Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate mentors' and mentees' perspectives of the mentor role within an education doctoral mentoring program at a mid-sized public institution.

Design/methodology/approach

Data from individual interviews with mentors and mentees were collected as part of a larger case study of a doctoral mentoring program. Mentees were doctor of education (EdD) students in their first and second years of the program. Mentors were identified as individuals who graduated from or are further along in the doctoral program. Five (N = 5) mentees and seven (N = 7) mentors participated in interviews, which were then transcribed and coded to identify emergent themes, along with transcripts of presentations given by the mentors.

Findings

Four themes emerged within the data: differentiating support roles, mentoring as a way to identify gaps in doctoral student needs, mentoring as support for doctoral student success and ways to provide suggestions for mentoring program improvement. Results indicated that mentors and mentees viewed the mentor role as being unique from the roles of faculty advisor and dissertation chair. Mentors and mentees alike responded positively to virtual mentoring.

Research limitations/implications

Participation by mentors and mentees was limited to first- and second-year doctoral students; thus, dissertation-stage students' perceptions of mentoring could not be determined. Implications include the value of mentoring in filling the gaps of support for doctoral students and the capability of mentoring programs to be adapted to unexpected circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Originality/value

This study targets scholar-practitioner students in an EdD program, who are often overlooked by mentoring literature, and distinguishes research between faculty mentoring and mentoring performed by other students/recent graduates. Additionally, the pandemic gave the authors an opportunity to explore adapting mentoring to virtual formats.

中文翻译：

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填补空白：非教师导师角色如何为博士课程支持结构做出贡献

目的

本文的目的是调查中型公共机构中的教育博士指导计划中导师和受导者对导师角色的看法。

设计/方法/方法

作为博士导师计划的大型案例研究的一部分，收集了来自对导师和受导师进行的单独访谈的数据。受训者是该计划第一年和第二年的教育博士（EdD）学生。导师被确定为从博士课程毕业或毕业的人。五名（N  = 5）的受训者和七名（N  = 7）的指导者参加了访谈，然后被转录和编码以识别新出现的主题，以及指导者给出的演讲记录。

发现

数据中出现了四个主题：区分支持角色，指导作为确定博士生需求差距的一种方式，指导作为对博士生成功的支持以及为指导计划的改进提供建议的方法。结果表明，导师和受训者认为导师的角色与教师顾问和论文主持人的角色是独特的。导师和受训者都对虚拟导师做出了积极的回应。

研究局限/意义

指导者和受指导者的参与仅限于一年级和二年级博士生；因此，无法确定学位论文阶段学生对指导的看法。含义包括指导在填补博士生支持方面的价值，以及指导计划适应COVID-19大流行等意外情况的能力。

创意/价值

这项研究的对象是教育学博士课程中的学术从业生，他们经常被指导文学所忽视，并且区分了教师指导与其他学生/最近的毕业生所进行的指导之间的研究。此外，大流行还为作者提供了探索将指导适应虚拟格式的机会。