Peer Mentorship in an Undergraduate Health Professional Education Program: An Embodied Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study
Abstract
Student peer mentorship, in which a more senior student mentors a more junior student for at least one term, is on the rise in health professions education programs. The research presented adopts an embodied hermeneutic phenomenological approach to investigate student peer mentors’ perceptions of teaching, learning and relationships within peer mentorship interactions in the context of one collaborative nursing program in Ontario, Canada.
This dissertation is composed of five integrated manuscripts, in addition to introductory, body-map findings, and conclusion chapters. The first manuscript describes the theoretical foundations of the doctoral research, drawing on phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of embodiment, intersubjectivity and intercorporeality. The second manuscript offers an overview of the embodied hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and methods utilized in this research. The third manuscript introduces the practice of body-mapping as an approach to foster embodied reflection; through elucidation of an ‘auto/body-mapping’ process, that shows how body-mapping can be used to examine educators’ assumptions about teaching and learning and make embodied forms of knowledge visible. The fourth and fifth manuscripts present findings from the study, reporting on student peer mentors’ perceptions of engaging in a student peer mentorship program. The fourth manuscript presents student peer mentors’ perceptions of teaching in a peer mentorship program, highlighting the core theme of ‘commitment to mentee growth’ and considering seven related themes and implications for health professional education. The fifth manuscript presents student peer mentors’ perceptions of relationships, centered by a core theme of ‘nurturing a trusting learning community,’ with five associated themes.
This thesis contributes knowledge pertaining to embodied, relational and pedagogical factors that shape the work student peer mentors contribute through participation in a peer mentorship program in undergraduate education. This research further contributes theoretically informed insights about considering embodiment and intersubjectivity in health professional education, and opens several theoretical, methodological and ethical discussions. This work has implications for post-secondary faculty and others who offer and manage student peer mentorship programs, for students in peer mentor and mentee roles, and for health professional education.