Mentoring Relationships Research Articles

A Mixed Method Investigation of Associations Between Caregiver Attachment and Natural Mentoring Relationships Among Black Adolescents

An integral change that occurs during adolescence is the development of independent close relationships outside of the immediate family unit. In addition to relationships with peers, adolescents are commonly engaged in natural mentoring relationships. Natural mentoring relationships are organically formed mentoring bonds between youth and adults in their pre-existing social networks. In an effort to better uncover factors that contribute to the development of natural mentoring relationships among Black adolescents, the current study examined a pathway between adolescents’ attachment to their parents and the quantity of natural mentors they possessed via their perceptions of adults as helpful. Survey data from 217 Black adolescents and interview data from a subsample of participants ( n = 25) and their parents ( n = 25) were utilized. Our findings document how parent-adolescent attachment is experienced among Black families and how attachment may shape adolescents’ willingness to pursue supportive relationships with non-parental adults. In addition, our findings indicate that more secure parent-adolescent attachment predict greater quantity of natural mentoring relationships indirectly via greater perceptions of adults as helpful. Implications of study findings for the promotion of natural mentoring relationships among Black youth are discussed.

Living at the Intersections of Race and Gender in Diversified Mentoring: Experiences of Minoritized Women Leaders in Higher Education

Problem There is chronic underrepresentation of minoritized women in higher education leadership positions. A primary reason is that mentoring support is either lacking or rarely considers how the intersection of their race and gender creates a double bind. Further, there is a dearth of studies examining the lived experiences of mentoring support received by minoritized women leaders. Solution Through semi-structured interviews of fifteen participants, our interpretative phenomenological study adds to the extant literature by exploring how women of color (WOC) leaders navigated the challenges posed by the differences in gender and/or racial identities with their mentors in diversified mentoring relationships (DMRs). Our findings indicate that aspiring minoritized women leaders can thrive under the double bind in DMRs with successful coping strategies. Stakeholders University administration and HRD practitioners can apply the findings to leverage DMRs as a critical tool for developing the leadership identity of women of color in higher education.

Cross-Cultural Mentoring Relationship in International Chemistry and Biology Undergraduate Research Experiences

Cross-Cultural Mentoring Relationship in International Chemistry and Biology Undergraduate Research Experiences

Mentoring in the workplace: Exploring the experiences of mentor–mentee relations

Orientation: The way work is performed changes continuously and mentoring is becoming more prevalent in the workplace and this rapid modification of work profiles mentoring relationships as vital.Research purpose: This study explored the mentor’s and mentee’s experiences in the same relationship at a construction firm offering a formal mentoring programme.Motivation for the study: A more comprehensive understanding of the mentoring relationship was required to aid organisations with agile and robust talent and skills development interventions.Research approach/design and method: A qualitative research design was employed and in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted. Data were analysed in two phases: (1) direct content analysis and (2) thematic analyses. The study’s findings are singularly reported to comprehensively understand the mentoring relationship’s lived experiences.Main findings: The experiences of the mentoring relationship in a workplace context are viewed as informal, mutualistic, and context-bound. Four key themes emerged from the mentoring relational interaction: (1) positive relationship, (2) growth and enablement, (3) psychological safety, and (4) purposeful.Practical/managerial implications: The findings could assist organisations in realising the importance of mentoring relationships in mentoring programmes, as the interaction proves effective in solving pressing challenges, such as attracting and retaining talent and addressing skills gaps.Contribution/value-add: This study conceptualises the mentoring relationship from an organisational context and contributes to the limited available literature on the topic. Possible recommendations are offered to improve workplace mentoring relationships.

Utilizing Experiential Modalities to Teach Principles of Trauma in Pediatrics: Foster Care Evaluation Services Clinic Partnership in Medical Education.

We developed a course for students to learn about trauma in a pediatric population by employing a novel experiential format. Students engaged in a longitudinal virtual mentoring relationship with a child in foster care, supplemented with lectures and debriefing sessions.

