Student voices should play a role in actioning change across the University and be embedded into everyday practice, and reverse mentoring is a very effective way of bringing less-heard voices to the fore.
The practice of reverse mentoring subverts the traditional ‘top-down’ mentoring dynamic, which sees an experienced senior person with expert knowledge imparting their wisdom to a less experienced junior. Instead, reverse mentoring provides a safe environment where both can learn from each other, but the ‘junior’ participant is recognised as the one with the specific expertise and takes the role of mentor.
The Reverse Mentoring Pilot, run by Rachael O’Connor, Associate Professor in the School of Law, involved eight international student/senior staff pairings and aimed to gain an insight into students’ lived experience and build stronger relationships between staff and students. Rachael joined the University of Leeds after working in commercial law, a sector in which reverse mentoring is common, and was keen to discover if the technique could work in a higher education setting.
The pilot was very successful and led to Rachael supporting the initiation of reverse mentoring on a university-wide scale in partnership with our Educational Engagement team, focusing on underrepresented students, including those who identified as ethnically minoritised, mature (21+), international or from a widening participation background. The project aimed to discover students’ sense of belonging and being valued and give staff and senior leaders/management at the University an understanding of challenges they faced. In addition, it explored how it could affect the daily practice of teaching and evaluation, as well as higher level decision making and policy for senior leaders.
25 student/staff pairings completed the project and post-mentoring feedback showed that students felt an increased sense of belonging, that their value was more widely accepted in the University, and that they had more confidence that staff understood them, their background and experiences.
“We discovered we both had working class backgrounds,” said one. “It was nice to see that someone so high up in the University came from these backgrounds and wasn’t forgetting where they came from. It gave me more confidence that the University has people’s best interests at heart, and I think it’s giving me more confidence in my teachers.”
Staff feedback was equally positive, with a greater understanding of student challenges and how they affected engagement.
“This really made me think differently about what inclusion means in the classroom and how complex it really is,” said a staff mentee. “It’s made me much more authentically engaged with the issues of underrepresentation because I can think about something I’ve discussed in depth with someone in a friendly, positive space.”
Rachael has a LITE fellowship aimed at furthering the use of reverse mentoring at Leeds. “The findings will be relevant to a number of important debates around the student experience, student well-being, diversity and inclusion and staff/student relationships,” says Rachael. “Student voices should play a role in actioning change across the University and be embedded into everyday practice, and reverse mentoring is a very effective way of bringing less-heard voices to the fore.”
Read more about Rachael's work: ‘Challenging the ‘traditional’: how ‘micro-communities’ can bring about big change’, part of our World Changer essay series.
Reverse Mentoring is just one approach we use to gather authentic student voices to help evaluate and improve the student experience and outcomes at Leeds. For more information on our student voice programmes, contact the Student Success Team: studentsuccess@leeds.ac.uk.