Presentation Schedule
Re-Centring the Emotional Labour of Mentoring: Conceptual, Psychometric, and Empirical Insights from the MEL Research Program (107712)
Session Chair: Richard O'Donovan
Thursday, 18 June 2026 15:20
Session: Session 3
Room: Room FSI 125 (1F)
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Mentoring in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is widely acknowledged as pivotal to preservice teacher development, yet the emotional demands placed on mentors remain largely invisible in policy, training, and research. This presentation synthesises findings from a three stage research program that reconceptualises mentoring as emotional labour, develops the first psychometrically validated tool to measure this labour, and examines how mentors’ emotional labour capacity varies across demographic and professional groups. The first phase introduces the Mentoring as Emotional Labour (MEL) framework, which positions emotional labour at the centre of mentoring and identifies four interrelated dimensions mediated by emotional intelligence: EI + Self, EI + Others, EI + Tasks, and EI + Context. The second phase reports on the development and Rasch validation of five MEL scales (MEL 15 and four subscales), establishing strong psychometric integrity and item level fairness. The third phase presents a large scale contextual validity study (N = 341), revealing that mentoring experience—not teaching experience—is the strongest predictor of emotional labour capacity, with gender and sector showing minimal influence. Together, these findings challenge entrenched assumptions that effective mentoring is a natural extension of teaching and demonstrate the need for targeted mentor development that explicitly addresses emotional labour. The MEL framework and scales offer a theoretically grounded, empirically validated foundation for strengthening mentor preparation, informing policy reform, and elevating the emotional dimensions of mentoring in ITE.
Authors:
Richard O'Donovan, Monash University, Australia
Mary-Clare Relihan, Monash University, Australia
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Richard O'Donovan is a University Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer at Monash University in Australia
See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule
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