New study shows benefits of reverse mentoring scheme
Reverse mentoring provides an opportunity to help staff to better understand the realities of the underrepresented student experience and raise awareness of the challenges our students face, according to a new study by Faculty researchers.
The study, published in the BMJ Open, analysed the Faculty’s reverse mentoring programme which first began in 2020.
It found the programme changed staff perceptions of the challenges and barriers students face and helped them acknowledge the responsibility they have as staff as well as the Faculty’s and University’s responsibility towards our underrepresented students.
Professor Sally Curtis, who led the Reverse Mentoring Scheme, said: “As a university we all need to do more to value and engage with each other by utilising our differences to create a better place to study and work. The Reverse Mentoring scheme has helped many staff members and students understand each other better and help us develop a more inclusive place with a culture of understanding.”
The Reverse Mentoring scheme was established by Professor Curtis with and Jacquie Kelly from the University of Southampton and Jo Hartland from the University of Bristol who designed, developed and delivered the scheme and who are authors on the BMJ Open paper. Two Faculty PhD students, Heather Mozley and Chloe Langford also contributed to the study in the analysis and are both widening participation postgraduate researchers.
During the scheme undergraduate students from either a widening participation background, belong to minority groups or to communities with protected identities mentored senior members of staff. The aim was to create safe spaces for difficult conversations that challenge assumptions and perspectives, to provide greater insight into the experiences of underrepresented students and to identify positive ways in which staff and students can work together.
In the study, staff mentees wrote a narrative text about the Higher Education journey of an under-represented medical student before and after the reverse mentoring intervention. These texts were compared using discourse analysis to identify shifts in language use that demonstrated a change in perceptions.
The first narratives revealed a superficial understanding of the student journey that focused on individual deficit but had fairy tale endings depicting the medical school as benevolent. The follow-up narratives revealed a deeper understanding reflected by the portrayal of students as capable agents and containing pragmatic endings acknowledging the responsibility of the medical school.
The Reverse Mentoring scheme has led to the creation of a new Faculty Equality Diversity & Inclusion (ED&I) education group to work with the ED&I student committee. A second reverse mentoring programme took place in the Faculty last year as well as the first scheme in the University Hospital Trust. It is also being rolled out across the wider University.