Developing Academic, Professional and Life Skills in Undergraduate Engineers through an Interdisciplinary Peer-Mentoring Support System

AbstractThe first years of teaching are crucial for novice teachers’ integration into and retainment in the education system. The support they receive from experienced teachers impacts their professional development. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers require specialized support from domain-specific mentors. In this study, we examined how a three-level mentoring support system contributes to STEM novice teachers’ professional growth (PG) and to their mentors. The support system levels are individual mentoring, group mentoring, and mentoring networks. Based on the framework of teachers’ professional development, there are three PG dimensions: personal, professional, and social. Our research goal was to analyze teachers’ professional growth by the various mentoring level and dimension combinations. The study, conducted using a mixed methods approach, included 123 novice and 78 experienced STEM teachers. We examined the novice teachers’ perceptions of their teaching efficacy, the mentoring factors, correlations between the professional growth dimensions, and the contribution of each support level to the growth dimensions. We found that experienced teachers perceive novice teachers’ efficacy as lower than that perceived by the novice teachers. We identified gaps between the mentoring factors described by novice and experienced teachers and a strong correlation between the growth dimensions. All three mentoring support levels facilitate substantive personal, professional, and social growth. Individual mentoring contributes the most to all three growth dimensions, followed by mentoring networks. The contribution of this research is its elucidation of the intertwined support levels, which provide scaffolds for the novice teachers and facilitate the growth of the experienced teachers.

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Leading the Way: Peer to Peer Mentoring to Improve the Experience and Adaptability of Australian and Chinese University Students

10.29007/rps6 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Dallas Wingrove ◽

Rebecca Yang ◽

Sarah Holdsworth ◽

Andrew Carre

Keyword(s):

Construction Management ◽

Social Engagement ◽

Peer Mentoring ◽

Chinese Students ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Management Program ◽

Mentoring Program ◽

Effective Mechanism ◽

The Many ◽

Mentoring Support

Peer to peer mentoring is well established in the literature as providing an effective mechanism to foster student’s sense of belonging and to support their resilience and academic progress. This paper reports on a peer mentoring model that was established within a Built Environment School in 2015. The mentoring program was designed to provide peer mentoring support for Chinese students who were articulating into the third year of a Construction Management program delivered at a Melbourne university. The Chinese students had successfully completed two years of a Building Science program at the China University of Mining & Technology (CUMT). To support the Mentees to transition into year three of the Construction Management program three teaching academics from the Construction Management program partnered with their School’s Academic Developer. The project team was formed to design and implement a mentoring program that sought to deliver reciprocal learning for local Melbourne based mentors and the newly arrived Chinese mentees. The program was designed to support Mentees to transition into the Construction Management program and living in Melbourne by providing study support and opportunities for social engagement. In this paper the authors reflect on their experiences of designing and implementing the peer mentoring program and report anecdotal evidence which suggests that peer to peer mentoring can provide an effective mechanism through which students are better prepared and supported to deal positively with the process of transition and the many complex challenges this can entail.

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Digital Media to ‘Engage the Disengaged’: Reaching out to Humanities Students at the University of Southampton

The Journal of Educational Innovation Partnership and Change ◽

10.21100/jeipc.v3i1.588 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 192

Author(s):

Eleanor Quince ◽

Charlotte Medland ◽

Ellen Blacow ◽

Kirstie Guildford ◽

Ursula Grover ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Digital Media ◽

Peer Mentoring ◽

Advisory Board ◽

Direct Impact ◽

Development Activity ◽

Curricular Development ◽

Sense Of Ownership ◽

Humanities Students ◽

The University ◽

Mentoring Support

In 2014, Dr Eleanor Quince and a team of student partners created the ‘Mission Employable’ initiative in the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Humanities. The initiative aimed to put students back at the centre of their own employability and careers development activity, via five main areas: Peer Mentoring, a compulsory Employability Module, Student Working Group, Alumni Network and External Advisory Board. Two years on, Mission Employable provides employability and careers advice and guidance to over 3,000 students across seven disciplines. Not all of these students can have direct impact upon activity by creating content and working in close partnership, so how do we give every student a sense of ownership? This paper will explore the ways in which Mission Employable has harnessed and implemented digital media – in particular, social networks – to reach out to Humanities students who might not otherwise directly engage with us. From Facebook for off-campus Peer Mentoring support, to e-portfolios for extra-curricular development, to hashtag campaigns, Instagram selfies and animated module ‘trailers’, Mission Employable has embraced the digital as a space for all of its student partners to engage, network, advise and create.

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