Peer Mentoring and Development of Student Agency

Peer-mentoring programs have become increasingly popular in recent years due to the many benefits they offer participating students. However, studies on peer mentoring in Japanese education often focus on the benefits afforded to mentees and not the mentors. The development of agency among student participants of a mentoring program in an English-language department at a Japanese university conducted between 2012 and 2018 is investigated in this study. The authors examined how the experience of mentoring a struggling underclassman encouraged learner agency for student mentors. The authors conducted qualitative analysis using the KJ Method of student interviews with four mentors and quantitative analysis of post-mentoring session report data of 316 reports using a co-occurrence network diagram using KH Coder. The results identify eight agency-related categories for mentors, indicating that the mentors’ agency also developed through the experience, particularly with regard to their study behavior and use of available language-learning resources. 学習者が学習者をサポートするピア・メンタリングは，学習者にとって有益であることが認められてきており，実践例も多くみられるようになってきた。本研究はピア・メンタリングの実践において，メンターの自主性の発達を明らかにしようとした。特に下級生を導くのに，メンターを務めた学生がそれまでの自分の経験をどのように活かして自主性を発揮したのかに焦点をあて，メンターへのインタビューと下級生とのセッションの記録を，KJ法とKH Coderの共起ネットワークを用いて分析した。結果として，自主性に強く関連する刺激が8項目あることが認められ，自身の言語学習の知識や経験をメンター活動に活かすことで，メンター自身の自主性に影響があることが分かった。