Effective Teaching Outcomes Associated With the Mentorship of Early Career Psychologists

Abstract

To date, research has not examined the influence of mentorship on the teaching effectiveness of Early Career Psychologists (ECPs). We sought to fill this void by conducting a national survey of 122 ECPs assessing the presence or absence of three types of ECP mentors (i.e., in their department, in another department at their university, or another self-selected mentor) as well as the successes and challenges associated with working with those mentors. Overall, ECPs viewed relationships with mentors quite favorably, and mentorship was positively related to more effective teaching activities and adherence to model teaching criteria. Implications for future research on the study of mentorship among ECPs and how junior and senior faculty can benefit from these findings are discussed.

Keywords

mentorship early career psychologist professional development faculty development

Traditionally, holding a terminal graduate degree in one’s field was considered sufficient qualification to teach college- or university-level courses, without any additional pedagogical training (see Howard, Buskist, & Stowell, 2007). Today, the reality is still that many graduate programs focus on research and place a low priority on preparing graduate students to become effective teachers (see Boysen, 2011). As a result, the early years in academia for new faulty members can be unnecessarily stressful and overwhelming (Benassi & Buskist, 2012). For new faculty, the significant amount of time spent on teaching duties typically leaves little time for research-related efforts (Good, Keeley, Leder, Afful, & Stiegler-Balfour, 2013). Not surprisingly, the time imbalance between teaching and research can leave many worried about the perception of their performance by department and university leadership as well as tenure progress.

To meet these challenges, many junior faculty seek advice and guidance from more seasoned colleagues through formal and informal mentoring relationships. Generally speaking, a mentor is someone who actively influences the development of another individual. Although many scholars suggest that mentoring is important for professional development (e.g., Green & Hawley, 2009; Johnson, 2002), there has been little systematic, quantitative evaluation of mentorship and its potential benefits, particularly with regard to teaching and Early Career Psychologists (ECPs). Indeed, a recent review of Teaching of Psychology articles (Griggs & Collisson, 2013) revealed that the second most frequently cited article in the history of the journal was a study on mentorship from the mid-1980s (Cronan-Hillix, Gensheimer, Cronan-Hillix, & Davidson, 1986), attesting to the importance of empirical studies on mentorship. Furthermore, mentoring at the student and professional level was the topic of a recent American Psychological Association (APA) presidential task force (APA, 2006), but surprisingly, we know of no research in the subsequent years that has examined the effect of mentoring on the teaching of psychology.

To date, much of the empirical work on mentoring has occurred under the general heading of higher education or in fields outside psychology. For example, some research in the higher education literature has examined whether mentors and mentees agree on what mentees should learn (Miller, Wadkins, & Davis, 2008), and other work has examined dispositional qualities valued in mentors within one university’s new faculty mentorship program (e.g., Thurston, Navarrete, & Miller, 2009). Additionally, drawing from research in business settings, researchers have established that effective mentoring decreases work–family conflict and increases job satisfaction, productivity, and the likelihood of promotions (Nielson, Carlson, & Lankau, 2001; Roche, 1979; Scandura, 1992). It remains to be seen whether these findings extend to the field of psychology and more specifically to the mentorship of ECPs and their teaching abilities.

The research and theorizing on mentorship within psychology and related fields have primarily focused on the mentoring of graduate students (Cronan-Hillix et al., 1986), professional psychologists (Kaslow & Mascaro, 2007), and people with specific background characteristics (e.g., minorities and women). But existing research has not examined ECPs, or whether such mentorship experiences are empirically associated with effective teaching, despite the fact that many have presumed mentorship would lead to effective professional and personal development for faculty (e.g., APA, n.d.; Green & Hawley, 2009).

Thus, in the current research, we sought to examine the correlates of mentorship and effective teaching among ECPs. We conducted a nationwide survey on the mentorship experiences of ECPs. We hypothesized that mentees would view their relationships as successful and with minimal problems. We also hypothesized that greater levels of mentorship would be associated with greater teaching effectiveness. To this end, we reported on the presence or absence of different types of mentors as well as the number of overall mentors, and we predicted that the presence of each type of mentor (vs. absence), as well as the greater number of mentors overall, would be associated with more effective teaching. We anticipate these data to provide a much needed baseline for our understanding of mentorship on the teaching of psychology that will serve as scaffolding for future investigations into more specific mentorship practices.

