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The purpose of this paper is to explore the key challenge(s) experienced by employers, employees and academics during work based learning (WBL) programmes at undergraduate level. The idea of academic mentors is proposed as an aid to addressing the challenges common to WBL programmes.

The case study presented in this paper involves a large multinational organisation and a higher education institution, both of which are based in Ireland. Interviews were used to explore the outcome(s) of a WBL programme.

The challenges associated with WBL place demands on the design of curriculum, pedagogy and accreditation. The use of academic mentors can help translate academic knowledge into workplace practice; and address challenges which are common in WBL programmes.

The understanding of best practice in the design of WBL programmes is enriched. A role for academics as mentors is identified and the implications explored.

The success of WBL can be linked to the relationships that form between employers, employees and academics. There is evidence that the academic is central to the development of these relationships.

Student welfare and wellbeing is crucial to successful postgraduate study, regardless of the global location in which the study is taking place, making it an international issue. This study sought to add to the conversations occurring globally on this topic, focusing particularly on exploring academic faculty participation in higher education postgraduate taught (PGT) student mentoring initiatives.

By applying two theories, social exchange theory (SET) and equity theory (ET), faculty participation in postgraduate mentoring was explored and examined. A qualitative methodology, comprising 19 semi-structured interviews with faculty participating as mentors, was conducted. Data was analysed using template analysis, with SET and ET used to create thematic templates.

The application of SET and ET enabled faculty participation to be understood in terms of the perceived equity, costs and rewards of mentoring. Costs can be significant, sometimes outweighing the benefits, thus endangering the viability and sustainability of the PGT mentoring initiative. Analysis suggested two distinct types of “mentor mindsets” exist, which influence the perception of investments, equity, costs and rewards.

As higher education institutions face increasing pressure to support student welfare, it is imperative that personalised support is put under scrutiny so management practices can be established that support and encourage academic faculty participation in these support initiatives. This paper recommends how institutions can allay the costs of mentoring by considering mentor recruitment, selection, training and other supportive measures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of student engagement in UCL’s Transition Mentoring scheme upon the individuals who take the role of mentor.

The study used data gathered from questionnaire responses from four cohorts of mentors from 2008‐2011.

The findings suggest that by assuming the role of mentor, students experience a development in their ability to critically reflect on their skills, knowledge and approaches to learning. From this increased awareness of their learning conceptions, and critical evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses, mentors actively develop new methods to accelerate their academic and personal development. In this way, the act of mentoring other students seems to enable the mentors to develop a more critical learner self‐concept. Through this process, many mentors experience a transformation from the learner they were before they took the mentoring role.

This paper explores the role peer learning plays in the development of students’ learning conceptions and is of value to researchers and practitioners with an interest in student engagement and the development of learner identities.

This paper provides an overview of the role and contribution of mentoring in the context of a degree programme in which students spend their second and third years in‐company. As well as describing the process within the context of the degree, the paper examines the particular mentoring design features. Of specific interest is the shared mentoring role of academic members of staff and in‐company managers, and the variety of roles adopted by each of them, including coacher, facilitator, networker, counsellor. In addition, the mentors share a role in assessing students’ work in relation to their skills development, focusing on transferable skills, namely: communication, teamworking, adaptability and leadership. This paper draws upon findings of primary research conducted with the mentoring teams that exist within the wide range of consortium companies that sponsor the second and third years of the degree programme and Nottingham Business School. The paper reports the perceived benefits of such a mentoring process for academic and practitioners working in partnership to support and enhance the students’ learning experience.

Mentoring of junior faculty members (i.e. professors) in higher education has been documented to be critical to their academic success which most often takes the form of receiving tenure and/or promotion to higher academic ranks at universities in the USA. A “junior faculty member” would be defined as someone who has not yet been tenured or promoted and is usually within the first five years of their academic appointment. However, mentoring relationships can sometimes be difficult to build and momentum for continuous mentoring throughout the pre-tenure period can be a challenge to maintain. One of the concerns identified by mentees is the importance of regular meetings with mentors and the concomitant difficulty of knowing what to address in these meetings so as to make them productive and helpful. Mentors, most often senior faculty members, note that they do not always know the most relevant issues to discuss with junior faculty during mentoring meetings. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In an effort to address these issues, the authors describe here the development of using creative technology to support a new mentoring system that provides structured prompts and reminders to both mentors and mentees and uses tools to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the mentoring relationship.

This paper highlights a pilot program, describing the rationale for and stages in the development of an e-mail-based and mobile-based program to improve the quality of mentoring for junior faculty at one higher education institution. Focus group data provided by stakeholders (e.g. faculty, department chairs, and associate deans) are provided.

Professional development and academic success for junior faculty members may be strengthened by greater attention to formal mentoring strategies such as the one described here.

The purpose of this paper is to observe different aspects of working relationships between supervisees/mentees with their academic supervisors/mentors from the mentees’ perspective. Respondents were asked about networking, instrumental, psychological help received from their mentors and their working relationships with their mentors.

A descriptive study was carried out in the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, a public university of Pakistan. Data were collected from its main campus of Islamabad only, the capital of Pakistan. Respondents were Master of Science (MS) and PhD level students actively engaged in research projects/theses with their mentors. A final sample of 104 respondents was used for data analysis, comprising of 65 MS and 39 PhD students, from six departments offering graduate programs. Descriptive analysis was mainly used here to observe mean differences (ANOVA) based on control variables of supervisees gender, academic program, supervisor designation, gender and selection.

