Fact Sheet on Evidence-Based Best Practice

The Mentoring Resource Center (the training and technical assistance provider for the US Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program) has just released the latest issue in their series of Fact Sheets.

This new issue deals with a "big picture" circumstance in the world of youth mentoring: the creation and application of "evidence-based best practices."

We've all heard the term "best practices," but one of the vexing problems for any field, especially one with as much diversity and nuance as youth mentoring, is how those best practices get defined, and by whom. Researchers, policymakers, local program staff, and even mentees and their parents all may have radically different views about what best practices are and how they get applied to mentoring services. This leads to all kinds of questions for practitioners, such as "Does what works for one mentoring program apply to mine? How do I meet the requirements of funders while also honoring what 'works' in my local circumstance? And what do we even mean by 'evidence'?"

The issue is centered around the 2009 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring at Portland State University, which featured a number of compelling presenters and guest speakers all covering various aspects of these evidence-based practice questions. We were lucky enough to have several MRC staff members attend this year's event, and we use this issue of the Fact Sheet to provide a broad overview of how mentoring is using best practices, while also highlighting the outstanding research and theory presented at this year's event. Space at those Summer Institutes is rather limited, so for those of you who were not able to attend this year, this issue will be a good way to catch up on what was presented and learn some strategies to help your program address the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of evidence-based practice in the mentoring field.

You can download the current issue here: http://www.edmentoring.org/pubs/factsheet30.pdf

Back issues can all be downloaded here: http://www.edmentoring.org/publications.html