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Structural mentoring barriers are policies, practices and cultural norms that collectively disadvantage marginalized groups and perpetuate disparities in mentoring. This study aims to better understand structural mentoring barriers at the postdoctoral training stage, which has a direct impact on faculty diversity and national efforts to retain underrepresented groups in research careers.

A diverse sample of postdoctoral scholars (“postdocs”) from across the USA were asked to participate in focus groups to discuss their training experiences. The authors conducted five 90-min focus groups with 32 biomedical postdocs, including 20 (63%) women and 15 (47%) individuals from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups (URG).

A social-ecological framework was used to categorize both the upstream and downstream manifestations of structural mentoring barriers, as well as mentoring barriers, overall. Notable structural barriers included: academic politics and scientific hierarchy; inequalities resulting from mentor prestige; the (over) reliance on one mentor; the lack of formal training for academic and non-academic careers; and the lack of institutional diversity and institutional mentor training. To overcome these barriers, postdocs strongly encouraged developing a network or team of mentors and recommended institutional interventions that create more comprehensive professional development, mentorship and belonging.

For postdoctoral scientists, structural mentoring barriers can permeate down to institutional, interpersonal and individual levels, impeding a successful transition to an independent research career. This work provides strong evidence for promoting mentorship networks and cultivating a “mentoring milieu” that fosters a supportive community and a strong culture of mentorship at all levels.

This study aimed to identify and describe how mentoring influences the mentor, by operationalising and specifying learning outcomes involved in mentoring.

This study used an action research approach, by uniting theory and practice to explore new ways of learning and evolve the field of practice in education. Thematic analysis was used to identify and organise patterns or themes that emerged from the data.

The results showed that mentoring changed the mentors' perspectives towards improved understanding, more flexibility and approval of other cultures. It seems that mentoring expanded the mentors' search for values, wishes and resources, including an awareness that our values, wishes and needs are more similar than different. Mentoring also seems to have improved the ability to reformulate, be flexible, strive to optimise user engagement and engage with people as they are, based on their own prerequisites.

The low number of participants means the results cannot be generalised, and voluntary participation may have led to more motivated involvement and positive results.

This study shows that mentoring has had an impact on students' development of intercultural competence and cultural sensitivity through regular meetings with individuals from a different cultural background. Mentoring seems to have revealed insights into underlying prejudices and changed perspectives towards better understanding, thus increased acceptance of other cultures.

Search for similar studies shows a lack of research that operationalises and specifies the learning outcomes that mentors gain from being a mentor.

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.

Integrative curriculum is sometimes understood in terms of utilizing two or more disciplines to explore and inquire into ideas to achieve certain tasks and learning outcomes. “Integrative” as an educational and curricular term, concept, and set of processes is more concerned with integrating students’ experiences across the teaching and learning activities of their academic program, constructing their knowledge and a range of competencies and capabilities in a meaningful and student-centered manner. This chapter approaches integrative curriculum in higher education through peer teaching and learning. The chapter presents and analyzes the case study of Phoenicia University, Lebanon, where one of the approaches to emphasizing integrative curriculum is through the “Peer Support Program” (PSP). In the PSP, excelling students (mentors) across various courses (e.g., calculus, English, etc.) mentor and tutor their marginal peers (mentees) who are underperforming in their studies. This study analyzed the attitudes, perceptions, and confidence levels of both the mentors and mentees in the PSP across freshman calculus courses. The chapter found that the PSP revealed reciprocity and mutual benefit for both the mentors and mentees in terms of academic gain, self-satisfaction, and personal growth. Some of the identified concerns about the program were that mentees seemed to be too dependent on the mentors and majorly driven by studying for the mark. The program was a win-win combination for the mentors, mentees, and the institution itself, serving as an effective integrative curriculum avenue, where students’ experiences, commitment, and ownership in the teaching and learning process are actively integrated into a meaningful, connected, and student-centered university environment.

This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.

The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.

The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.

The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.

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.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Spanish researchers conducted a survey of 80 experienced mentees. They identified 27 mentee outcomes in previous research, then narrowed them down into four factors encompassing the most relevant themes. The results revealed that knowledge transmission, social capital and psychosocial support were all possible outcomes.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The transition to college presents significant challenges for many students as they navigate new academic and social experiences. In the USA, 30% of first-year students drop out before their second year. Research indicates that mentoring programs help students achieve social integration and likely have a positive effect on their transition to college. This research study was conducted with education students to better understand the potential impacts of peer mentorship.

Student mentors and mentees were matched by attributes such as their concentration within the education major, gender, sports they played and whether they were first-generation matriculants. Data collection utilized two surveys one before the peer mentoring process and one after the process.

The findings suggest that peer mentoring improved first-generation students' sense of belonging to both their major and the college. Peer mentors also experienced increased belongingness. The transfer rate among participants of 2% was a significant drop from previous years.

The success of the peer mentoring experience was possibly due to the intentional matching process based on certain attributes. Additionally, taking a leadership role increased a sense of belonging in the peer mentors.

Co-authored by three South African academics working in higher education development, this chapter uses the transition from professional practice to academic contexts as an entry point into a discussion of transitions broadly. We reflect on the role of mentoring in supporting the multiple transitions which dual professionals navigate and what this means for the provision of inclusive, quality education (SDG 4) with a focus on higher education. In reflecting on this Sustainable Development Goal, we approach the topic of mentoring from a critical perspective which allows us to attend to the themes of power, access and equity that it invokes. The body of scholarship on the transition experiences of practitioners into academia has challenged the assumption that professional expertise translates into teaching expertise in the classroom. The opening vignette contextualizes this challenge. The vignette protagonist offers to support an academic colleague and approaches a mentoring expert to explore her guiding principles for mentoring within and beyond the classroom. The dialogue surfaces the need for mentoring that considers the various transitions that dual professionals navigate. We engage critically with international literature on the role and positionality of dual professionals in academia and reflect on selected concepts from this literature to highlight the importance of an adaptive mentoring approach for meeting academics in transition at their point of need. We offer a synthesis of literature on holistic approaches to mentoring, critically reflecting on how they enable inclusive quality education for the benefit of society.

This chapter offers an original conceptualization of co-mentoring – situated in the wider literature – together with evidence of its impact and factors facilitating impact across applications of co-mentoring in transnational schooling contexts. Co-mentoring is an alternative to more traditional, hierarchical, and unidirectional approaches to mentoring in education. Extending the extant literature on collaborative mentoring (or “comentoring”), co-mentoring is a collaborative, compassionate, and developmental relationship – informed by specific approaches to mentoring and coaching – that is intended to support participants' professional learning, development, effectiveness, and well-being, and potentially improve their workplace cultures. Detailing three different applications of co-mentoring across the United Kingdom and United States, the chapter evidences the realization of these intended outcomes (professional learning, etc.), and highlights factors found to be instrumental in facilitating the positive impacts of co-mentoring. We end with recommendations for undertaking research and practice that build human and organizational capacity through co-mentoring. A takeaway is that intentional approaches to co-mentoring can have value for participating parties and broader impact, as well as wide applicability.