Wendy Nuis

The continuously evolving labor market increases the need to develop students’ employability competencies in higher education. Engaging in reflection is crucial for developing these competencies, as reflection supports students in learning from their experiences and identifying their skills gaps. Nevertheless, without guidance or structure, students find it challenging to engage in deep levels of reflection. Therefore, mentoring programs are frequently introduced to provide reflection-inducive conditions. Existing research has already demonstrated the positive relationship between mentoring and reflection but has not explored students' perceptions of which types of mentoring support actually induce reflection and how these relate to the depth and content of reflection. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 master's students in an employability-oriented mentoring program in higher education. Data were analyzed using direct content analysis and co-occurrence analyses. Results showed that autonomy support, empathy, trust, and availability especially induce student reflection. Regarding reflective depth, students mainly reflected on the levels of reflection and critical reflection. Psychosocial support (i.e., empathy, trust, and availability) especially evoked students’ critical reflection. All students reflected on non-cognitive and cognitive content, but only half of them were about affective content. Finally, the results suggested making a distinction between reflecting back, up, and forward, which is in line with the feedback literature (feedback, feedforward, and feed up). The findings add depth and specificity to the scientific discourse on mentoring and reflection in higher education, and provide practical guidance to mentors on how to stimulate reflection in students.

Purpose: Given the dynamic and fast-evolving labour market, developing students’ employability competences has become of utmost importance for higher education institutions. The ability to reflect is essential to develop these competences, as it helps students to identify their learning needs and make plans for further development. However, reflective abilities are not easy to acquire and students need guidance to help them reflect. Therefore, mentoring is often used as an instructional approach to stimulate students to reflect. Empirical evidence on the relation between mentoring and employability competences is scarce, and the mediating role of reflection especially has rarely been researched. Consequently, the present study aims to investigate this mediating relationship, employing a pre-test post-test design.Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaire data were collected from students before and after participation in four similar 1-year mentoring programmes in higher education within the Netherlands and Belgium (n = 160).Findings: The path analysis demonstrated that, first, trust and availability, autonomy support and empathy were significantly related to students’ employability competences. Secondly, autonomy support and similarity were significantly related to students’ critical reflection. Thirdly, critical reflection was significantly related to students’ employability competences. Last, reflection partially mediated the relationship between mentoring (autonomy support and similarity) and employability.Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to demonstrate that mentoring programmes in higher education enable students to reflect and, in turn, develop their employability competences. Furthermore, it provides mentoring programme directors and mentors with concrete guidelines for developing students’ reflection and employability competences.

To keep up with technological advances and macro-economic trends, higher education has increasingly focused on developing students’ employability competences through mentoring programs. However, measuring the effectiveness of such mentoring programs has remained difficult, because many mentoring measurements are not validated or grounded in theory. Furthermore, existing questionnaires have mostly focused on one or two types of support, ignoring the wide variety of support types offered by a mentor. Therefore, the current study’s aim was to develop and validate a new questionnaire measuring various types of mentoring support. Based on a systematic literature review, a 35-item questionnaire was developed and data were collected from mentoring programs at four higher education institutions. Data were analyzed through exploratory factor analysis (n = 225), confirmatory factor analysis (n = 208), and cross-validation (n = 101). The results support a 6-factor model (21 items) that is statistically valid and reliable for use in universities (of applied sciences). The model includes the following factors, referring to types of support and their features: trust and availability, emotional support, networking support, autonomy support, similarity, and empathy. This questionnaire makes an original contribution insofar as (1) it is based on a sound, theoretical framework, and (2) it was demonstrated to be valid and reliable across different sub-populations in higher education. The questionnaire provides educational practitioners with a sound and valid tool to evaluate the quality of their mentoring program. It can also be used to assess what types of support could be offered to a greater extent.

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