Mentoring and Support Development

Mentoring and Support Development Carla George (March 2018) 

II. LEARNING STRATEGIES Abstract— This paper explains about the aspects of mentoring and coaching that apprentices go throughout their workplace .

I. INTRODUCTION Both coaches and mentors have a duty towards imparting knowledge towards apprentices and ensuring that they provide an appropriate level of support so that they can understand the nature of the tasks carried out in their job role.

Mentors will use different forms of resources to impart knowledge to their learners such as diagrams, verbal communication and help sheets. Other strategies used could be questioning and assessment, their aim is to help learners to understand why tasks are carried out in a certain manner.

Dennen defines coaching as someone providing guidance or assistance to the learner ensuring that they are completing the task within the guidelines. Coaching can be misconstrued as a mentor but in accordance to Denman they carry out the same duties. In terms of career development, the mentor will be involved in providing career choices and opportunities in moving in the right direction whilst a coach will be assisting with the tools provided ensuring the learner achieves their objective.

M Eraut defines informal learning as being invisible, during his research where he interviewed participants to discuss their learning experiences on the job. Their responses were involvement of educational background alongside training and other working practices. His definition of informal learning is an experience that is unintentional, unintended and unstructured he explains this occurs during the stages of formal learning.

P Hager supports elements of cognition he describes how learning takes place in the workplace such as communication of ideas, collecting and analyzing ideas, ICT Technology, solving problems, working within a team, planning, organizing activities and development of techniques. He explains that transfer of work experience is used by reflecting on past experiences in a new work setting.

Superstition learning which involves carry acting on self-decision that goes against organization’s practice. This type of learning is based on a success rate and targets without failure.

Disadvantages of this type of learning that there are opportunities to fail this type of learning will require strategy an appropriate level of though including a great deal of self-confidence. Organizations will allow for this regardless of their present situations it’s all about risk taking and in an ICT environment this is how you learn when constructing modern technologies.

III. ICT SUPPORT The journey from a novice to an expert learner can vary in according to the demands within the ICT industry. Peter Weiß, Dudley Dolan, Wolffried Stucky, Peter Bumann describes that within Europe and Germany that addresses current technological changes such as digital media, data mining, software programming, hardware and software support. In the UK there is a huge demand for Java programmers and web development including ICT graduates with business analysis skills.

The learners I spoke with always have access to expert advice even if they work in isolation they prefer to be focus on the task with minimal distractions. They also develop confidence through use of ICT resources and previous knowledge acquired from their past educational establishment. They also have the opportunities towards attending seminars and attend a Vendor qualification course for further expert advice and knowledge. Overall both horizontal and vertical development are utilized to ensure learners are provided with a well-rounded learning experience.

D Guile explains the challenges that learners encounter when integrating both development methods and this is mainly down to curriculum and existing education systems as the approaches are very formal. He explains further that it is difficult to separate both development methods as learners will focus on the task at hand as well as rely on their supervisor that will support them through the processes of relating their formal and workplace development.

Feedback from an apprentice he is a novice programmer as his strengths is based on the financial side of project management his barriers are understanding syntax errors, parameters his employer must simplify each strand of code to help him to understand as well as write an explanation to engage his learning.

M Eraut explains during informal learning process that there are barriers concerning HR processes, lack of resources, and disorganization of activities, unable to assess one’s work duties, conflicting relationships and deficient performance. He explains that these issues vary depending upon experience and nature of the job. To determine the factors explained good assessments of workplace performance needs to be examined closely to understand what the apprentice goes through every day.

He describes that the individual goes through a continuous process of learning, thinking or times act upon a decision without thinking. This will involve some discussion on this situation. M Eraut also adds to his model elements of situated awareness and moments where the apprentice will be in a position of self-management involving making rash decisions.

Feedback from other apprentices that they have benefited using the expansive approach as they have been able to develop further knowledge and use their existing experiences develop confidence within their job role. They also benefited from both training off job and on job as they had the opportunities to develop a good balance of experience in future they can apply this in their future careers.

Lave and Wenger strongly stipulates that learning through participation is key, but they have come under criticisms by formal education institutions that there is a weak barrier towards this method of learning. Their concerns surrounds adopting traditional practice and how this might be appropriate in line with their procedures.

The Conservative Government proposes changes towards April 2020 that will emphasize the following: Robust training programme that will provide an opportunity for transferable skills for all ages eg. Maths and English.

Ensure that all apprenticeships are attractive and provide the opening doors towards aspiring adults and young learners towards successful careers.

Availability of all apprenticeships regardless of age and qualification.

Apprenticeships will be targeting employer’s requirements and be realistic.

I worked with a small company and they allow their apprentices to learn because of trial and error with a combination of guided learning when placing processes in place towards handling their customers. They have recently undergone training on how to troubleshoot and handle ICT register systems bear in mind they have no experience of this and they have acquired customers with these types of systems within their businesses.

The trial and error will relate to personal interpretations and with trial and error on resolving issues in place. Small organizations have the scope for experimental learning down to lack of corporate procedures they tend to move away from this as they solely believe to accomplish their objectives is down to self-learning rather than using the black box. The company ensures that they employ those that are multi-skilled and are willing to progress forward.

Barbara Levitt and James G March advised however there are pitfalls with this as this type of learning strategy is successful for those that are specialized and those that may not have this type of experience will stumble. They also mention that organizations will favor a new procedure over the previous one that has been successful in the pass causing inadequacies.

These issues are often the case within organizations as there are at time are disputes amongst employees on how to carryout procedures and coming to an understanding and a decision. This often decided without intervention and most of the time forced changed is imposed upon the organization.

IV. SUMMARY In organizations, you will never find the perfect setting to work in accordance to Wenger’s view that all organizations should adopt a structured social system to allow for others to fit in where they feel comfortable in sharing ideas and experience whether its past or present, and adapting the entire process to our personal perspective.

REFERENCES [1] Hager P Workplace Learning [2] Experienced Based Learning Lee Andresen, David Boud and Ruth Cohen [3] Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, V.18, (1), 32-34.