Editor’s overview: mentoring relationships in higher education

This issue of Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning includes research from scholars representing Florida, Ohio, and Tennessee in the United States as well as Russia. These international contributors explore mentoring relationships in higher education. Mentoring relationship usually evolved between experienced faculty/staff members and junior faculty/staff members, either informal or formal. Several scholars (e.g. Gardiner, 2005) recommended establishing a formal mentoring program involving different institutional stakeholders, rather than leaving it to emerge as informal, due to the concern for inclusion, diversity, and equal accessibility. For example, studies have reported that women faculty are continued to be marginalized in navigating different resources or gaining access to the informational networks (Rios & Longnion, 2000); women are more likely to be excluded from the informal mentoring partnerships (Gibson, 2006).

However, implementing a formal mentoring program is also challenging in higher education. It is not easy to find competent mentors willing to take additional workloads investing their time and resources to mentees, and there is not enough of diverse faculty pool with different backgrounds to be matched with other faculty of colors. As a result, Boice (1992) indicated that mentoring is available only to about one-third of new faculties in higher education. Moreover, some scholars argued that traditional, dyad mentoring relationship does limit the success of mentees in today’s fast-changing, knowledge society where promotion and tenure systems get less secure (Altbach, 2000; Darwin, 2004). Despite some challenges, many researchers have proved that mentoring relationships are still beneficial both to mentors and mentees, and those benefits include research productivity, networking, professional recognition, increased retention and commitment (Darwin & Palmer, 2009). More research is required to facilitate structuring and building successful formal mentoring relationships, and the M&T editorial board encourages and supports such rigorous studies.

In the article Cross-cultural Academic Mentoring Dyads: A Case Study, Daniel, Franco, Schroeder, and Cenkci used a descriptive case study to offer insight into the relationship between diversity and the academic mentoring process. They examined cross-cultural mentoring dyads to determine factors which influence relationship in a cross-cultural mentoring dyad and sought to identify challenges mentors and protégés may face. They also found the models they used were evident in the dyad, though not in the order they had hypothesized. They also found mentors and protégés to interpret their experiences in the dyad differently based on their unique culture. They encourage cross-cultural mentoring outside the formal classroom.

In the next article, Literature Review: The Gap Between Theory and Practice for Diverse Women Faculty, Graham examines the gap between theory and practice of mentoring women faculty across African, Latinx, Asian, and Native American Diasporas by conducting a review of existing qualitative and quantitative research. She identifies beneficial mentoring behaviors in existing literature which support protégé learning. She suggests mentors and administrators recruit ethnically diverse women faculty, and scaffold their experience to ensure retention. She also notes the importance of acknowledging intersectionality among women faculty.

Hayes, in Using Developmental Relationships in Mentoring to Support Novice Principals as Leaders of Learning, explores the mentoring experiences of beginning principals and their mentors in a district-wide mentoring program. She used a single-case study design, her findings suggest a strong mentoring relationship can support new principals in their development as leaders of learning.

Behar-Horenstein and Kuang, in their article Efficacy of a Mentor Academy Program: A Case Study, describe the efficacy and long-term results of mentor training through the lens of the mentee. They conducted 12 interviews with mentees who worked under mentors who had participated in Mentor Academy training. Behar-Horenstein and Kuang found mentor training academy benefitted most participants, both mentors and mentees, acknowledging the importance of mentor orientation and training.

In the final article of this issue, Autoethnography of Tutoring in the Russian University: From Theoretical Knowledge to Practical Implementation, Paukova, Khachaturova, and Safronov use autoethnographic and narrative analysis to highlight central ideas and challenges tutors encounter when supporting students in offline and online learning environments. They acknowledge the important role and evolving form communication takes while building a tutoring relationship.

Publishing in mentoring and tutoring

Authors are reminded as they submit their work to the journal to ensure all manuscripts follow the American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (6th edition) format. We receive quite a number with APA formatting errors. In Volume 20, Issue 1, we outlined several common concerns with submissions. When writing your manuscript, please remember to check your headings, spacing, table formats, and references for correct 6th edition usage. Because the journal is very popular and competitive, and we are receiving on average three to five manuscripts every 2 weeks. Please prepare works that are extremely attentive to detail (e.g. current and relevant citations, high-quality writing, careful proofreading, proper formatting style) and that are making specific contributions to the field of mentoring and tutoring. For further information, consult the Taylor & Francis posting of the M&T author guidelines for article manuscripts and book reviews: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/cmetauth.asp (ISSN 1361-1267).

We do not conduct pre-reviews; rather, we will be mentoring authors in the publication process within the FastTrack system review process. That said, the Editor reserves the right to conduct desk rejections at the outset if manuscripts to not follow the prescribed guidelines. Please go to the NCPEA Manuscript FastTrack system to register as a user and then upload your manuscript and any additional information through the system. The FastTrack system helps with the ease of communication between authors, reviewers, and the editor and resolves issues of overloaded email inboxes.

The current requirements for M&T are that the paper, not including references and abstract, should be a maximum of 30 pages, including references, tables, and figures. Depending on the manuscript, we may consider manuscripts that are longer than 30 pages, and certainly, we will accept manuscripts shorter than the prescribed 30 pages. If you have any questions about how to submit your manuscript to M&T, please go to the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) Publications at http://www.ncpeapublications.org. Click on M&T from the Menu of Buttons on the top of that screen. The submission link appears there on the M&T home page. You may, of course, access the journal page from the Taylor & Francis Publisher page at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13611267.asp.

Qualified individuals who serve on the Review Board, along with select Editorial Board members provide commentaries. We would also like for you to register in the same location as you submit to be considered to be a member of the M&T Journal Review Board. We will be acknowledging the Review Board at the end of the year and a top reviewer will be honored. The acceptance rate of the journal is currently 10%. Mentoring & Tutoring is abstracted in Academic Search; Australian Education Index (AEI); Australian Research Council (ARC) Ranked Journal List; Cabells; National Database for Research into International Education (NDRI); British Education Index; Contents Pages in Education; Educational Research Abstracts online (ERA); EBSCOhost EJS; Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI); Education Resources Information Center (ERIC); PsycINFO and SCOPUS®, and Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Educational Curriculum and Methods. Additionally, Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning is now included in the Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources Citation Index.

Many authors have been turning to the M&T journal as the venue-of-choice for publishing high-quality works for over 20 years. M&T is the longest-running mentoring journal in the field. This refereed, peer-reviewed journal is known worldwide. Authors, readers, and subscribers are from different countries and various types of institutions and professional environments. The editorial team is committed to producing timely, thorough reviews, modeling conscientious guidance and support, and being open to a wide scope of topics and methods related to mentoring and tutoring, collaboration, and learning.

Books to be reviewed must be about mentoring and tutoring. Visit this journal’s website, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/carfax/13611267.html, for more information about M&T, as well as special rates and discounts.