Mentoring across Differences: How Race and Class Shape the Youth Mentoring Process

Background: This qualitative interview study examines the ways youth and adult volunteer mentors navigate cultural differences in formal mentoring relationships. Strong relationships with adults have been identified as a key ingredient for healthy psychological development in adolescence (Scales & Leffert, 1999). Formal mentoring programs match youth living in single-parent homes or from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., low-income) with an unrelated adult in the hope that a caring and supportive relationship will develop. However, research has shown that the adults with whom youth have naturally occurring mentoring relationships tend to share similar racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds (e.g., Galbo & Demetrulias, 1996) whereas the adults youth are matched with in formal mentoring programs tend to have different backgrounds (Grossman & Tierney, 1998). Examinations of whether there are differences in the benefits to youth of same- versus cross-race matches in formal programs have yielded mixed results (DuBois, et al., 2002; Rhodes, 2002; Rhodes, et al., 2002). The field is virtually silent on social class differences.

Methods: In the present study, qualitative interview data with male and female adolescents and adults collected for two related studies of mentoring processes were analyzed in the service of examining how mentors and youth navigate cultural differences in their mentoring relationships. In-depth (Johnson, 2002), semi-structured (Seidman, 1991) interviews were conducted with 79 adults (n= 44) and adolescents (n= 35) who had participated in either long standing mentoring relationships (a minimum of 1 year) or in relationships that ended before the initial 9-month commitment had been met. The adult mentors were 19-55 years of age and predominantly White. The adolescents were 10-17 years of age and racially and ethnically diverse. The transcriptions of the interviews were analyzed in three ways. Employing a holistic-content approach (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998), a thematic analysis was conducted by two coders using the qualitative analysis software ATLAS.ti. Conceptually clustered matrices (Miles & Huberman, 1994) were then constructed to detect patterns in the themes across the interviews.

Results: The analyses yielded descriptive information about the ways that cultural differences impeded the development of some of the mentoring relationships and how in other cases the participants were able to bridge these differences and forge a close and lasting relationship. Prominent themes included (a) variations in the levels of self-awareness and openness to cultural differences among mentors, (b) variations in the ways mentors managed expectations and differences in cultural values, and (c) discrepancies between youth's and mentors' understandings of the youth's background and relational worlds.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the complexity of youth mentoring relationships established through formal programs and the need for further research on how cultural differences shape the mentoring process. The findings offer possible insights into the mixed results found in previous quantitative studies of same- versus cross-race mentoring relationships. This study also suggests that training directed toward helping volunteer mentors identify some of their culture and class-based values and beliefs and develop skills for effectively engaging in cross-cultural relationships with youth may enhance the likelihood of success of some mentoring relationships.