March 9, 2022
Co-constructing knowledge with youth: how high-school aged mentors support their mentees’ autonomy, belonging, and competence
Mentor Canada launched its second Research into Practice Webinar Series (Winter 2022) which showcased the latest research related to youth mentoring as well as innovative programs practices.
This second webinar of its series explored how Relationships Motivation Theory (RMT) can be applied to a cross-age peer mentoring context. RMT, a mini-theory of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), focuses on the essential ingredients of high-quality relationships: feelings of autonomy, belonging, and competence. This webinar also took a look at how researchers trained high-school age mentors on the core components of RMT and how mentors then applied the language and skills they acquired to support their mentees’ feelings of autonomy, belonging, and competence.
Ben Dantzer, Ph.D. candidate in Human Development, Learning, and Culture (HDLC) at the University of British Columbia, joined us for this discussion. His research investigates the impact of mentoring relationships on human development and explores an innovative mentoring model that has been labelled Youth-Initiated Mentoring (YIM).