Medical Student Mentorship in the COVID-19 Era.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a reduction of in-person, guided mentorship due to social distancing and an emphasis on virtual meetings. The effect of these changes on medical students' experiences and specialty choice has yet to be studied in a large-scale manner. To determine the perspective of third- and fourth-year medical students regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mentorship. The authors distributed a modified Likert scale questionnaire (score: 1-10) to assess responses. Third- and fourth-year medical students at two large US allopathic medical schools. Responses to each survey item were analyzed to characterize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mentorship relationships in medical school. A score of 1-5 was considered "disagree" and a score of 6-10 was considered "agree." A total of 144 responses were collected with a response rate of 16.2%. Overall, 80.6% (n = 116) of respondents agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on their medical school experience. Nearly half (41.0%, n = 59) expressed concern over the lack of mentorship opportunities, and 66.0% (n = 95) reported that the pandemic has made it more difficult to form or maintain connections with their mentors. Importantly, 43.6% (n = 61) of respondents reported that having close mentoring relationships reduced the impact of the pandemic on their medical training. While many respondents (79.9%, n = 114) did not change career plans due to the pandemic, most students are concerned about evaluating prospective residency programs (88.9%, n = 128). Notably, M3s have much lower confidence than M4s in their ability to choose a specialty (5.9 vs. 8.2, p = 6.43e - 08). This investigation illustrates the concerns that medical students have regarding access to mentorship opportunities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope that these findings encourage medical schools to evaluate and expand their current mentorship programs. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01838-4.

Exploring mentorship in surgery: An interview study on how people stick together.

The objective is to explore the processes contributing to how and why mentors and mentees initiate, maintain and grow in their mentorship relationships in surgery. To explore the processes contributing to how and why mentors and mentees initiate, maintain and grow their mentorship relationships in surgery. Evidence suggests that mentorship has a positive impact on physicians' success. Consequently, mentorship programmes have been incorporated into many medicine environments, albeit with variable success. We designed an interview-based study using a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the dynamics of mentorship between junior and experienced surgeons. Recruited mentees were asked to nominate a senior surgeon they identified as a mentor. Both mentee and mentors were then interviewed separately. Transcripts were analysed using constant comparison to a create a final coding framework and to generate themes. We interviewed nine faculty mentors and 10 junior faculty mentees. Our analysis identified key themes describing how to initiate, maintain and grow a mentorship relationship. Mentorship starts with ensuring a 'good fit', persists through satisfying a reciprocal loop with timely communication and deepens the relationship through cycles of mutual investment, learning, and success. Participants also discussed how to navigate through tensions to avoid relationship breakdown, balancing formality and friendship, knowing when to transition a relationship to a new dynamic and finding areas of realistic contribution. We found that successful mentorship relationships are viewed as dynamic and thus require active investment and shared responsibility between mentees and mentors. Our results also emphasise the value of co-regulation in the relationship, where cycles of mutual investment can contribute to mutual learning and growth.

Thinking Outside the Dyad: Incorporating Cohort-Based Experiences into Mentorship

A benefit of the traditional one-to-one, hierarchical mentoring relationship is the individualized attention and guidance the mentor provides the mentee. This singular mentoring relationship can be effective but is not always sufficient in addressing institutional acculturation and meeting personal needs of the new employee. This paper discusses how an emergent mentoring program at Milner Library blended the dyadic mentoring relationship with cohort-based programming to create a space for participants to learn from colleagues across departments, share experiences, and consider psychosocial issues. These grassroots programming efforts have cultivated holistic engagement and renewed community.