Method

Participants

Participants were 122 ECPs (84 women, 35 men, 3 did not report gender; M_age = 33.71, SD_age = 4.57) recruited to participate in an online study of mentorship from listservs (i.e., the PSYCHTEACHER listserv and the STP (Society for the Teaching of Psychology)-ECP listserv) and the STP-ECP Facebook group. All ECPs (within 7 years of terminal degree or beginning full-time teaching)¹ were invited to participate. For this study, participants reported having between 0 and 3 mentors in total—some formally assigned, some for which the relationship developed more organically—who were members of their department, their university, or another mentor whom they had sought out on their own. Additional details about the participants are available in Table 1.

Table 1.

Percentage of Participants Across Job Title, Teaching Setting, and Psychology Specialty Area.

Job Title	%	Specialties in Psychology	%
Assistant professor	62.30	Social	22.95
Associate professor	8.20	Cognitive	20.49
Lecturer	6.56	Clinical/counseling	13.93
Visiting professor	4.10	Developmental	13.11
Adjunct professor	4.10	Industrial/organizational	4.92
Research associate	0.82	Educational/school	4.10
Other	11.48	Biological/neuroscience	4.10
Missing	2.46	Personality	1.64
		Other	12.30
		Missing	2.46
Teaching Setting	%	Mentor type^a	%
Four-year liberal arts college	49.18	None	16.39
Regional comprehensive university	18.03	Only department	24.59
Research intensive university	16.39	Only university	6.56
Two-year/community college	6.56	Only “other”	15.57
Professional school	3.28	Department and University	9.02
High school	0.82	Department and “other”	17.21
Other	3.28	University and “other”	5.74
Missing	2.46	Department, University, and “other”	4.92
Participants’ racial identification	%	Highest degree earned	%
White	92.62	PhD	90.15
Asian	3.28	PsyD	2.46
Latino/Latina	1.64	Master’s	3.28
Other	1.64	Other	2.46
Missing	1.64	Missing	1.64

^aIn the order of the survey, participants reported if they “have had a mentor who is a member of your department,” “have had a mentor who is a member of another department at your college or university,” and if they “have sought out an additional mentor(s) other than those already described” in the survey. Participants who responded “no” to each of these items were classified as having no mentors; others were classified as having one or more mentors falling into these categories.

Online Survey Procedure

We created a survey to examine the mentorship experiences and teaching-related outcomes of ECPs and distributed it online using the Qualtrics web-based survey system. The results reported here are part of a larger survey on mentorship of ECPs, and thus, we only examine variables related to this article’s specific hypotheses. The survey first asked participants if they had a mentor who was a member of their department (henceforth referred to as a “department” mentor). If participants indicated “yes” to this item, they responded to further items about that mentor (details in the materials section subsequently). They answered identical questions if they also had a mentor who was a member of another department at their university (henceforth referred to as a “university” mentor) and/or if they had sought out any additional mentor(s) other than those previously described (henceforth referred to as an “other” mentor).² There were many types of “other” mentors listed, including but not limited to additional colleagues at one’s institution or elsewhere, representatives of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and former mentors (e.g., graduate or undergraduate advisors). Skip-logic moved participants to the next section of the survey if they reported not having a mentor of a particular type. After completing the mentor-related items, participants answered questions about their teaching activities and model teaching behaviors and completed demographic items. The survey required 10–30 min to complete, and participants were compensated with an entry into six raffles for US$25 Amazon.com gift cards.

Materials

Mentors

Based on participant responses, we ascertained whether they had a department mentor (yes/no), a university mentor (yes/no), or an “other” mentor (yes/no). We also summed the total mentors reported per category for each participant (0–3). Each of these variables served as predictors of effective teaching activities and model teaching criteria.

