Experiences of mentorship with academic staff doctoral candidates at a south african university

Abstract

Given the growing emphasis on academic research output and the challenges encountered in expediting completion of doctoral studies especially, mentorship is increasingly being utilised as a capacity development strategy for supporting scholars to complete postgraduate studies. This article reports on a mentorship project aimed at academic staff enrolled for doctoral studies in a health sciences faculty at a South African university, based on reflections drawn from annual feedback from the mentees and the annual report of the mentor, as well as a focus group conducted with mentees by an independent researcher. Participants found the mentorship, with its combination of individual and group meetings, as well as regular residential writing retreats, to be extremely helpful. A number of key features that enable the mentorship process emerged, and issues relating to supervision and mentorship were highlighted, especially regarding power dynamics.

Comments: Development of an early career academic supervisor in Statistics - a discussion on a guiding rubric

“…Overall this paper aligns with the opinions expressed in [2], who indicate that the informal mentorship at institutions be updated with a more formal approach. The suggestion to adopt a rubric style supervisory and assessment system is considerably more formal than the ad hoc system in place at present.…”

“…The suggestion to adopt a rubric style supervisory and assessment system is considerably more formal than the ad hoc system in place at present. [2] argues that there is strong evidence to support the implementation of a formal mentorship system for emerging researchers. Unfortunately the lack of senior statistics academics in the tertiary system limits that option.…”

Being a Postgraduate Nursing Student in Limpopo Province, South Africa: An Exploratory Study

“…From these findings, research supervisors should set up enough time to meet with postgraduate students one-on-one and in cohort sessions. Additionally, regular consolidated time blocks away from the higher education institution in the form of writing retreats can provide research supervisors and postgraduate students with the chance to work productively on their research theses [ 18 ]. Constant, thoughtful supervision and availability are critical to successful postgraduate research completion, quality, and throughput rate.…”

“…There is a dire need for more postgraduate research throughput and completion in South Africa [ 17 ]. According to Strebel and Shefer, South Africa continues to perform poorly compared to other countries regarding postgraduate research throughput, timely completions, and reduction of dropout rates among postgraduate students [ 18 ]. Previous researchers such as Bopape, Khauoe, and Obaje and Jeawon have cited many factors that affect and hinder the postgraduate research throughput and completion rate at South African HEIs [ 19 , 20 , 21 ].…”

Developing Research Skills for the Future Workplace through Interdisciplinary Near-Peer Mentoring

“…In the South African higher education setting studies on the use of mentorship to enhance research capacity tend to focus on developing emerging academics (see e.g., Nundulall and Dorasamy 2012;Nundulall and Reddy 2011;Strebel and Shefer 2016;van der Merwe 2011) or completing a postgraduate qualification (see e.g., Michau and Louw 2014).…”