Transformative learning of mentors from an immigrant workplace connections program

ABSTRACT

Mentorship programs have been deployed within immigrant and settlements services to integrate newcomers to the Canadian labor market. These programs are often assessed for their impacts on immigrant mentees. Little attention has been paid to how they may have influenced mentors. In this context, this study, from the perspective of transformative learning, examines the experiences of 19 mentors who were involved in a mentorship program designed to enhance the employment prospects for immigrant professionals in Canada. Findings indicated that in the process of mentoring immigrants with diverse backgrounds, mentors engaged in both informational and transformational learning. Through informational learning, the mentors expanded their cultural and work-related knowledge, hence their life horizons. For some mentors, their learning was also transformational. Some developed new awareness of and relation to the self. Some also started recognizing the structural and cultural barriers facing newcomers, and sometimes taking actions to effect social change. Both kinds of learning – informational and transformational – we argue, may contribute to disrupting relations of inequality between newcomers and the host society. The study suggests ways through which mentoring programs can contribute to a two-way process of integration involving changes and learning for both newcomers and the host society.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformative learning
• integration
• mentoring

Acknowledgements

We thank Vicheth Sen and Ee-Seul Yoon for the research assistance and are grateful to our colleagues Dr Michelle Stack and Dr André Elias Mazawi for their feedback on this paper. We appreciate the work of Prof. David Boud, the journal editor and the feedback from peer reviewers, which are instrumental to the final production of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Hongxia Shan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She specializes in adult education, immigrant studies, work and learning and qualitative research. She has published in journals such as Adult Education Quarterly, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Workplace Learning, Journal of Continuous Studies, Work, Employment and Society, and Canadian Journal for Studies in Adult Education.

Shauna Butterwick is a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Her main area of teaching and research is in adult learning and education. She brings a feminist and decolonizing perspective to her research on formal, informal, and social movement learning of adults who are situated on the margins of mainstream society.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge that this work was supported by a UBC Faculty of Education Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant.