To Teach is to Learn Twice: The Power of a Blended Peer Mentoring Approach

Abstract

Two students at a Canadian university perceived there was a lack of opportunities for peer mentoring support in their teacher education program. They approached a faculty member to co-create and research a blended peer mentoring support program embedded in a first-year education course. This study documents the journey of these two students as co-inquirers in a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project. Through online surveys and interviews, first-year teacher candidates and faculty involved in the blended peer mentoring program identified four key benefits: new perspectives and expansion of ideas, positive and encouraging reinforcement, supportive connection with second-year students, and probing questions to think more deeply. Conversely, three major challenges were uncovered with the use of digital technologies to support this blended approach to peer mentoring: lack of email notification from the institution's learning management system (LMS) with regards to the peer mentors' online contributions, the impersonal nature of online peer mentoring, and the limited number of peer mentors. The major recommendation from this study was to create a blended program assignment to provide all second-year teacher candidates with the opportunity to learn how to serve as peer mentors to students just entering the teacher education program.

Strengthening a peer mentorship program for accelerated nursing students

“…Coincidentally, while working to build lateral leadership (i.e., leadership between individuals of similar status in the academic power hierarchy) and mentoring between students within the program, we experienced horizontal mentoring (i.e., traditional mentorship from someone of a higher position in the power hierarchy) from the faculty members during the QI process. Similar to the experiences described in Vaughan, Clampitt, and Park's (2016) case study of implementing a scholarship of teaching and learning project with students as partners, we found this horizontal role modelling and knowledge to have had a trickle-down effect. The leadership of our faculty partners strengthened our leadership as student representatives, which in turn supported the leadership of our student mentors.…”

Do students experience transformation through co-creating curriculum in higher education?

“…Since collaboration and negotiation require positive relationships between students and staff (Bovill 2020a), dialogic processes underpin how teachers and students share power to negotiate the curriculum (Blau and Shamir-Inbal 2018;Bovill 2020b;Dzubinski 2014;Lubicz-Nawrocka 2019a, 2019bPhillips and Napan 2016). Co-creation processes of working together based on shared values promotes stronger working relationships between students and staff (Blau and Shamir-Inbal 2018;Kaur, Awang-Hashim, and Kaur 2019;Lubicz-Nawrocka 2019b) and also between students and other students through formal and informal peer learning (Bovill 2020b;Phillips and Napan 2016;Vaughan et al 2016).…”

Conceptualisations of curriculum co-creation: ‘it’s not them and us, it’s just us’

“…Curriculum co-creation promotes strong working relationships through collaboration not only between students and staff (Blau & Shamir-Inbal, 2018;Kaur et al, 2019;Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2019b) but also between different students through peer learning (Bovill, 2020b;Vaughan et al, 2016). This practice can foster staff and students' senses of belonging (Cook-Sather et al, 2018a;Masika & Jones, 2016) and community (Blau & Shamir-Inbal, 2018;Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2019a).…”

“…Curriculum co-creation can promote authenticity by advancing culturally and personally relevant forms of learning and teaching (Backhouse et al, 2019;Temple Clothier & Matheson, 2019), which is especially relevant in the context of large class sizes and digital education. Students' deep and active learning is an integral aspect of co-creation of content and pedagogy (Backhouse et al, 2019;Vaughan et al, 2016) as well as assessment (Bovill, 2020b;Doyle et al, 2019). Curriculum co-creation can also help individuals overcome challenges by working collaboratively and resiliently to find authentic solutions that are relevant to their own context (Bergmark & Westman, 2016;Blau & Shamir-Inbal, 2018;Bovill et al, 2016).…”