Mentor effectiveness

For each of the mentors, participants completed a series of items designed by the authors to measure mentor effectiveness. These items assessed the ways in which participants perceived the mentor–mentee relationship to be successful (9 items, rated from 1 = not at all successful, to 7 = very successful) and problematic or challenging³ (8 items, rated from 1 = not at all challenging, to 7 = very challenging). The individual items are presented in Figure 1, and because participants completed the successes and challenges items for each of their mentors, they responded to these items for as few as zero mentors or as many as three mentors.

Figure 1.

Mentee reported successes and challenges of working with each type of mentor. *Note. We conducted between subjects and within subjects analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to examine if the three mentor types were associated with differences in each of the successes and challenges listed previously. None of these ANOVAs approached statistical significance (ps > .12 for between subjects ANOVAs and ps > .104 for within subjects ANOVAs), with the exception of the within subjects ANOVA for item 16 marked with an “*” mentioned previously, F(2, 6) = 6.70, p < .05. Among the four participants who completed this item, a Tukey Least Significant Difference (LSD) test revealed that mentees found university mentors (M = 4.50, SD = 1.26) to have a marginally poorer understanding of their field as department mentors (M = 1, SD = 0; LSD from university mentors significance = .07) and other mentors (M = 1.75, SD = 0.48; LSD from university mentors significance = .09).

Effective teaching activities

We computed a sum of 3 items created by the authors considered to be indicative of teaching effectiveness, which we refer to as “effective teaching activities.” The specific items included (1) Whether participants attend a teaching-related conference during an average year (yes/no), (2) if they had ever presented at a teaching conference (yes/no), and (3) if they had ever published a teaching-related research article (yes/no; M = 1.04, SD = 1.01, Cronbach’s α = .61).

Model teaching criteria

Participants also completed the 51-item Self-Scoring Checklist for Model Teaching Criteria created by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Presidential Taskforce on Model Teaching (Richmond et al., 2014). This self-report checklist provides an index of model teaching based on six competency areas: training, instructional methods, assessment process, syllabi, content, and student evaluations. Each of these areas contains from 5 items to 9 items, answered with either 0 (no) or 1 (yes) response options, which we summed to compute a value on this scale for each participant (range = 11–51, M = 34.73, SD = 7.64, Cronbach’s α = .85). Participants responded to items such as “I have peer-reviewed publications related to content areas I teach” (training area) and “I regularly solicit formative and summative feedback from students” (student evaluations area).

Results

Number of Mentors and Teaching Effectiveness

The first set of analyses examined correlations between participants’ number of mentors, effective teaching activities, and the model teaching criteria. First, the model teaching criteria were associated with our measure of effective teaching activities, r(121) = .35, p < .001, suggesting that both tap aspects of successful teaching. Also, as hypothesized, having a greater amount of mentors was associated with more effective teaching activities, r(121) = .31, p < .01, as well as higher levels of the model teaching criteria, r(117) = .30, p < .01.

Mentor Effectiveness

The second set of analyses addressed the degree to which participants perceived working with their mentors to be successful or challenging. As can be seen in Figure 1, participants viewed working with each type of mentor as primarily successful and as not very challenging. In order to verify this, we conducted one-sample t-tests with the testing value set at 4 (the scale midpoint). We averaged across each of the mentor types for each success item to reduce the number of statistical tests we conducted. All of the tests were significant at the p < .0001 level, ts > |5.35|.

Presence or Absence of Each Mentor Type and Teaching-Related Outcomes

The third set of analyses addressed whether having each type of mentor (vs. not) was associated with effective teaching activities and the model teaching criteria. Because we specifically hypothesized that mentoring would be associated with more effective teaching, we conducted six planned comparisons using independent samples t-tests (see Table 2). The presence of a mentor within ECPs’ departments was associated with marginally more effective teaching activities (a small to medium effect size) but not the model teaching criteria (although the difference was in the predicted direction). With regard to the presence of mentors at one’s university who were not in the ECP’s department, having such mentors was associated with increased levels of effective teaching activities (a medium effect size) and marginally associated with greater values on the model teaching criteria (a medium effect size). Finally, the presence of another mentor whom ECPs sought out was not associated with increased effective teaching activities (although in the anticipated direction), but it was associated with greater values on the model teaching criteria (a medium effect size).

