Innovative Approaches to Mentoring

This conceptual article explores how the principled innovation (PI) framework can challenge and structure multi-participant co-construction of innovation processes striving to enhance quality in mentoring. In a time when innovations in education contexts are plentiful and diverse, the authors illustrate how PI can be used to benefit innovative co-construction activities. We also use an ongoing project whose goal is to develop tools for mentoring to exemplify how PI can guide and challenge innovation. The PI approach is found to offer a structure that enforces activities that involve multiple actors while being mindful of their educational needs. The approach also allows flexibility in each stage. We catalogue the benefits and posit that the framework can be suitable for a larger research and development agenda with potential to engage multiple actors such as researchers, mentors, mentees, technicians and lawyers in systematic co-construction in innovation.