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Exploring academic personal tutoring with under-represented students

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Using reverse mentoring to explore academic personal tutoring in partnership with students who self-identify as under-represented

Rachael O’Connor (School of Law)

Project overview

This project builds on Rachael’s award winning pilot work on reverse mentoring in higher education (HE), to explore how identified principles can be applied to academic personal tutoring (APT) relationships.

The project is important because APT is important, being one of the only opportunities students may have to develop an authentic, one-to-one relationship with a staff member. Tutor/tutee relationships have significant transformational potential for staff and students. However, there are often inconsistencies in how it is approached which can lead to some staff and students ‘checking out’ of the process.  It is crucial that APT is informed by student voices, particularly those who identify as under-represented within HE whose voices are typically marginalised or excluded from mainstream policy decisions.

As well as providing further evidence of the impact of reverse mentoring between staff and students in HE, the project supports us to understand how the institutional review of APT and the introduction of new supportive technology for APT plays out ‘on the ground’ so that we can continue to challenge and to develop. The cross-institutional nature of the project seeks to support in the development of an inclusive and authentic APT provision across campus.

The research seeks to empower students as active decision makers, working in positive partnerships with staff and promoting authentic relationships, belonging, kindness, compassion and mattering. A key objective is to understand challenges faced by students who self-identify as under-represented, particularly those facing intersectional barriers, when it comes to engagement with APT.

Key findings

  • Staff-student partnerships centred on lived experience expertise require significant work in order to be both successful and meaningful – advertising and promoting partnership opportunities must be done thoroughly and extensively if we are to attempt to engage a diverse range of students and staff in pedagogic research/co-design work
  • Staff-student partnerships built on empowering under-represented individuals to harness their lived experience expertise in co-designing initiatives for the benefit of other under-represented students have significant potential to enhance student wellbeing, through increased autonomy, relatedness and competence
  • Although some students involved had positive APT experiences, overwhelmingly the student co-designers and mentors explored significant issues and barriers with the current APT system, including many students not having any relationship or contact with their tutor, inconsistencies across Schools and under-represented students feeling tutors are not well equipped to support them. The APT system therefore risks already marginalised students becoming even further distanced from staff and the university due to inconsistent, negative, or non-existent APT experiences. Development of APT institutionally must therefore become a true priority if we are to meet our student experience commitments.
  • Staff-student partnerships have so much potential beyond individual research projects – where we build and maintain meaningful connections and commitments to one another, relationships which begin with a research project can far outlast project timelines and have a significant impact on staff and student experiences
  • Reverse mentoring is not the answer to ‘solving’ issues faced by under-represented students. However, where it is thoughtfully designed and consulted on with those impacted by it, it can serve as an important vehicle and catalyst for progress in culture change around key student experience areas, such as APT and belonging. This is particularly so where reverse mentoring has a clear purpose – here, to make proposals relating to enhancing APT at Leeds – which student and staff voices can meaningfully collaborate on, spotlighting lived experience expertise as vital to higher education development.
  • Participant and co-designer experiences are the most important part of any pedagogic research project, outputs and ‘results’ aside – in Phase 2, for example, as a group of 40 colleagues and students who regularly came together across a whole academic year, we created our own community of practice and partnership which had significantly positive impacts on our ability to persist, advocate and feel empowered to facilitate change. This ‘participant experience’ should be prioritised in all projects involving staff and students.

Implications for practice

  • This project has already resulted in a range of changes to APT practice across the University. For example, the School of Medicine has moved from students changing tutor annually to a five-year tutor continuation strategy, based on the lived experience insight of a student mentor about the negative impact of changing tutor. Other developments including increased time, communication and more inclusive practices adopted by staff and leaders in APT.
  • There is a growing body of evidence around the positive impact of reverse mentoring in higher education. At Leeds alone, we have conducted a range of different reverse mentoring schemes beyond this LITE project, including with university senior leaders (see bibliography) – this evidence can be drawn on and developed by colleagues looked to centre lived experience expertise in their practice, especially in terms of enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion. Colleagues in Chemistry have since been successful in obtaining external funding for a reverse mentoring scheme, building on this LITE project in a STEM context.
  • This project is a prime example of the need to eradicate the idea of ‘traditional’ approaches to staff-student relationships and higher education. Where instead, we view one another as human beings, as equals and as people who have time and care for one another, there is ample space for staff-student engagement to be transformational for all involved. The key principles of reverse mentoring support this and can be expanded and extended into a range of different delivery modes, beyond reverse mentoring itself.
  • Impactful APT takes continuous commitment and above all, it takes time – the reverse mentoring scheme involved staff-student partners engaging with each other for up to 20 hours across an academic year. By contrast, an APT is likely to see a student for no more than 1 hour each year. Reverse mentoring relationships can support us to see the power and potential of APT, if it is better prioritised, supported and celebrated institutionally.
  • This project placed a spotlight on APT and has been the catalyst for an institutional rethink about how we conduct APT, alongside other evidence such as National Student Survey (NSS) results and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) requirements. As part of this work, we are conducting a series of design sprints on APT, in partnership with the Learning Design Team (LDT), across four faculties in 2025 which will support more staff and students beyond this project to get involved in these vital conversations.

If you want to find out more details about this fellowship or what the next steps were upon completion please read the full snapshot  or contact Rachael (R.E.OConnor@leeds.ac.uk).

Read about the spotLITE workshop Rachael delivered, titled 'Using insights from reverse mentoring to kickstart meaningful staff-student relationships'.

Project start date: October 2021