Academic Mentorship and the Mentorship Needs of New Faculty Members in Faculties of Education
The aim of this study is to determine the problems of new faculty members who are in their first years of profession, to gather information about from whom and on which topics they receive support in the process of solving these problems and to present their views on academic mentoring process which...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Bülent Ecevit University
2016-10-01
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| Series: | Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi |
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| Online Access: | http://higheredu-sci.beun.edu.tr/pdf.php3?id=1715 |
| Summary: | The aim of this study is to determine the problems of new faculty members who are in their first years of profession, to gather information about from whom and on which topics they receive support in the process of solving these problems and to present their views on academic mentoring process which is implemented for novice faculty members in different countries of the world such as the United States and United Kingdom. With this purpose, a qualitative research method was used in this study and 14 faculty members from four different universities who started their profession at Faculty of Education in last three years were interviewed. The results of the study indicated that in their first years of profession new faculty members experienced such problems as heavy workload concerning the taught courses, lack of time for doing research, adaptation difficulties during their transition to faculty membership, and lack of academic cooperation with colleagues. The participants stated that they received substantial support from their colleagues with whom they had a close relationship or from their doctorate supervisors in order to overcome these problems. However, the participants who completed their PhDs abroad indicated that they had serious problems during this process and they felt themselves lonely in the system. Faculty members also defined the areas in which they needed professional support as research, administrative and teaching activities Finally, many participants stated that having a mentor in charge of helping them on these issues would be beneficial for their professional development, while some also emphasized the possible drawbacks of such an implementation. It is considered that academic mentorship process could be beneficial especially for the novice faculty members who have completed their PhDs at institutions different from their current universities in Turkey or from institutions abroad.
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| ISSN: | 2146-5959 2146-5967 |