Mentoring in higher education to improve research output: an ethnographic case study

Abstract

This article reports on the implementation of a model of mentoring in higher education to improve research output. A number of mentoring models were analysed before implementing a new model for research mentoring. The ethnographic case study reports on the mentor’s observation of different influences on the mentoring process after having implemented the model for a few months. The study revealed that the implementation of the model was influenced by the university context in which it took place, the dynamics of the three groups that functioned as communities of practice, and the individual dispositions of the participants.