Re-thinking the Mentoring Relationship: Gabriel Marcel, Availability and Unavailability

Abstract

This chapter addresses the intractable problem of how to find time to do mentoring well in the context of higher education. It begins by showing how this is an issue across different sectors, and is a key indicator not only of the quality of mentoring practices generally but also of mentee satisfaction with them. The chapter then turns to consider a different way of thinking about this problematic issue of time for mentoring by turning to the work of the French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). In particular, it reflects on what his ideas of disponibilité and indisponibilité (commonly translated as “availability” and “unavailability” respectively) might offer to our thinking about the mentoring relationship. The chapter considers how Marcel’s relational ethics can offer an original perspective on mentoring in two respects: first, to move away from the merely technical aspects of mentoring; second, to help us think beyond a transmissive model of mentoring to something more relationally rich. This allows us to see mentoring not predominantly as the dissemination of expertise (in which there might be serendipitous moments of learning for both mentor and mentee) and towards mentoring as an expression of reciprocal practices of learning and development in which the fate of both mentor and mentee are worked out through their radical availability to each other.