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The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of peer mentoring on critical care nursing students’ learning outcomes in critical care units.

A qualitative exploratory research design was used to conduct the study. Ten critical care nursing students were recruited from critical care units in the five private and two public hospitals. Descriptions of their experiences were gained through individual face-to-face interviews.

The study reinforces peer mentoring as a vital strategy in helping the critical care nursing students to attain their learning outcomes. However, peer mentoring was not consistent in all hospitals and there were no structured support systems to ensure that peer mentoring was formalized. Making peer mentoring a vital component in the registered nurses core competencies would enable efficiency and guarantee the viability of peer mentoring.

Mentors for the critical care nursing students were not included in the study.

The study identified a need for incorporating a formalized mentorship programme into the core competencies of all qualified critical care nurses, the unit mentor to familiarise themselves with the prescribed learning objectives of the critical care nursing student and an allocation of supernumerary time for the critical care nursing student and mentors to allow for formal mentoring responsibilities to take place.

The study reinforces peer mentoring as a vital strategy in helping the critical care nursing students to attain their learning outcomes and conscietises registered nurses of their responsibility as mentors.

The South African vocational education and training (VET) sector is required by legislation to redefine postsecondary education, advance industrialisation and expand the job market to address unemployment in the country. Yet, VET leaders' heterogenous educational and occupational backgrounds do not enable them to address the needs of the VET sector. Continuous professional development of leaders in the education sector needs to include support structures such as mentoring.

The present study sought to investigate how VET managers in South Africa perceive three different types of mentoring – individual, peer group and expert-based key performance area (KPA) mentoring – during a part-time professional leadership development programme. Using interactive qualitative analysis (IQA), the authors collected and analysed data from focus group discussions (n = 24) and individual interviews (n = 21) from two cohorts of the programme.

The results revealed that individual mentoring represented the most important driving mechanism, followed by peer group mentoring and expert-based KPA mentoring. Participants identified leadership as a prerequisite for their development. Emotions formed the final outcome of the mentoring framework.

Based on the findings, the authors suggest investigating the role played by leaders' interpersonal competences such as emotional competence in the workplace. Additionally, research needs to clarify if and how mentoring can support leaders to develop interpersonal competences in formal and informal settings.

The study offers empirical evidence on a three-pillar mentoring framework adopted in a professional development programme for leaders in VET in South Africa. It highlights the importance of individual, social and emotional factors.

While there are well-established personal benefits to being a mentor, such as increased life satisfaction and job performance (Ramaswami & Dreher, 2007), how mentors grow and develop requires exploration. We meet this need by presenting six key themes from two recent research studies related to the experiences that mentors perceived as contributing to their development. The growth of two leadership theories in particular were explored: generativity and Psychological Capital. Six themes emerged: (a) curricular training, (b) exposure to leadership outcomes, (c) being mentored by peers, (d) experiences with mentee, (e) reflection, and (f ) observing a ripple effect. These themes offer insights on how curricular and co-curricular experiences might maximize leadership development of students and ground leadership interventions, such as mentoring, in theory and research.

The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate peer mentors at Texas A&M University perceive their development of leadership behaviors through their peer mentor experience. Participants were first- generation college students serving as mentors to first-generation college students at Texas A&M University. A qualitative approach was used to examine reflections from the peer mentors about their personal best leadership experiences as a peer mentor and their self-reported highest scored practice on the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (SLPI). This study is rooted in Kouzes and Posner’s (1987, 2002) Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership model. There were 33 peer mentors who participated in this study. Mentor reflections showed evidence of behaviors demonstrating all five of the exemplary leadership practices through serving as a peer mentor.

The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate peer mentors at Texas A&M University perceive their development of leadership behaviors through their peer mentor experience. Participants were first- generation college students serving as mentors to first-generation college students at Texas A&M University. A qualitative approach was used to examine reflections from the peer mentors about their personal best leadership experiences as a peer mentor and their self-reported highest scored practice on the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (SLPI). This study is rooted in Kouzes and Posner’s (1987, 2002) Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership model. There were 33 peer mentors who participated in this study. Mentor reflections showed evidence of behaviors demonstrating all five of the exemplary leadership practices through serving as a peer mentor.

Undergraduate peer mentorship has the potential to transform mentor and mentee alike. In an effort to understand the potential positive effects of a peer mentorship program on honors peer mentors, paired sample t-tests of data from a pre-test / post-test of at least 69 honors first-year seminar facilitators shows that respondents grew in their leadership efficacy and teaching efficacy. Mentors also show modest gains in their sense of belonging to the honors program. Qualitative analysis of assessment discursive data further indicates that the yearlong facilitation experience is a mechanism for mentors’ growth. Results indicate that being a peer mentor is a powerful means of fostering student development across multiple dimensions, including leadership efficacy, while meeting the goals outlined by a transformative honors educational experience.

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.

The purpose of this application manuscript is to address assessing and evaluating the impact of leadership mentoring programs on collegiate mentors. Specifically, this paper addresses the nuanced considerations of creating appropriate program outcomes and associated objectives given the individualized nature of mentoring relationships. Additionally, the current paper discusses assessment and evaluation strategies to demonstrate impact of leadership mentoring on the collegiate mentor via a three-year program evaluation effort. By innovating leadership mentoring program practice, leadership educators can more soundly design and deliver leadership mentoring programs and more precisely measure and demonstrate impact.

This paper reviews the literature of formal mentoring programs in organizational settings. Additionally, the components of mentoring, how it works, and how it can be implemented in an organization is addressed. Further this paper also proposes that formal mentoring is possible in organizations. Formal mentoring will be shown to be less effective than informal mentoring. Furthermore, it will be shown that formal organizational mentoring can be effective to meet the needs for all employees to have the opportunity to be mentored, to learn from the wisdom, experience and mistakes of others, and to increase the protégé’s career opportunities.

The use of high-impact practices is well documented in higher education literature. This brief describes the integrative practice of undergraduate peer-led leadership learning communities as a model of delivery within a large introductory leadership education course for first-year students. Utilizing open-ended questions embedded within end-of-semester teaching evaluation surveys, we analyzed students’ perceptions of the learning community experience and the peer leader’s role. Our findings illustrate how peer leaders play a critical role in fostering a vibrant leadership learning community, which contributes to students’ positive perceptions of their own leadership learning and development.