Major significant mean scores differences were observed between supervisees who selected supervisors themselves and those who were assigned supervisors by the concerned department. In academic programs (MS vs PhD), some significant differences in instrumental and psychological help were observed, whereas no significant differences were found on gender basis (both supervisees and supervisors), supervisor designation and supervisees’ category (full-time, part-time and faculty on leave).

This study endeavored to observe relationships between supervisees and their supervisors in an academic environment using descriptive analysis. No such particular research in literature has been made earlier on national level and thus this study tries to fill that gap. This research’s outcomes can be useful to all the concerned parties i.e. the mentor, supervisees and the graduate school. Mentors can assess how supervisees rate the supervision style and contribution. Supervisees can benefit from the experiences of their fellows and the graduate schools can assess which aspects of relationship matter most to the supervisees at different levels.

University-affiliated mentors serve as liaisons between schools and pre-service teachers during practicum placements, offering academic, administrative and relational support. In the context of academic workload intensification, increasing student numbers and the need to respond to issues as they occur in time-pressured environments, the wellbeing of mentors can become compromised. Mentor wellbeing is explored, highlighting corollary impacts of threats to pre-service teacher wellbeing on those who support them.

A descriptive single case-study explored mentor lived experiences of wellbeing during the pre-service teacher practicum placement and mentoring process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with mentors supervising pre-service teacher professional experience placements. Adopting a shadowed data approach, mentors shared their own experiences and reflected on the experiences of others. Data was analysed using thematic content analysis.

Mentor and pre-service teacher wellbeing experiences exhibited similar wellbeing indicators, including personal and professional stress, workload strains and ethical dilemmas. Many mentors felt invisible in terms of supports for their own self-care as the focus was on meeting practicum stakeholder and student support needs rather than their own wellbeing.

Changes to professional experience practices must consider potential impacts on pre-service teachers, in-school supervisors and the university-affiliated mentors as the wellbeing of each is potentially impacted the wellbeing of others in this professional experience triad. Increasing emphasis on work-integrated learning experiences across multiple disciplines invites future comparison and contrast of wellbeing experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to expose the impact of the shortage of senior academics, particularly professors, in Australian accounting schools, to relate the way one school addressed this shortage through a mentoring scheme, and to challenge existing institutional arrangements.

This is a contextualised qualitative case study of a mentoring scheme conducted in an Australian accounting school. Data collected from semi‐structured interviews, personal reflections and from Australian university web sites are interpreted theoretically using the metaphor of a “green drought”.

The mentoring scheme achieved some notable successes, but raised many issues and challenges. Mentoring is a multifaceted investment in vocational endeavour and intellectual infrastructure, which will not occur unless creative means are developed over the long term to overcome current and future shortages of academic mentors.

This is a qualitative case study, which, therefore, limits its generalisability. However, its contextualisation enables insights to be applied to the wider academic environment.

In the Australian and global academic environment, as accounting professors retire in greater numbers, new and creative ways of mentoring will need to be devised. The challenge will be to address longer term issues of academic sustainability, and not just to focus on short‐term academic outcomes.

A mentoring scheme based on a collegial networking model of mentoring is presented as a means of enhancing academic endeavour through a creative short‐term solution to a shortage of accounting professors. The paper exemplifies the theorising power of metaphor in a qualitative study.

This study examined the characteristics of research mentors that successfully support underrepresented racially minoritized undergraduate (URMU) students in education research.

An exploratory case study approach was employed to gain insight into the characteristics. The data sources used to inform this study included surveys and artifacts from eight URMU students who participated in a national grant-funded research apprenticeship fellowship program.

Results revealed three key findings about the characteristics that research mentors need to possess to successfully support URMU students in education research. These characteristics include a willingness to (1) invest time and effort in the mentor–mentee relationship, (2) share relevant knowledge and expertise about education research and (3) serve as sponsors to support and promote their mentees' educational research goals and endeavors.

The results have the potential to improve the quality of successful research mentorship opportunities for URMU students in education research by demonstrating the qualities and importance of these mentoring relationships. Higher quality mentoring relationships have the power to encourage URMU students to persist into graduate school and/or the education research profession via knowledge sharing, support and social capital. This is particularly important as education research – which still largely privileges Eurocentric research perspectives and methods – continues to take much needed steps toward racial and cultural diversity.

Most undergraduate research mentorship literature – and especially that literature highlighting the needs of URMU students – focuses on students in STEM, leaving gaps in knowledge related to students in education research. By focusing on the latter, this study seeks to extend our knowledge of the research mentorship needs of URMU students in education research.

Scholarly studies on mentoring have mostly focused on traditional mentor–mentee relationships, with little or no emphasis on how institutionalized mentoring activities that include different pedagogical approaches could be used to enhance the professional development of academics. To address this knowledge gap, this article examines how an institutionalized multilevel mentoring program could be used to enhance the professional development of early-career academics and academics in designated groups in a South African university.

The data for the study were gathered from 18 mentees and 2 program administrators using semi-structured interviews. The data gathered were assessed by way of thematic analysis that involved a detailed process of identifying, analyzing, organizing, describing and reporting the themes that were developed from the data set.

The findings revealed that when mentees participate in different mentoring and professional development activities that are structured based on different pedagogies, they can engage in higher-order thinking processes and develop multidisciplinary experiences within an expanded professional learning community. Enabled by the situated learning setting, mentees can negotiate the meaning of their professional practice within a professional community and comprehend the nuanced pedagogical approaches including scaffolding learning used by mentors to shape their career trajectory and guide them to secure promotions.

The current study contributes to the scholarly discourse on situated learning by showing that mentoring could be planned and implemented as a pedagogical endeavor with diverse learning activities and structured as a form of professional development program within a professional community.