Concluding Reflections
What Next ?
Acknowledgements
Mentees ’ Experience
“ Self-compassion provided a ‘ safe ground ’ where I could reflect on how I was the product of a privileged system , and I experienced a dawning insight into the real costs – financial and otherwise – for our BAME students and their families .”
“ I really appreciated the opportunity to get out from behind my desk and ‘ see ’ aspects of student ’ s experience at Westminster through fresh eyes – I would meet my mentor at a café near her placement which was fun !”
“ It would be helpful to know about the assumptions that other types of students hold , care leavers and disabled students for example .”
When asked about appropriateness of ‘ reverse mentoring ’ terminology , it was not seen as problematic : Why not simply call it a mentoring scheme ? [ Mentee ]; What about calling it prosocial mentoring ? [ Mentor ]. Therefore inverted commas have been removed in the remainder of the paper .
Concluding Reflections
Kline ’ s ( 2009 ) concept of being equal thinking partners in a reverse mentoring relationship highlighted that the ‘ equal ’ element does not have to assume that each party is equal in their knowledge . Rather , they are equal in their ability to reflect and share thoughts and perspectives , with mutual respect . This can facilitate an environment of psychological safety where both parties can say what is on their mind without fear of judgement or reprisal . However , for this to work a plan / road map should be shared in the form of a mentoring contract / agreement on what each party wants to achieve with the help of the other and working in partnership . Being equal thinking partners can extend into other forms of pedagogical partnership with students as co-creators of curriculum , assessment , and knowledge ( Cook- Sather and Matthews , 2021 ). Being equal thinking partners promotes shared responsibility and ownership , creating new forms of student-teacher agency , and more democratic , inclusive , and dynamic ways of working and learning with , from , and about each other .
Reverse mentoring , when planned correctly , simply becomes an important extension of traditional mentoring , and our study supports the benefits of mentoring in HE . For reverse mentoring to work it requires commitment to embodying the roles of the mentor and mentee , to avoid the roles reverting back to a more hierarchical mentoring relationship . This reverse mentoring study provided real-time insight into shifting power dynamics between the mentors and mentees . For both roles , disruptions of positionality challenged previously held views regarding the lifeworld of participants . Albeit temporary , the liminal space of a reverse mentoring conversation facilitated authentic dialogue around impostorism ( namely , a feeling of intellectual fraudulence ; see Kilby , 2020 ). Some senior leaders shared their own feelings of impostorism , which sharply contrasted with a sense of empowerment in student mentors . Participants benefitted from an exchange of cultural literacies which , in the case of senior leaders , fed into a more informed understanding of the challenges for BAME students . Students gained a fresh understanding of the leadership territory which could be taken into future employment , with a new sense of agency and empowerment .
What Next ?
Three initiatives have arisen from this small-scale study . Firstly , the concept of being equal thinking partners informed a Society for Research into Higher Education funded study into compassionate pedagogy , with students as co-researchers ( see Waddington and Bonaparte , 2022 ). Secondly , the University of Westminster ’ s Diversity and Inclusion Research Community funded investigations into experiences of the impostor phenomenon in racially minoritised students in higher education ( see Yetkili , Husbands and Linceviciute , 2022 ). Finally , one of the student mentors in this project – whose reflections on ‘ leaving egos outside ’ informed the title of this paper – now works as employability lead for a youth justice social enterprise in London . These initiatives clearly show how reverse mentoring enhanced their knowledge , skills , work-readiness , and personal development . The principles and processes of reverse mentoring described here will now be extended beyond higher education , in a follow-up study with vulnerable and disadvantaged young people .
Acknowledgements
The study was internally funded by the Quintin Hogg Trust which is committed to supporting a wide range of projects , with a single criterion that the project must contribute to the advancement of education for students at the university . Ethical approval was granted by the university ’ s research ethics committee . We would also like to thank : Professor Peter Bonfield , Vice-Chancellor and President , who actively supported the mentoring study and facilitated access to senior members of his team ; and Sammy Odoi , Managing Director , and Karl Donaldson , Employability Lead , at Wipers Youth ( https :// www . wipers . org . uk / our-work ), for the opportunity to explore the social impact of reverse mentoring .
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