Table 2.

Presence or Absence of Type of Mentor and Measures of Teaching Effectiveness.

	Yes, M (SD)	No, M (SD)	Degrees of Freedom	t-Value	d
Department mentor
Effective teaching activities	1.19 (1.04)	0.85 (0.94)	120	1.87⁺	0.34
Model teaching criteria	35.24 (8.35)	34.08 (6.62)	116	0.82	0.15
University mentor
Effective teaching activities	1.47 (1.02)	0.89 (0.97)	120	2.88**	0.58
Model teaching criteria	36.81 (5.71)	34.00 (8.12)	116	1.77⁺	0.40
Other mentor
Effective teaching activities	1.15 (1.08)	0.96 (0.95)	120	1.06	0.19
Model teaching criteria	36.83 (6.50)	33.10 (8.10)	116	2.71**	0.51

Note. Some degrees of freedom are uneven because participants elected not to respond to particular items.

⁺ p < .10; **p < .01.

Discussion

The current research provides early-stage evidence that mentor relationships for ECPs are largely successful, free of challenges, and associated with teaching effectiveness. Having mentors within one’s department, at one’s university, or other mentors individuals sought out—versus not having these individuals—was associated with indicators of effective teaching activities and criteria associated with model teaching as was having more mentors overall. These findings provide much needed empirical data to bolster existing claims that mentoring is an effective practice for new faculty members within the field of psychology (e.g., APA, n.d.; Green & Hawley, 2009; Johnson, 2002).

We view these findings as an important step in the understanding of effective teaching. Although it has long been accepted that mentorship is associated with teaching success, this work provides the first empirical examination on this topic among early career psychologists. We hope that this study will form the foundation of future efforts designed to answer other questions aimed at the traits and characteristics of successful mentoring relationships for faculty members, especially ECPs. At a minimum, this work should encourage ECPs to take advantage of mentoring opportunities provided by their department and/or university. In addition, we have found support for the merit of “other” mentorship relationships that ECPs may seek out on their own, both within and outside their home university. In a related fashion, these findings should spur senior faculty to participate in mentorship programs at their home institutions and outside their universities (e.g., the professional development program sponsored by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology). Regardless of whether senior faculty members are in the same department or at the same university as their mentee, our results suggest at least some benefit to overall ECP performance. Finally, these results should serve as a rallying call for the need and utility of mentorship programs to organizations with ECP members. As “the more the merrier” sentiment has been found to ring true for mentoring, the investment of time and energy on the part of the mentors should yield important and meaningful outcomes in the advancement of departmental, university, and discipline rewards related to overall teaching of psychology.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

It is worth noting that some of our findings did not achieve statistical significance as anticipated. The presence of a department mentor was marginally associated with more effective teaching activities but not associated with the model teaching criteria. It is possible that this occurred because department mentors may be especially attuned to issues related to achieving tenure for the protégé (e.g., presenting and publishing research) but not necessarily attuned to the broad range of competencies present in the model teaching criteria. Perhaps the idiosyncratic nature of criteria for achieving tenure-prevented department mentors from recognizing and prioritizing training across each of the many model teaching criteria. In addition, the presence of an “other” mentor was associated with higher levels of the model teaching criteria but not associated with the effective teaching activities. This may be because, by nature of being outside of participants’ departments, “other” mentors are not as acutely aware of department guidelines for presenting and publishing. They may, however, prioritize a more general approach to effective teaching embodied by the model teaching criteria. These explanations based on tenure-based priorities are speculative though, and future research should examine whether these and other aspects of mentors influence teaching practices.

The present study also does not delve into which specific aspects of mentorship are most predictive of teaching activities and model teaching. Clearly, some mentoring relationships are more successful than others; thus, future research should investigate specific mentor behaviors. We also did not have a large enough sample of participants with multiple mentors to statistically determine which type of mentor was most strongly associated with teaching effectiveness (e.g., through a relative importance analysis). Future research might focus on those ECPs with multiple mentors to investigate which mentoring relationships are most predictive of positive teaching behaviors.

