Undergraduate Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs

Perspectives on Innovation by Faculty, Staff, and Students

Contributions by Andrew Barry, Tamsin Bolton, Marcia Jenneth Epstein, Sanjay Goel, Jill Singleton-Jackson, Ralph H. Johnson, Veronika Mogyorody, Robert Nelson, Carol Pollock, Tina Pugliese, Jennifer L. Smith, Tania S. Smith, Kate Zier-Vogel, Bryanne Young Edited by Tania S. Smith

Publication date:

14 December 2012

Length of book:

292 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739179321

Curricular peer mentoring is a programmatic approach to enrich student learning and engagement in postsecondary courses in which instructors welcome a more experienced undergraduate student into a credit course they are teaching. The student then serves as peer mentor to the students enrolled. Peer mentors can provide a variety of peer-appropriate, course-specific mentoring, tutoring, facilitation and leadership roles and activities that complement the roles of the course’s instructor and teaching assistants both in classroom settings and beyond. A program provides training and ongoing support for a larger number of peer mentors and instructional teams and manages recruitment and program research and quality. This volume provides research findings, definitions, theories, and practical program descriptions as a foundation for program development and research of undergraduate curricular peer mentoring programs in higher education. This work builds on a long history of higher education program development and collects a significant amount of literature that has previously been scattered.

Introduction: The History and Scope of Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 1: Defining Features of Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 2: Discipline-Focused Peer Mentoring: Peer Teaching in Biology at the University of British Columbia
Carol Pollock
Theory and Practice: Lave and Wenger on Communities of Practice
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 3: Peer Mentoring in a Team-Taught Interdisciplinary Course: Engaging the 21st Century Student Through Peer-Led Learning
Tina Pugliese, Tamsin Bolton, Veronika Mogyorody, Jill Singleton-Jackson, Robert Nelson & Ralph H. Johnson
Theory and Practice: Student Engagement
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 4: Peer Mentoring in Large-scale First-year Programs: Academic Peer Mentors in First-year Courses at the University of Texas at Austin
Jennifer L. Smith
Theory and Practice: Tinto and Wenger on Learning Communities
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 5: Peer Mentoring in a Technical Institution: Undergraduate Mentoring in Software Engineering
Sanjay Goel
Theory and Practice: Vygotsky’s and Bloom’s Theories
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 6: Hosting Peer Mentors in a Senior Interdisciplinary Course: Notes from a Pre-History of Peer Mentoring at the University of Calgary
Marcia Jenneth Epstein
Theory and Practice: Bruffee on Collaborative Learning
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 7: Supporting Peer Mentors: Recruiting, Educating and Rewarding Peer Mentors
Kate Zier-Vogel and Andrew Barry
Theory and Practice: Peer Mentor Education Through Service-Learning
Tania S. Smith
Chapter 8: Case Studies of Conflict and Collaboration: Supporting Teaching Assistants Who Work with Peer Mentors
Bryanne Young
Theory and Practice: Teaching Teams with Graduate and Undergraduate Assistants
Tania S. Smith
Conclusion: Program Development and Sustainability
Tania S. Smith

Tania Smith’s volume, Undergraduate Curricular Peer Mentoring Programs, situates the heretofore practice-oriented peer instruction literature within a well-researched theoretical framework. It will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners.