First-year students and their mentors' experiences of social intergation in a peer mentor programme

[摘要] English: This research study aimed to explore and describe the experiences of social integration in apeer mentor programme. A significant amount of existing evidence suggests that students needto be provided with the required support to persist at higher education institutions. One of thesesupport structures is peer mentoring. Peer mentoring relationships at higher educationinstitutions have a significant effect on first-year students' academic performance, sense ofbelonging, and commitment towards their studies. Feuerstein states that in his theory ofmediated learning experience, intentional interactions between mentors and mentees can assistto shape the mentees' cognitive growth, control of behaviour, goal achieving behaviour, andoptimistic attitude towards challenges and problems. In a peer mentor programme at theUniversity of the Free State, senior undergraduate students are assigned to small groups of firstyearstudents in their campus residences and present a structured peer mentor programme tothem during a year. A qualitative study was conducted to explore the experiences of thesestudents. A purposive sampling method was employed to select students who were mentorsand mentees in the peer mentor programme to participate in the research study. Focus groupdiscussions that were semi-structured in nature were held with these participants, and therecordings of the discussions were transcribed for analysis. The transcriptions of the data wereanalysed by making use of thematic analysis. From this analysis, four main themes wereidentified from the data, namely (1) focus of the mentor-mentee relationship, (2) type of mentorroles, (3) factors influencing the mentor-mentee relationship, and (4) value of the mentormenteerelationship. These themes were discussed in depth for both the mentors and thementees. These findings indicate how the intervention of a peer mentor programme canincrease the amount of belonging students experience towards their campus community.Recommendations for amendments to the peer mentor programme and suggestions for futurestudies are also discussed.

[发布机构] University of the Free State