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The transition from school to higher education is a complex process. Peer mentoring is often used by institutions to facilitate this process. The purpose of this research, which was conducted at a South African university, was to determine whether a peer mentoring programme, which involved a large number of students and a limited number of mentors, could successfully assist students to adapt to the academic and psychosocial demands of university life.

A sequential explanatory mixed method design was implemented. In the first phase, a questionnaire was used to collect data to establish participants' experience of the programme. The findings from the questionnaire were used to inform the qualitative phase, in which the participants' perceptions of the benefits of the mentor programme were further explored by means of group interviews. The qualitative data were analysed using inductive qualitative content analysis.

The results indicate that a structured peer mentoring programme, in which a mentor works with up to 70 mentees in a group setting, can be a useful tool to assist with students' transition to university. The research found that the peer mentoring programme contributed to the students' academic, social and personal integration into the higher education environment.

The perspectives of mentors and faculty were not included. No comparative study with students who did not participate in the programme was conducted.

This research illustrates that it is possible to mentor large groups of disadvantaged and vulnerable students notwithstanding limited resources.

In contrast to the existing literature on peer mentoring in higher education, which focuses on one-on-one or small-group mentoring, this research suggests that peer mentoring of larger groups can also play an important role in assisting students to transition to higher education. The description of the programme and the benefits students derived from it offer other institutions with limited resources some ideas about how a peer mentoring programme can be implemented.

This study aims to describe the design of a provincial government ministry group mentoring program and examine mentees’ and mentors’ experiences in the program.

A total of 151 mentees rated their satisfaction in a post-program survey. The survey was followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 10 mentees and 11 mentors.

In all, 87 per cent of mentees rated their learning as effective. Benefits to mentees were relevance of the learning, and senior leader/mentors use of current issues, events and personal stories. Delivery through a combination of Web conferencing and collaboration technologies was most effective. Mentors learned from mentees and other mentors. Regular and full mentee participation was an identified issue. In addition, not all mentoring teams worked well together.

The selection criteria favored participants who had a positive experience. Including more participants who were disengaged or less active may have revealed what inhibited full engagement. Complex underlying systemic and cultural issues negatively affected mentee participation and mentoring team effectiveness. It is unclear whether this was caused by intrinsic or extrinsic barriers. Further study could shed light on how to address participation issues.

Selection criteria favored highly active participants who had a positive experience. Including more disengaged or less active participants may have revealed barriers to full engagement.

Despite a context of extreme organizational churn, this program delivered cost-effective and engaging learning to a large number of employees. Recommendations are made to further strengthen the program.

This contextually grounded case study will be useful to those who plan to implement a group mentoring program.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to an understanding of the relational work carried out in mentoring programmes and the implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

This study is based on field research of a mentoring programme bringing together senior and newly graduated workers in a large Swedish health care organisation. In total, 54 qualitative interviews with mentors, mentees, HR, managers and union representatives are included.

The findings point to the role of trust and a psychological sense of community in the socialisation work that goes on in relationships between the mentor and the mentee. This in turn leads to increased social capital in the form of learning and retaining workers. The conditions for being vulnerable and asking questions, as well as daring to be independent, are an essential and decisive part of constructing bonding within the professional group and bridging out to other professions and parts of the organisation.

The practical contribution from this study is the workplace conditions that are central to organising mentoring programmes, with implications for learning capabilities in future practices.

With its theoretical focus on social capital, the study shows the importance of relationships for learning and retaining both newly graduated and experienced employees in a context of high employee turnover. It is central to achieving strong and mutually beneficial relationships through continual and trustful interaction between actors. By using the concepts of social capital, socialisation agents and psychological sense of community, this study contributes to an understanding of mentoring and workplace learning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the initial outcomes of a mentoring program designed to increase the advancement prospects of racialized teachers to vice principal positions within a Canadian school district.

This program assessment documents evidence that challenges current school leadership paradigms rooted in western dominance and suggests new approaches to leadership informed by research on diversity, equity, and identity.

