Developing a mentorship programme for junior lecturers working with student tutors at a South African university: Emerging shifts in pedagogy and identity

Abstract

Junior lecturers are entry-level academic staff who, despite their junior position and lack of experience, are often given the responsibility of developing student tutors. This frequently leads to insecurity about how best to approach the task. In response to this, a collaborative mentorship programme was developed in order to provide an enabling context in which junior lecturers could explore various aspects of tutor development. This article reports on participants' responses to the programme, in terms of the personal and pedagogical shifts experienced. It locates the mentorship programme within the context of some of the key challenges in the South African higher education sector. Action research was used to explore how the programme affected junior lecturers' perceptions of themselves in the context of their disciplines and their understanding of innovative tutor development. In order to understand their responses fully, it was also necessary to consider the ways in which the junior lecturers initially perceived themselves in their departments and within the university as a whole. An analysis of the identity shifts among staff suggests that a collaborative mentorship programme of this nature is an effective form of staff development which could be of mutual benefit to staff in similar contexts.

Keywords:

• collaborative mentorship
• identities
• tutor development
• staff development