Although our sample would not be large enough to make firm conclusions about this matter, we think future research should touch on differences in mentorship based on institution type. The faculty members in our sample were primarily employed in liberal arts environments, which may have very different norms for mentorship—particularly, as it relates to teaching—than larger institutions or institutions with a more significant research focus.

Finally, the present study is correlational, and thus causal relationships cannot be determined. Perhaps ECPs with more effective teaching behaviors are more likely to seek out additional mentors or to utilize their existing mentors in a manner that promotes continued teaching improvement. Future research could use a longitudinal design to test whether the development of a mentoring relationship affects ECPs’ teaching over time. Researchers could also assess the effectiveness of various specific mentoring initiatives, such as the STP mentoring program.

We believe the benefits of mentorship outlined in the current work provide a clear starting point for understanding the potentially manifold benefits of mentorship on the teaching and professional development of ECPs. We hope this work sounds the call for more research on this topic and more mentor relationships within the university setting.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Resource guides for early career psychologists: Academia, research, parenting, and life issues. Retrieved July 1, 2013, from http://www.apa.org/careers/early-career/resource-guide.pdf

American Psychological Association. (2006). Introduction to mentoring: A guide for mentors and mentees. Washington, DC: Author.

Benassi

V. A.

Buskist

(Eds.). (2012). Effective college and university teaching: Strategies and tactics for the new professoriate. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Boysen

G. A.

(2011). The prevalence and predictors of teaching courses in doctoral psychology programs. Teaching of Psychology, 38, 49–52. doi:10.1177/0098628310390850

Cronan-Hillix

Gensheimer

L. K.

Cronan-Hillix

W. A.

Davidson

W. S.

(1986). Students’ views of mentors in psychology graduate training. Teaching of Psychology, 13, 123–127. doi:10.1207/s15328023top1303_5

Good

J. J.

Keeley

Leder

Afful

Stiegler-Balfour

J. J.

(2013). Supporting our junior faculty: Assessing the concerns and needs of early career faculty. Teaching of Psychology, 40, 340–345. doi:10.1177/0098628313501048

Green

A. G.

Hawley

G. C.

(2009). Early career psychologists: Understanding, engaging, and mentoring tomorrow’s leaders. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40, 206–212. doi:10.1037/a0012504

Griggs

R. A.

Collisson

(2013). ToP’s greatest hits: The most frequently cited Teaching of Psychology Articles. Teaching of Psychology, 40, 76–87. doi:10.1177/0098628312475026

Howard

Buskist

Stowell

(2007). The STP guide to graduate student training in the teaching of psychology. Retrieved from http://teachpsych.org/resources/e-books/gst2007/gst07.php

10.

Johnson

W. B.

(2002). The intentional mentor: Strategies and guidelines for the practice of mentoring. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33, 88–96. doi:10.1037/0735-7028.33.1.88

11.

Kaslow

N. J.

Mascaro

N. A.

(2007). Mentoring interns and postdoctoral residents in academic health sciences center. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 14, 191–196. doi:10.1037/a0012504

12.

Miller

R. L.

Wadkins

T. A.

Davis

S. F.

(2008). Contrasting perspectives on mentoring new faculty. Journal of Faculty Development, 22, 135–143.

13.

Nielson

T. R.

Carlson

D. S.

Lankau

M. J.

(2001). The supportive mentor as a means of reducing work-family conflict. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 59, 362–381.

14.

Richmond

A. S.

Boysen

G. A.

Gurung

R. A. R.

Tazeau

Y. N.

Meyers

S. A.

Sciutto

M. J.

(2014). Aspirational model teaching criteria for psychology. Teaching of Psychology, 41, 281–295.

15.

Roche

G. R.

(1979). Much ado about mentors. Harvard Business Review, 57, 14–28. doi:10.1006/jvbe.2001.1806

16.

Scandura

T. A.

(1992). Mentorship and career mobility: An empirical investigation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 13, 169–174. doi:10.1002/job.4030130206

17.

Thurston

L. P.

Navarrete

Miller

(2009). A ten-year faculty mentoring program: Administrator, mentor, and mentee perspectives. The International Journal of Learning, 16, 401–415.