Professional Mentoring: Development

Sustained professional learning, critical reflection and development

Develop your practice through continuing dialogue and inquiry

Professional development is rarely a straightforward process of identifying a goal, acquiring new skills and applying them. Our professional understanding develops through experience, changing responsibilities, relationships, critical reflection and engagement with new ideas. Some questions require time to explore. New responsibilities may reveal unexpected challenges. Initial learning interests may develop into broader questions about professional identity, institutional expectations or the direction of our practice. Professional Mentoring — Development provides a six-month opportunity for sustained mentoring, combining professional dialogue with relevant educational perspectives and continuing reflection upon practice. Drawing upon the philosophy and pedagogy of Paulo Freire, our approach treats professional development as an active and critical process in which participants examine their experience, question assumptions and develop their understanding through dialogue. Rather than following a fixed developmental formula, mentoring responds to the participant's evolving professional interests and circumstances.

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Who is this package for?

Professional Mentoring: Development may be appropriate if you are:

Undertaking a significant professional transition.
Developing within a particular professional field.
Assuming new or emerging leadership responsibilities.
Seeking sustained engagement with a specialist area of practice.
Exploring questions about professional identity and direction.
Looking to connect educational learning with continuing professional experience.
Developing practice in circumstances involving complex organisational responsibilities.

The longer engagement is particularly valuable where professional questions are likely to evolve through experience and reflection.

What does the mentoring involve?

The programme begins with a discussion of your professional background, current circumstances and developmental interests. Together with your mentor, you will identify an initial focus for the work, while recognising that new questions may emerge over the following months. Regular mentoring conversations provide opportunities to examine professional experiences, consider relevant knowledge and perspectives, question assumptions and explore developments in your practice. Your mentor may introduce selected educational materials, readings or other resources relevant to the areas being discussed. Periodic reviews allow you to consider how your understanding is developing and whether the focus of the mentoring needs to change. The concluding session provides an opportunity to reflect upon the engagement as a whole and consider your continuing professional learning.

What's included?

A six-month mentoring engagement.
Twelve individual sessions of 60 minutes, normally held twice monthly.
An initial discussion and agreement of the developmental focus.
Regular mentoring conversations informed by relevant professional experience.
Selected educational input and resources, where appropriate.
Periodic reviews of learning and emerging questions.
A concluding discussion of continuing professional development.

Specialist mentoring

Professional Mentoring: Development can be particularly appropriate for people wishing to deepen their engagement with an area of specialist professional practice. Changemakers supports mentoring provision across fields including critical pedagogy, community education, leadership, community development, public services, the third sector and the social economy. Mentor availability and the relevance of particular expertise will be discussed before an engagement is agreed.

Professional development as continuing inquiry

We do not regard professional development simply as the accumulation of competencies or the pursuit of individual advancement. Professional practice is shaped by institutional conditions, social relationships, organisational priorities and questions of power and responsibility. A sustained mentoring relationship provides opportunities to examine these influences alongside the knowledge, experience and judgement involved in professional work. It also allows learning to be revisited as circumstances develop, connecting critical reflection with continuing practice and the possibilities for collective as well as individual action.

Begin a conversation

If you are interested in a sustained period of professional mentoring, we invite you to discuss your circumstances, interests and the expertise that may be available.

Tell us about your goals. We will discuss the right approach with you before agreeing a package and arranging payment.

For a shorter engagement concentrating on a particular area of professional practice: