Trends in Mentoring at Higher Education: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

[EN] Learning is a complex process that requires elements that favour its development. In higher education this process can be complicated not only by the stage of education, also by the associated organisation and formalities. Universities, concerned to facilitate the inclusive participation of their members, have developed support systems. Mentoring is a reciprocal learning relationship development between the mentor whose expertise in a particular field allows him/her to guide and assist the mentee in his/her academic, professional and personal growth (Etzkorn and Braddock, 2020). In this framework, mentoring programmes have become particularly relevant as a tool to help facilitate the integration of both students and teachers. The importance of mentoring in higher education has attracted a significant amount of research. An analysis of the state of the art would therefore provide an insight into the most researched concepts associated with mentoring. This paper presents a hybrid methodology, using a bibliometric approach and in-depth literature review of the most influential articles during the last period. A co-occurrence analysis is carried out by VOSviewer software whose search formula was "mentoring" and (university or "higher education"), retrieving a sample of 232 articles from Web of Science. The thematic organization shows three main topics. Firstly, the benefits of mentoring on students' transitions in university by enhancing their experiences are analysed. Secondly, universities develop programmes related to psychological aspects such as increasing satisfaction or decreasing stress and programmes related to procedures that enable self-efficacy, protection, support and retention. Thirdly, programmes related to job training related to soft skills such as leadership are analysed. The research trends during 2020 and 2021 focus on new mentoring models oriented towards mentoring training and support actions (Etzkorn and Braddock, 2020), female mentoring (Hsieh and Nguyen, 2020) and disability support (Rillotta et al., 2020; Thompson et al., 2020).