Background Essential to the professional development of mentors is making explicit and critically challenging the knowledge and beliefs underpinning their mentoring practice. This paper reports on the development of a survey instrument called MERIT, MEntor Reflection InstrumenT, which was designed to support mentors’ systematic reflection on the how, what and why of their practice. Methods In 2019, a twenty-item survey instrument was developed and piloted. Initial validation data (N = 228) were collected by distributing the survey through the authors’ network. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted and internal consistency reliability coefficients were calculated. Results The Principal Axis EFA with Direct Oblimin rotation (Delta = 0) resulted in four factors: 1) supporting personal development, 2) modelling professional development, 3) fostering autonomy, and 4) monitoring performance. The four factors explained 43% of the total variance of item scores. The Cronbach’s alphas for the subscale scores were between .42 and .75. Conclusions The MERIT can help mentors reflect on their beliefs and professional knowhow. These reflections can serve as input for the faculty development initiatives mentors undertake, which may ultimately improve their knowledge and skills as a mentor.

Purpose How mentors shape their mentoring is strongly influenced by their personal beliefs about the goals and purpose of mentoring, the possible activities associated with it, who decides on the focus of the mentoring relationship, and the strategies mentors choose to enact these beliefs in practice. In accordance with the personal interpretative framework, the authors operationalized mentors’ beliefs as professional self-understanding (the what) and subjective educational theory (the how) of teaching and sought to identify different mentoring positions. Method Using a qualitative approach, the authors conducted semistructured interviews between December 2017 and January 2018 with 18 undergraduate mentors from Maastricht University in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The aim of the interviews was to reconstruct their personal interpretative framework. Before building a general pattern of explanation in a cross-case analysis, the authors performed a within-case analysis of the data, analyzing individual mentors. Results This approach resulted in the identification and description of 4 mentoring positions: the (1) facilitator (service providing and responsive), (2) coach (development supporting and responsive), (3) monitor (signaling and collaborative), and (4) exemplar (service providing or development supporting and directive). Each position represents a coherent pattern of normative beliefs about oneself as a mentor (professional self-understanding) and how to enact these beliefs in practice (subjective educational theory). Conclusions Awareness of their mentoring position can help mentors understand why they act the way they do in certain situations and how this behavior affects their mentees’ learning and development. It can also help mentors identify personal learning needs and, consequently, provide opportunities for faculty development.