Trends in digital mentoring for language teachers: Promising practices, caveats, and future directions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the future of mentoring by focusing on digital mentoring of language and TESOL teachers in higher education with a lens on nurturing the faculty‐student dynamic in primarily online/digital/blended teaching contexts. We also focus on a review of recent extant literature from the last ten years (2012‐2022) on the topic in three key categories. The paper draws upon a framework of connectivism and networked knowledge as well as a constructivist approach to learning. A constructivist model for digital mentoring builds on students’ needs, knowledge, and experience, seeing the instructor and student mentoring dynamic in multi‐faceted ways. Mentoring in a digital era draws on frameworks that suggest that mentors and mentees are part of connected communities, especially digitally connected communities. Digital mentoring has been used across both synchronous and asynchronous learning contexts (e.g., email, videoconference, etc.) and increasingly over social media (e.g., Twitter).