Survey data from 32 participants (13 mentors and 19 mentees) from Canada’s second largest school district were analyzed thematically and showed that racialized mentees generally rated their satisfaction with the program lower than did mentors (both racialized and non-racialized), particularly as it relates to feelings of inclusion and in the program’s potential to influence the recruitment and advancement of racialized employees in the district.

The findings are limited to a single mentoring program for aspiring racialized leaders within a single, large school district but reinforce similar findings from research conducted in another large Canadian urban center, the USA and UK, and are of interest in other educational contexts where leaders from diverse backgrounds are underrepresented.

The paper reinforces findings from the small number of studies on targeted leadership mentoring for specific populations. While the findings support the practice of mentoring for leaders, the authors challenge the culture-free leadership paradigm that permeates Western education literature and question its role as an underlying barrier for aspiring racialized leaders in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to discover peer mentors’ perspectives of an education doctoral (Doctorate of Education) peer mentoring program implemented in a mid-sized public institution.

Data from one focus group and an interview collected from peer mentors as part of a larger case study of mentors and mentees in a peer mentoring program for education doctoral students are presented. Four (n=4) peer mentors participated in a focus group (n=3) and an interview (n=1). Participants were asked about their perceptions of the program and their experiences as mentors.

Four themes were discovered within the data: mentors relate to social, emotional and academic life balances of mentees, mentors provide support and reassurance to mentees, mentors guide mentees to focus on the future, and mentors gain personal and professional growth from the peer mentoring program. Results indicated that mentors believed that the program was helpful for their mentees and beneficial to their own personal and professional development.

Limitations of this study include the small sample size (n=4) and the short period of time in which participants were asked to be a part of the mentoring program and reflect in focus groups and interview (one academic year). Implications of this study include the benefits of peer mentoring for both mentors and mentees alike.

In contrast to many other studies of peer mentoring programs, this peer mentoring program targeted scholar-practitioner students who were balancing full-time careers with their coursework and family lives. Thus, peer mentors focused more on career and work-life balance with mentees than mentors may in other programs, as well as finding benefit to their own professional development.

The chapter examines the role of volunteer business mentoring in potentially improving financing and financial management in under-served (i.e. schemes aim to assist deprived neighbourhoods and youth entrepreneurs) youth enterprises.

Youth entrepreneurship (commonly defined as entrepreneurs aged up to 35 years) is regarded by the OECD as under-represented, within entrepreneurship as a general social phenomenon, and young entrepreneurs as disadvantaged through being under-served. Indeed, young people with latent potential for entrepreneurship have been defined as a component of ‘Missing Entrepreneurs’ (OECD, 2013). This under-representation of nascent entrepreneurs within young people under 35 is partly theoretical. While examining entrepreneurship as a social phenomenon and taking a resource-based approach (Barney, 1991), young people are perceived at a particular disadvantage compared with older members of society. That is, however creative, they lack the experience and network resources of older members.

Theoretically, from a demand-side perspective, young people may have aspirations and the required skills for start-up entrepreneurship, but are disadvantaged from a supply-side perspective since financial institutions, such as the commercial banks, private equity investors and other suppliers of financial debt and equity, will see greater risk combined with a lack of track record and credibility (pertaining to information asymmetries and associated agency and signalling problems: Carpenter & Petersen, 2002; Hsu, 2004; Hughes, 2009; Mueller, Westhead, & Wright, 2014). This means that aspiring nascent youth entrepreneurs face greater challenges in obtaining mainstream and alternative sources of finance. Practically, unless such young entrepreneurs can call upon deep pockets of the ‘bank of Mum and Dad’ or family and friends, we can expect them to resort to pragmatic methods of stretching their resources, such as financial bootstrapping and bricolage (Mac an Bhaird, 2010; Mac an Bhaird & Lucey, 2015). Although these theoretical and practical issues have long existed for youth entrepreneurship, they have only been exacerbated in the post-2007 Global financial Crisis (GFC) financial and economic environment, despite the growth of alternative sources such as equity and debt sources of crowdfunding.

