Learning to Hear Students’ Voices: Teachers’ Experiences on Student Mentoring

Abstract

In recent years, mentoring practices have become increasingly common in different disciplines. One of these disciplines is education. In this connection, mentoring at the macro level contributes to the education system, while mentoring at the micro level reduces school dropout rates, increases academic success, supports students in their career journeys and protects them against any problems and unhealthy habits. In this context, the objective of this study is to provide an in-depth examination of teachers’ student mentoring experiences in the school context. To this end, phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study and the study was carried out with face-to-face interviews. The maximum variation sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used to select the participants. A total of 15 teachers selected from different branches formed the study group of the study. The data obtained from the study were transcribed and the thematic analysis method was used to determine the emerging themes and, in this way, a total of five themes were determined: identification, the role of the mentor, the types of mentoring used by the mentor, the mentoring strategies used by the mentor and the problems encountered during the student mentoring process.