The Centre for Educational Leadership Research, University of Waikato is proud to host the second Transforming Together coaching and mentoring conference. This international conference is for coaches and mentors, researchers and practitioners, students of coaching and mentoring, and interested parties working in all fields. It seeks to provide a platform for participants to connect; to deepen their knowledge of coaching and mentoring; and to contribute to the generation of quality research, theory, knowledge and expertise about coaching and mentoring.

The conference whakatauki, Kia honotahi te puāwaitanga, captures the essence of coaching and mentoring in a culturally diverse world. Bestowed upon the inaugural conference by Te Kura Toi Tangata Faculty of Education Kaiurungi, Karaitiana Tamatea, kia is the predicate preceding subsequent words of encouragement. Honotahi means being unified, or coming together, and te puāwaitanga denotes blooming, evolving, or transforming. This conference especially welcomes contributions that highlight diversity in coaching and mentoring relationships, within and across national borders.

Conversation will again be a key strategy of the conference and is intended to generate communicative learning that “transforms problematic frames of reference – sets of fixed assumptions and expectations (habits of mind, meaning, perspectives, mindsets) – to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change” (Mezirow, 2003, p. 58). Participants will have opportunities to explore the ways in which coaches and mentors apply a range of approaches that lead to effective, transformative and sustained change.