There has been an evidence for some time that young people have a higher desire to enter entrepreneurship and self-employment as a career choice, in preference to other forms of employment (Greene, 2005). Younger people are also more positive about entrepreneurial opportunities. For example, a Youth Business International, Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (YBI/GEM) (2013) report indicated that in the European Union (EU), ‘younger youth’ were more positive in their attitudes to good business opportunities and in seeing good opportunities than older people. Theoretically, the issues of low experience and credibility can be mitigated by the role of advisors, consultants and/or volunteer business mentors. In corporations and large organisations, mentors are known to be valuable for early career staff (Clutterbuck, 2004; Haddock-Millar, 2017). By extension with young entrepreneurs, business mentors raise credibility, develop personal and professional competence, business potential and entrepreneurial learning. From a supply-side perspective, this reduces risk for financial institutions, potentially increasing the likelihood of receiving external finance and improving the likely returns and business outcomes of such financing.

In examining the role of business mentoring in youth entrepreneurship finance, the chapter poses three research-related questions (RQs):

To what extent is the youth voluntary business mentoring (VBM) associated with access to external finance?

Where access to external finance takes place, does the VBM improve the outcomes of the businesses?

To what extent do VBMs make a difference to the performance of businesses receiving financial assistance?

The chapter draws on primary evidence from an online Qualtrics survey of 491 (largely) youth entrepreneur mentees drawn from eight countries in the YBI network. These were selected for their contrasting high (Sweden and Spain), middle (India, Argentina, Chile, Russia and Poland) and lower (Uganda) income economies, global coverage of four continents and operation of established entrepreneurship mentoring schemes. The study provides collective quantitative data on the current relationship between mentoring and the access and impact of external finance. It surveyed current or recently completed mentees during Autumn 2016 – the typical mentoring cycle being 12 months. Additionally, the chapter draws on further qualitative insight evidence from face-to-face interviews, with current mentor-mentee case study pairings from the eight countries.

In summary, the profile of surveyed mentees demonstrated even gender distribution, with three-fifths currently in mentoring relationships. At the time of commencing mentoring, nearly four-fifths were aged under 35, half being self-employed, one quarter employed, with the remainder equally distributed between education and unemployment. At commencement of mentoring, mentee businesses were typically in early stages, either pre-start (37%) or just started trading (34%), the main sectors represented being business services (16%), education and training (16%), retail and wholesale (12%) and creative industries (8%), with the median level of own business management —one to two years.

For one-third of mentees, mentoring was compulsory, due largely to receiving enterprise finance support, whilst for the remainder, more than a quarter stated that access to business finance assistance was either considerably or most important in their choice to go on the programme.

In terms of business performance, businesses receiving external finance (loans or grants through the programme) or mentoring for business finance performed significantly better than the rest of the sample: amongst those trading 47% increased sales turnover, compared to 32% unassisted (<0.05 level); 70% increased employment, compared to 42% (<0.05); 58% directly attributed improved performance to mentoring, compared to 46% (<0.1).

The chapter provides both statistical and qualitative evidences supporting the premise that youth business mentoring can both improve access to external finance and lead to improved business performance. This provides useful guidance to youth business support, given that in some of the countries studied, external financing in the form of grants and soft micro loans for youth entrepreneurs are not available.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes of a formal university mentorship program that paired junior and senior (third and fourth year) undergraduate student mentees with mentors from industry. Specifically, the researchers examined the effects of mentorship on mentees’ psychological sense of community at the university, and job search self-efficacy (confidence).

The researchers used a mixed-methods design that incorporated survey data and qualitative data from interviews and focus groups. Where relevant, mentees were compared to a control group of students who did not participate in the mentorship program.

The results demonstrate that the mentees accrued several benefits from participating in the mentorship program. For mentees (but not the control group), job search self-efficacy increased over time as a result of participating in the program. Mentees valued receiving practical career-related support such as opportunities for networking, resume development and job interviewing skills. Mentees also gained a more realistic view about the workplace and their potential career options, and received important psychosocial support from their mentor.

