Mentoring Youth Across Cultures Incorporating Different Worldviews: A Zones of Proximal Exploration Model

Mentoring is an ongoing, regular, reciprocal process of advice-sharing, involving a mentor and a protégé in an agreed pattern over an extended period. In this article the need for cross-cultural, immigrant youth mentoring is demonstrated and acculturation issues in educational, employment, and social and family environments are highlighted. A grounded approach is described using a new conceptual model of zones of proximal exploration drawing on the work of sociocultural, educational, and developmental theorists to incorporate the social context of both parties involved in conjunction with a person-focused approach based on a new behavior motivation matrix and the work of Gardner, Kohlberg, and Maslow.