Informal Faculty Mentoring Practices in Higher Education in Kazakhstan

Abstract

Mentoring as a means for professional socialization enhances a sense of community, cooperation, and engagement among faculty members. Moreover, mentoring is regarded as one of the essential parts in faculty development and retention, and academic environment. Specifically, mentors can help their mentees in conducting research, writing publications, passing the transition period easily and with less stress. The purpose of this research is to investigate how informal faculty mentoring works in young academics' professional development and teaching career and what effects it has for teacher's career development in Kazakhstani higher education system. The research seeks to examine the role of faculty mentoring as a form of professional growth and socialization where a more experienced faculty member stands as a guide to a less experienced member with the aim of developing and elaborating their skills and abilities, knowledge and cultural understanding of a particular organization or institution. 5 young academics were involved in this research with 1-5 job experiences in higher education. The results of this study show that mentoring is a learning partnership, a process of support, a reciprocal relationship, a dynamic process where a mentor- mentee relationship changes over time.