Dr Lisa Gentle publishes doctoral research on caregiving and mentoring relationships
25 September 2024
Research Manager and Fellow Dr Lisa Gentle has completed her attachment-based psychology PhD on the relationship between caregiving and mentoring.
Dr Gentle’s doctoral research examines the extent to which unconscious assumptions about how caregivers should help children overcome a short-term difficulty is related to their unconscious thoughts about how mentors should help their mentees.
As an experienced nursery nurse, college tutor, mentor, counsellor and mental health worker, the theme of relating to people and understanding their point of view has been a thread throughout the various roles Dr Gentle has held in her career so far. Her PhD research was supervised by her Director of Studies, Associate Professor Dr Pelham Carter and her supervisors Dr Dean Petters and Professor Craig Jackson and was awarded by Birmingham City University.
The topic of Dr Gentle’s doctoral thesis grew out of these experiences. It focuses on using two assessment methods – the Attachment Script Assessment and the Mentoring Script Assessment – to capture people’s unconscious assumptions about caregiving and mentoring relationships, and to analyse the relationship between the two sets of assumptions. The research also involved asking participants about their previous mentoring experiences and their attitudes toward mentoring and mentors. The information captured on unconscious assumptions, mentoring engagement and conscious attitudes towards mentoring allowed Dr Gentle to look at the relationship between all three aspects of attachment relationships and mentoring.
The research findings have allowed Dr Gentle to suggest changes to the Mentoring Script Assessment to make results more relevant to people’s engagement with mentoring, helping to improve its predictive nature. Alongside this, Dr Gentle was able to suggest changes to the Mentoring Script Assessment and Attachment Script Assessment so that they can be used in education, counselling, mentoring and other settings to help people develop their approach to both seeking help and providing help. Thus, changing the way in which the assessment methods are used, developing them into training aids rather than solely research tools.
In her role as Research Manager/Fellow, Dr Gentle intends to use the approach that has come out of her research to help mentees and mentors develop their approach to the way they seek help and provide support. She will also be carrying on her research at Norland, gathering more data to develop the findings.
Read Dr Lisa Gentle’s published doctoral thesis:
Gentle, Lisa (2024) An Examination of the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA), Mentoring Script Assessment (MSA), and the Relationship Between Secure Base Script Knowledge and Mentoring Script Knowledge. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University. Available at Lisa Gentle PhD Thesis published_Final version_Submitted Nov 2023_Final Award Jul 2024.pdf (bcu.ac.uk)
