A taxonomy of the characteristics of student peer mentors in higher education: findings from a literature review

By Jenepher Lennox Terrion, Dominique Leonard. 2007

314 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Peer mentoring in higher education is regarded as an effective intervention to ensure the success and retention of vulnerable students. Many universities and colleges have therefore implemented some form of mentoring program as part of their student support services. While considerable research supports the use of peer mentoring to improve academic performance and decrease student attrition, few studies link peer mentoring functions with the type of peer best suited to fulfill these functions. This literature review categorizes the abundant student peer mentor descriptors found in mentoring research. The result is a preliminary taxonomy that classifies ten peer mentor characteristics according to mentoring function served (career‐related or psychosocial). The proposed taxonomy and the discussion developed in this article help shed light on the dynamics of successful student peer mentoring relationships in higher education.

Subfields: Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/058d19f1ee5cf5fe7d6e3c93994f444dec25abf3

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In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Can Peer Mentors Improve First-Year Experiences of University Students? (2017, background): “…peer-mentoring program is an intervention strategy that pairs one or more students (i.e., mentees) with a more experienced student (i.e., peer mentor; Terrion & Leonard, 2007) who provides both practical guidance and social support to the mentee(s) (Bozeman & Feeney, 2007; Nora & Crisp, 2007).”
Implementation and evaluation of a formal academic-peer-mentoring programme in higher education (2016, background): “Peer mentors provide emotional support, personal feedback and friendship (Terrion and Leonard, 2007).”
Causes of differences in student outcomes (2015, background): “…Academy (HEA)-commissioned, non-UK reviews were also incorporated because of their focus on issues relevant to the current study: for example, Terrion and Leonard (2007) on peer mentoring in North America; Troxel (2010) on persistence and success in US higher education; Stevenson and Whelan…”
Benefits of Peer Mentoring to Mentors, Female Mentees and Higher Education Institutions (2016, background): “In another context, Terrion and Leonard (2007) and Clutterbuck (2004) likewise show that effective mentoring is developmental both for mentors and mentees, even though, obviously, the needs of the mentees are prioritized.”
Toward a Conceptual Model of Mentoring Research: Integration with Self-Regulated Learning (2013, unknown): “Peer mentoring, which may occur individually or in groups, is attracting more attention (Fletcher and Mullen 2012; Terrion and Leonard 2007).”
Roles, Risks, and Benefits of Peer Mentoring Relationships in Higher Education (2010, background): “Other researchers have studied peer mentor characteristics (see Terrion & Leonard, 2007 ), but few identify the types of mentor roles recognized by mentors, students, and instructors, with the exception of Sanft and colleagues ( 2008 ).”
The Mentoring Relationship Challenges Scale: The impact of mentoring stage, type, and gender (2011, background): “…Maetzke, 1997; Bozionelos, 2004; Grant-Vallone & Ensher, 2001) More recently, researchers have begun to examine the innovative benefits of peer mentoring in a variety of settings including software firms (Bryant, 2005), libraries (Level & Mach, 2005), and higher education (Terrion & Leonard, 2007).”