Abstract:

The challenges that the European space of higher education has been facing in the last two decades, namely the ones presented by the Bologna Process, are placing an important focus on and an ongoing attention to the tutoring process. It is suggested that tutoring, as an implicit function of the learning and teaching process, can address a number of issues including academic, social and personal settings (Leidenfrost, Strassnig, Schabmann, Spiel, & Claus-Christian, 2011).

As defined in the literature, tutoring is a type of developmental relationship that include peer dyads composed of senior (teachers/tutors or older students/mentors) and junior individuals (graduate students/mentees), aimed to focus on the junior’s academic advancement and personal and social growth (Lunsford, Baker, Griffin, & Johnson, 2013). These interactions between young and senior can assume a variety of forms and when implemented in the context of higher education have been found to be a win-win process and have been showed positive effects for mentees, as well as for mentors and tutors (Leidenfrost et al., 2011). Tutoring is first and foremost a relationship that inspires individual and systematic attention to the mentee as a whole, targeted to humanize students’ workplace by facilitating the academic integration in all the activities that enfold students’ educational and personal development (Bean, Lucas, & Hyers, 2014).

The Tutoring Program of the University of Aveiro (PT-UA), Portugal, first implemented in 2011, was designed to ensure the comprehensive integration of new undergraduates both regarding academic success and well-being, and identifying and giving an effective and prompt response to early drop out and academic failure. Within this framework, the PT-UA Program was planned in a peer tutoring process where first-year students (mentees) are mentored by senior students under teachers’ (tutors’) supervision. This Program includes, simultaneously, a set of workshops, talks and other sessions, fully oriented to the development of transversal competences and to the involvement in all the activities that are offered by the academia (e.g. cultural, sports). Different interested parties with different responsibilities join in the operationalization of the PT-UA Program: the Pedagogic Council, the Executive Committee of the Faculties and the Heads of the under graduation programs. More recently (since September 2015), the PT-UA Program was fully integrated in the FICA project (a project that works with a set of tools to identify and prevent early school leaving and promote academic achievement) that is sponsored by the Ministry of Education.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light and gather input on new trends of the tutoring and mentoring process, by detailing and disseminating this academic experience. Data triangulation was used with direct observation, document analysis and semi-structured interviews to different participants (tutors, mentors and mentees).The results of the study recognize the benefits of the PT-UA Program, both in terms of added value for mentees, mentors and tutors and in terms of prevention of early school leaving.

Keywords:

Tutoring, mentoring, higher education, academic success, well-being.