Results suggest that junior and senior undergraduate student mentees gained professional and career-related benefits including increased job search self-efficacy from participation in a mentorship program that paired them with mentors from industry. In addition, the qualitative results indicate that mentees reported psychosocial benefits including an increased sense of connection to the university. Altogether, results indicate that undergraduate students experience positive outcomes from participating in mentorship programs designed to prepare them for the transition from university to the workplace.

Education doctoral (EdD) students (mentees) typically hold full-time leadership positions in education-related fields while completing their degree. The types of support these scholar-practitioners need is unique because of their focus on balancing full-time work, academic, and personal needs. This study aims to explore mentor support systems for mentees in their first and second year of the EdD program through a group mentoring program, which is designed to provide resources and access to mentors to promote successful degree completion in five years or less.

Mentors participated in monthly presentations and discussions with mentees throughout the 2018–2019 academic year, which were video recorded. At the end of the academic year, mentors partook in an interview or focus group meeting.

Themes emerged related to mentors’ focus on the dissertation process; emphasis on outreach for support; discussions and work/life balance; selection of presentation topics; perceptions of networking opportunities with mentees; desire to build stronger connections with mentees; and concerns/opinions about the mentoring format.

The design of a mentoring program for EdD mentees varies throughout the doctorate degree pathway. Mentors support mentees in their doctoral journey through presentations and discussions about relevant topics during their first two years in the doctoral program. Additional studies are needed regarding EdD mentoring programs for students in the third year to the completion of the degree.

Few studies exist related to mentoring programs for scholar-practitioners in EdD programs. Results from this research provide EdD faculty and advisors insights to group mentoring and discussion topics for first and second year EdD students, based on the mentors’ perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to demonstrate that formal mentoring is a helpful tool to develop managers within the changing context of the UK Police, and to highlight how managers can have an influence on mentoring programmes and the learning within them.

A longitudinal qualitative case study approach was chosen and semi-structured interviews were conducted alongside focus groups.

The findings showed that both mentees and mentors perceived they were learning within the mentoring relationship. Also, despite some common themes in relation to the key moderating factors, managers were seen as both facilitating and hindering these mentoring relationships.

It was recognised that although interesting to compare and contrast the findings between the two different case study organisations, the findings drawn from this study may not be directly applicable to other mentoring programmes beyond these UK Police Forces. More could have been explored in the focus groups and information could have been collected from those that did not attend the interviews or the focus groups.

This research adds value as there is little written about the mentoring and managers, within the interesting changing context of the UK Police force. The insights from this mentoring research suggest that there is much learning to be gained by both parties through mentoring and that line managers need to be encouraged away from the day to day reactive approach towards being more proactive with supporting the personal development of their team members (and themselves) into the future. If they are more involved and supportive of learning and development interventions, then they and their team members will gain more from the experience and this will ultimately help them to make a more positive difference within their role.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate mentors' and mentees' perspectives of the mentor role within an education doctoral mentoring program at a mid-sized public institution.

Data from individual interviews with mentors and mentees were collected as part of a larger case study of a doctoral mentoring program. Mentees were doctor of education (EdD) students in their first and second years of the program. Mentors were identified as individuals who graduated from or are further along in the doctoral program. Five (N = 5) mentees and seven (N = 7) mentors participated in interviews, which were then transcribed and coded to identify emergent themes, along with transcripts of presentations given by the mentors.

Four themes emerged within the data: differentiating support roles, mentoring as a way to identify gaps in doctoral student needs, mentoring as support for doctoral student success and ways to provide suggestions for mentoring program improvement. Results indicated that mentors and mentees viewed the mentor role as being unique from the roles of faculty advisor and dissertation chair. Mentors and mentees alike responded positively to virtual mentoring.

Participation by mentors and mentees was limited to first- and second-year doctoral students; thus, dissertation-stage students' perceptions of mentoring could not be determined. Implications include the value of mentoring in filling the gaps of support for doctoral students and the capability of mentoring programs to be adapted to unexpected circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study targets scholar-practitioner students in an EdD program, who are often overlooked by mentoring literature, and distinguishes research between faculty mentoring and mentoring performed by other students/recent graduates. Additionally, the pandemic gave the authors an opportunity to explore adapting mentoring to virtual formats.