Mentoring of early career academics in South African higher education : a transformation strategy

[摘要] Early career academics in South Africa enter a higher education system with ahistorical legacy of division along lines of past discrimination and apartheid. Thehigher education system has been undergoing profound transformation in the lastdecade through the promulgation of the SAQA Act (No 58 of 1995) and the HigherEducation Act No 101 of 1997. Although numbers of black students at historicallyadvantaged, predominantly white higher education institutions have increaseddramatically in the past decade to over 50% in some cases, the change in the academicstaff at these institutions has not been nearly as rapid. Less than 30% of the academicstaff is black, even at institutions which consider themselves to be progressive.The argument in this research is that the professional socialisation and development ofearly career academics in all South Africa universities is generally neglected orreceives scanty attention and that the professional development in teaching which theyreceive at entry-level, is minimal. Although mentoring as a professional developmentstrategy has been shown in many studies to have a positive impact in careers at entrylevel,South African universities are not doing enough to support and develop earlycareer academics and consequently the transformation of higher education is beingretarded by institutional lack of support. The case of the University of theWitwatersrand illustrates the situation common in many higher education institutions.The purpose of the study is to investigate mentoring as a transformation strategy forthe professional development and socialisation in the career development andmanagement of the early careers of entry-level academics to higher education inSouth Africa where transformation of higher education is a critical issue on thenational agenda.In this study there are 28 early career academics in formal mentoring relationships as a result of specially designed mentoring programmes or academic internships whichhave been established since 1999. They were interviewed in-depth for theirinterpretations of their experiences in formal mentoring programmes where almost allthe mentors are white and the majority of mentees belong to different cultural groups. The findings in the study show how necessary it is for early career academics to bepaired with mentors who are aware of the functions and roles of mentors in highereducation and who are seriously committed to fulfilling those roles themselves or inconjunction with others in their networks. One new career development function andone new psychosocial function of mentors were added to a model of existingfunctions derived from the literature. Transformation is an important new function ofmentors and their function as role models is emphasised by the context of thismentoring research. Mentoring may be lauded as the panacea for transformation inhigher education but unless mentors are adequately trained, supported and monitored,and are committed to transformation, the strategy is not likely to meet with success.Mentoring in cross-cultural contexts in higher education in South Africa is also likelyto be only partially successful because too little is being done to address the effects ofinstitutional and covert racism which lingers on.A wide spectrum of recommendations is made for making mentoring work in highereducation institutions. These range from broadly based macro interventions at nationaland institutional levels, to quite detailed micro interventions at the individual level.Without a systematic and committed thrust throughout the sector to acceleratetransformation, the whole sector is likely to languish and busy itself with meetinglegislative demands for equity compliance and quality assurance drives withoutaddressing the fundamental issues of developing those young academics who areinstrumental in transforming the system.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand