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Mentors extending support and challenge across shared and unshared identities with minoritized students in engineering: theorizing an identity-based model of mentoring
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Mentors extending support and challenge across shared and unshared identities with minoritized students in engineering: theorizing an identity-based model of mentoring

Rajashi Ghosh and Alene Montogomery
Mentoring & tutoring, pp 1-27
12 Oct 2025

Abstract

Education & Educational Research Social Sciences
Mentoring plays a critical role in shaping mentees' career outcomes, yet existing research offers limited understanding of how identity similarities and differences between mentors and mentees influence the nature and impact of mentoring behaviors. Drawing on a developmental perspective of mentoring and using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study explores how minoritized engineering students and their mentors made sense of impactful mentoring experiences through awareness of intersecting identities. Findings contribute to an identity-based model of mentoring that explains how varying combinations of mentor support and challenge operate across shared-identity and cross-identity relationships. The model highlights two key paradoxes (hierarchy versus mutuality and individual versus systemic focus) that shape mentoring dynamics and outcomes. Together, these insights extend current theories of mentoring by showing how identity awareness informs developmental processes and relationship quality. We conclude by discussing implications for designing identity-conscious mentoring practices within higher education contexts.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Education & Educational Research
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