Individualno mentorstvo, most med posameznikom in izzivom učeče se družbe

The mentor is often metaphorically represented as a bridge – he is the person who encourages others to reflect on their experiences and thus acts as the bridge, allowing the mentees to reach new forms of knowledge and abilities. The mentorship relationship is a relationship which a more experienced person has with a less experienced person in order to help him or her get integrated – as active participant – into his or hers environment (culture), professional, local, artistic or a specific domain of culture. In the spirit of late modernity and the learning society, we deal in the article with the strategies of individual mentoring that coincide with the requirements of the rapidly changing social reality. We present an analysis of the data obtained by means of a semi-structured questionnaire, reviewing a multiplicity of methods of individual mentoring at the national level, within the framework of the project The Development and Implementation of Newly Designed Programmes for Training of Professional Workers, under the auspices of the Ministry of Science, Education, Culture and Sport and the European Social Fund. Included in the project is a program- me for training of mentors for learning in pairs and (e-)mentoring at the Slovenian Third Age University. Through an interpretation of the data we determine the strategies in individual mentoring. We highlight those aspects which, at the first glance, may appear risky (e.g. promoting dichotomies), thus emphasizing the importance of creative vitality in mentoring relationships, which raises mentoring into the realm of art rather than craftsmanship