Leveraging Learning Collectives: How Novice Outsiders Break into an Occupation

Existing research depicts occupational learning as predominantly happening through formal education, situated learning, or a combination of the two. How career switchers might develop occupational skills outside of these established learning pathways is understudied. This paper examines how novice outsiders break into a skilled occupation by looking at the case of aspiring software developers attending coding bootcamps. Drawing on 17 months of fieldwork in the San Francisco Bay area, I find that bootcamps did not resemble either schools or workplaces, the two institutions that facilitate occupational learning. Instead, bootcamps scaffolded learning collectives—groups composed of peers and near peers who learn collaboratively and purposefully to reach a shared goal. Within learning collectives, aspirants progressed from novice outsiders to hirable software developers, despite limited access to proximate experts to learn from or legitimate peripheral participation opportunities. Three scaffoldings facilitated learning at bootcamps. First, peer team structures turned what is normally a solitary activity—writing code—into a collaborative endeavor and facilitated peer-to-peer knowledge exchange. Second, near-peer role structures engaged recent graduates in teaching and mentorship relationships with novices so that aspirants could access knowledge quickly and easily. Third, bootcamps encouraged aspirants to self-learn by reaching out to the expertise of the broader occupational community. This third scaffolding prepared aspirants for learning beyond the bootcamp curriculum and socialized them for an occupation with high learning demands. The outcome of this process was that novices pursuing an alternative mode of occupational entry developed both occupational skills and new self-conceptions as software developers. Funding: This work was supported by a grant from Stanford Cyber Initiative.

Building Approachable Surgical Experiences (BASE) in High School Populations

Pipeline programs are often set up to bring more diverse candidates to medical schools with the goal of diversifying the physician workforce in the years to come. All too often, these programs begin in college, long after many students of diverse backgrounds have been left behind through a myriad of barriers that exist between entering high school and matriculating to medical school. The Building Approachable Surgical Experiences (BASE) outreach program was designed to showcase healthcare careers, with an emphasis on surgical subspecialties, to historically underserved high school students. This pilot program's goal was to increase high school students' interest and confidence in pursuing future medical and surgical careers and provide a platform to initiate mentorship. Local high school students from underrepresented in medicine (URiM) populations or medically underserved communities were invited to spend the day at an academic medical school campus. These students engaged in hands-on clinical and basic operative skill workshops led by third- and fourth-year medical students. They also engaged in small group conversations centered on mentorship with surgical residents and faculty. Program implementation took place at an academic medical center school of medicine in an urban city. Forty high school students, 16 medical students, and 2 surgery faculty participated in this pilot program. This event allowed early exposure for high school students to surgical and medical specialties, clinical techniques, and surgical mentorship. From the connections made, students have developed mentorship relationships and have felt comfortable reaching out with questions regarding the steps required to seek entrance to medical school. Mentors are currently resident or attending physicians, which provides students from underrepresented populations an opportunity for direct insight and guidance to and through the path to becoming a physician. Based on qualitative feedback from students, their high school teachers, and administrators, this pilot program succeeded in providing a window into healthcare, using a format that was encouraging to students long beyond their time on the school of medicine campus.

The evolution of a cooperative mentoring community: developing research leadership in early career (healthcare) faculty

ABSTRACT Mentoring (healthcare) research from low-to-middle-income countries is critical for developing evidence-based healthcare solutions. This paper presents findings from a study of the mentoring and supervisory relationships embedded in a South African fellowship program for early career healthcare researchers. The findings demonstrate how, rather than relying only on formally assigned mentors and supervisors, the fellows chose to establish a mentoring community. This mentoring community included a network of mentoring relationships which involved sharing career advice, establishing professional networks and cooperation opportunities, and creating a reciprocal psychosocial support community. We conceptualize these findings from a developmental network and mentoring community perspective.

How informal mentoring by teachers, counselors, and coaches supports students' long-run academic success

We document a largely unrecognized pathway through which schools promote human capital development – by fostering informal mentoring relationships between students and their teachers, counselors, and coaches. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents, we explore the nature and consequences of natural mentoring relationships by leveraging within-student variation in the timing of mentorship formation as well as differences in exposure among pairs of twins, best friends, and romantic partners. Results across difference-in-differences and pair fixed-effect specifications show consistent and meaningful positive effects on student attainment, with a conservative estimate of a 9.4 percentage point increase in college attendance. Effects are largest for students of lower socioeconomic status and robust to controls for individual characteristics and bounding exercises for selection on unobservables. Smaller class sizes and a school culture where students have a strong sense of belonging are important school-level predictors of having a K-12 natural mentor.

