Mentoring has become a hot topic across a number of professional spheres in recent years. Its most important and longest established location is in education where it is now established across the world as a central part of teacher training. There have been a number of studies on how to make mentoring work, mostly from a teacher training perspective. However, this is the first wide-ranging academic critique of the concept and its application. Offering both a critical and a practical stance, the authors look at the historical and cultural aspects of mentoring and at the motivations behind it. They explore the effects on the individual - both mentor and mentee, the effects on the system and the different approaches to the idea and implementation of mentoring. This comparative study features contributions drawn from Europe, the USA and the Middle East. The authors look at a wide range of empirical studies of mentoring from those countries that have invested in it, including case studies and analyses of current practice. The book's strength is not just in the international perspective it provides but in the way in which actual cases are analysed in order to detect the difference between the much vaunted theoretical advantages promoted by policy makers and the everyday realities and complexities that arise in a scheme entirely dependent on personal relationships.