Peer mentoring for international students

In her paper Shamini Ragavan (Newcastle University) described her experiences as an international student tutor, exploring in particular the role of collaborative learning in supporting international students.

Shamini’s slides are embedded below. She also presented this paper at the 2009 Socio-Legal Studies Association conference.

Newcastle Law School first appointed an international student tutor as a pilot in 2004, with the aim of supporting international students both socially and academically in making an effective transition to the new environment.

The tutor’s job is to offer guidance to students on how to respond to the challenges of a radically new situation and to ensure that they have a rich and rewarding experience. Significant results have been achieved in a short time, with both the percentage of passes and retention of first year international students increasing. The law school now intends to develop further support for international students across the whole student cohort.

One tool in the success of the initiative has been the setting up of a peer mentoring scheme, merging a community of students with similar interests and purpose to achieve better social and academic integration.

Richard Owen (University of Glamorgan) reports:

Shamini presented her experiences piloting a mentoring scheme for international students. The scheme started in September 2008, with eight students supported as mentors for 13 mentees. The mentors are also international students. They were trained after appointment and are being paid, although they were unaware of the possibility of payment until after appointment. Meetings are initiated by mentors and occur weekly. Mentees are free to choose other mentors if they wish. The scheme acts as a complement to the personal tutoring system, as the students still see Shamini once a week.

The objectives of the pilot are to:

• facilitate the students’ social and academic transition to a British higher education institution
• encourage wider and fuller engagement both within the institution and on the students’ academic programme
• explore the effectiveness of merging a community of students with similar interests
• prevent the students from becoming isolated
• increase co-operation
• develop trust, emotional intelligence, imagination (Nussbaum, 1998), cognition and personality
• ensure cultural diversity without segregation (Tatum, 1997), Collins, 1990)

A qualitative evaluation of the pilot is being undertaken via focus groups using open questions with data being recorded, transcribed and analysed, and there is the possibility of a phenomenological study taking place in the future.

Shamini considered the extensive literature on ‘peer mentoring’. Amongst other things, she noted that there is no agreed definition of the term ‘mentor’, which she does not find adequate, preferring the term ‘buddy’.

Key concerns raised at the focus group:

• the mentors would like more guidance, with reiteration of the issues dealt with at training
• the label ‘mentor’ is not adequate
• informality was felt to be crucial to the success of the programme, and a preference was stated for not meeting at the law school
• two students would have preferred a mentor from their own country, however, the number of international students means this will not always be possible
• meetings were felt to have been too frequent

In discussion one participant raised the possibility of mentors giving their mentees wrong advice. The weekly meeting with Shamini acts as a safeguard to either prevent this happening or to allow remedial action to be taken as soon as possible, and the personal tutor system acts as a further safeguard.

The difficulties of finding quantitative measures of the pilot’s success were considered. It was thought that assessment results involved too many variables to be a reliable indicator of the pilot’s success, and retention rates were mentioned as a preferred measure.

It was also questioned whether the pilot might inadvertently lead to segregation, as home students do not act as mentors. However, another opinion was expressed that only someone who had themselves come to the UK could fully empathise with a mentee in this situation – many issues, for example Sunday closing, may not be apparent to British students.

About Shamini

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Shamini Ragavan is a teaching fellow and international student tutor at Newcastle Law School, where her work in initiating a support programme for international students has been recognised as good practice.
 
Shamini is module leader for the law of evidence and also teaches public and contract law.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010