Group e-mentoring: Learnings from a pilot of assistive technology group mentoring in Australia

ABSTRACT Mentoring relationships are pathways to the sharing of tacit knowledge regarding the realities of professional practice, and good evidence supports the efficacy of mentorship among occupational therapists. Mentorship in specific practice areas can be difficult to recruit, and alternative mentoring models and platforms are emerging. This article presents a model of short-term group mentoring using a remote platform in the assistive technology (AT) practice arena. Conducted as a quality improvement activity within two professional associations, four volunteer mentees and five mentors engaged in three 75-minute Zoom-based mentoring sessions over three months. Content was collaboratively designed by a mentee/ mentor dyad from both professional associations. Pre and post-surveys were conducted and analysed to explore the experiences and outcomes for all participants. Positive outcomes for both mentees and mentors were reported, with a range of benefits identified in this small pilot study, Small group time-limited mentoring on topics of mutual interest are likely to be a time effective ‘starting point’ to partially meet mentorship needs. Mentoring remains an enduring and relevant pathway to support occupational therapists to do, to be and to become reflective and competent practitioners. In the face of pragmatic constraints, strategies such as short-term mentoring, group mentoring, and mentoring in a focal practice area, show great promise and may support further mentoring actions. Use of increasingly ubiquitous virtual/remote platforms, particularly in the twenty-first century and with the influence of pandemic-related distancing, are a promising enabler of connection.

Advancing understanding of discordant mentoring relationships in STEMM: A method and framework.

Having a diverse workforce in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) fields is essential for the United States to remain competitive in the global economy and to create a more just society. Faculty-mentored undergraduate research experiences have been identified as a high-impact practice for encouraging students from diverse backgrounds to pursue STEMM education and careers. Despite extensive research examining factors influencing the effectiveness of mentor-mentee relationships, there is still limited understanding of how differences or similarities in the social identities of mentors and mentees, which we term mentor-mentee discordance, impact undergraduates' research experiences and outcomes. In this perspective, we propose that mentor-mentee discordance should be conceptualized as a multidimensional, continuous construct and suggest a global index to measure varying degrees of discordance in mentoring relationships. We also offer a conceptual model that incorporates the Discordance Index to systematize the understanding of the effects of discordant mentoring relationships on student development across social contexts and over time. Finally, we provide recommendations for future researchers, STEMM educators, and program directors who are interested in using the Discordance Index.

Mentoring and the Dimensions of Trialogical Knowledge Creation - Mentors' Perceptions of Learning in a Mentoring Relationship

Mentoring and the Dimensions of Trialogical Knowledge Creation - Mentors' Perceptions of Learning in a Mentoring Relationship

Fostering Success and Promoting Professional Development of Clinician Educator Mentees: A Workshop for Mentors.

The goal of academic mentoring relationships is to enable the mentee to identify/achieve professional advancement. Although mentors of clinician educators (CEs) must understand the criteria for successful career advancement, few have received formal CE mentor training. The National Research Mentoring Network convened an expert panel to develop a 90-minute module for training CE mentors. This module included individual development plans, case studies involving challenges for CE faculty, and examples of the broadened scope of scholarly activity. The workshop was delivered to 26 participants across four institutions and evaluated by a retrospective pre/post survey. Using a 7-point scale (1 = very low, 4 = average, 7 = very high), participants rated the overall quality of their CE mentoring as slightly below average preworkshop (M = 3.9) and as above average postworkshop (M = 5.2, p < .001). Areas of greatest self-perceived change in skills on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all skilled, 4 = moderately skilled, 7 = extremely skilled ) included setting clear expectations of the mentoring relationship (pre M = 3.6, post M = 5.1, p < .001), aligning mentor expectations with those of mentees (pre M = 3.6, post M = 5.0, p < .001), and helping mentees set career goals (pre M = 3.9, post M = 5.4, p < .001). This module trains CE mentors using an interactive and collective problem-solving approach. Workshop participants better defined demonstrable markers for CE progression with potential to impact tailored guidance for mentees.

