These skills can be an invitation to examine, modify, or control an aspect of one's behavior. Becoming a professional incorporates both external requirements and internal self-conceptualizations. An individual's self-conceptualization associated with a career role can be viewed as one's professional identity. Professional identity issues deal with professional socialization and development, person-environment fit, and a developmental process of maturation. Effective mentors can assist beginning teachers to deal with the stages of development as professional educators by helping them work through both personal and professional challenges of the teaching profession.
Mentors play a critical role in the development of beginning teachers' professional identity.
As beginning teachers move through developmental stages, mentors' responses and approaches change and adapt to these stages. Attending is the awareness of non-verbal behavior. Active listening is used to hear similarities and discrepancies among the beginning teacher's thoughts, feelings, and actions. Also, listening for specific aspects of the beginning teacher's behavior that needs to be initiated, strengthened, or modified. This category focuses on the systematic and deliberate emphasis on certain types of content that relates to a goal within the mentoring relationship.