“Nurturing a trusting learning community”: perceptions of relationships in a health professions education peer mentorship program
International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education
ISSN: 2046-6854
Article publication date: 25 October 2023
Issue publication date: 19 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships in a health professions education program.
Design/methodology/approach
The design uses embodied hermeneutic phenomenology. The data comprise 10 participant interviews and visual “body maps” produced in response to guided questions.
Findings
The findings about student mentors' perceptions of peer mentor relationships include a core theme of nurturing a trusting learning community and five related themes of attunement to mentees, commonality of experiences, friends with boundaries, reciprocity in learning and varied learning spaces.
Originality/value
The study contributes original insights by highlighting complexity, shifting boundaries, liminality, embodied social understanding and trusting intersubjective relations as key considerations in student peer mentor relationships.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend appreciation to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and to Sigma Theta Tau, Iota Omicron chapter, for funding of this research. Thanks are extended to Western University and Fanshawe College for support of this research and to the student participants for generously granting permission for their interview transcripts and body maps and testimonials to serve as data for this study. Appreciation is extended to Alan Gooding and John Sing for their work of producing photographs and graphics shown in this manuscript.
Citation
Harrison, H.F., Kinsella, E.A., Loftus, S., DeLuca, S., McGovern, G., Belanger, I. and Eugenio, T. (2024), "“Nurturing a trusting learning community”: perceptions of relationships in a health professions education peer mentorship program", International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 55-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-08-2022-0065
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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