Toward a Holistic Understanding of Factors That Support or Inhibit Graduate Student Success

The goal of this research was to gain a holistic understanding of factors that support or inhibit graduate student success, with a particular interest in the experiences of underrepresented minorities, females in STEM, and first-generation college students. The Graduate Student Success Survey (GSSS) was developed and validated with 537 M.S. and Ph.D. students at a research-intensive university in the southeastern United States. Guided by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and informed by salient factors described in the literature and published surveys, items were developed to measure students’ perceptions of imposter syndrome, microaggressions, microaffirmations, mentoring, sense of belonging, financial support, and mentor relationships. This manuscript details the development of these items and validation of the GSSS with full- and part-time thesis-based graduate students across twelve colleges, six of which were STEM-focused. Validity and reliability were tested with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, resulting in a survey with seven subscales. Findings revealed significant differences in these graduate students’ experiences based on their gender identity, racial and ethnic group, citizenship status, and program area. The findings of this study report the experiences of graduate students at one institution. However, the validated survey and the recommendations resulting from the findings could be used to scaffold student success and provide insight for faculty and administrators on how to better support students.

In Their Own Words: The Experiences of Black and Latinx Youth in Culturally Relevant Programming

This study aims to learn from and with students of color to understand the influence of culturally relevant programming. Grounded in conceptions of counter-narrative and culturally relevant education (CRE), we center the voices and perspectives of Black and Latinx male adolescents to explore the impact of CRE-related programs and practices. Drawing on 10 focus groups with 37 students in urban schools, we illustrate how integrating community-based mentoring, critical conversations, and family-based relationships positively shaped students’ high school experiences. These findings contribute to growing empirical work on the benefits of CRE, while pushing for holistic efforts that extend beyond the classroom.

Formal mentorship in Canadian radiology residency programmes

To characterise formal mentorship programmes in Canadian radiology residency programmes, to evaluate residents' perspectives on formal mentorship, and to identify ways to optimise mentorship during radiology training. An anonymous survey was distributed to radiology resident representatives of the Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) Resident and Fellow Section (RFS). Questions pertained to the presence and structure of formal mentorship programmes at each participant's institution. The survey was distributed to 33 radiology residents, of which 30 responded. All 16 accredited radiology residency programmes in Canada were represented. Of these programmes, 12 (75%) had formal mentorship programmes and four (25%) did not. The structure of formal mentorship programmes varied among institutions including one-on-one and group mentoring. For 33% of residency programmes, the programme director assigned the mentor and mentee groups. Only 33% of respondents had the option of choosing their mentor. Lack of funding and lack of time were the two main perceived barriers by residents to maintaining mentorship relationships. Although not all radiology residency programmes in Canada have a formal mentorship programme, most have a form of structured mentorship in place. As formal mentorship programmes improve overall mentorship experience during residency, they can lead to improved research productivity, fellowship, and career preparation, as well as work-life balance for Canadian radiology residents.

Factors affecting mentoring services - cross-national perspective

Abstract The research aims at the identification of factors influencing mentoring services with a particular emphasis on the country of origin of the mentor and the mentee. The quantitative research was conducted in four Central and Eastern European countries, i.e., Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania and one Southern European country, Italy. The implemented methodology covered Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and reliability analysis, which were performed to identify factors influencing the process of communication in the mentor–mentee relationship. Moreover, to diagnose statistically significant differences between individual countries in terms of factors influencing the effectiveness of communication, the Kruskal–Wallis H Test and the Mann–Whitney U Test, as well as pair-wise comparisons, were used. Factors influencing communication in the mentor–mentee relationship are mentor traits, mentor’s personal background, mentor’s professional background, non-verbal communication channels, communication barriers, written communication channels, online communication, quality of content and the ability of content processing by the mentee. There are differences in the perception of individual factors in the analysed countries. So far, no cross-country comparison has been conducted of factors influencing mentoring services. As a direction for future research, more detailed research can be recommended concerning factors of the mentoring process in such countries as Lithuania, Latvia and Italy by developing separate models (or EFA) for mentors and mentees.