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

There is a widespread belief that youth mentoring contributes to students’ holistic competency development, but research has not yet provided enough clarity on how exactly this contribution is made possible. To address this gap, in the current study we explore different mentoring strategies and their impacts on mentees’ holistic competency development in an extracurricular mentoring programme for secondary school students in Hong Kong. Informed by both mentors’ interviews and mentees’ written/video reflections, we present three scenarios illustrative of the connection between mentoring strategies and impacts. Through detailed vignettes, we offer a productive and situated approach to understand the extent to which certain mentoring strategies are more likely to contribute to particular holistic competency outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Generic competencies
• mentoring strategies
• secondary school students
• adolescents
• mentoring impact

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Chan, CKY], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council, under the General Research Fund [project 17200720]; and by the Quality Education Fund.

Notes on contributors

Cecilia K. Y. Chan

Dr Cecilia K. Y. Chan is the Head of Professional Development in the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. She has conducted research on topics such as the development and assessment of generic skills, educational policies, and engineering education.

Jiahui Luo

Jiahui Luo is a postgraduate student in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. She is particularly interested in the development of holistic competencies.