Impact of mentoring on academic performance & career self-efficacy of business students.
| Author | Jain, Rachna |
To enhance effectiveness of business students, mentoring is used as pedagogy for ensuring the makeover into professionals. A faculty mentoring was examined for its impact on academic performance and self-efficacy of the business students. Data was collected from 327 postgraduate business students pursuing MBA from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, North Delhi Region. For measuring career self- efficacy, the Task-Specific Occupational Self-Efficacy Scale (TSOSSO) has been administered. College Student Mentoring Scale (CSMS) has been used for measuring faculty mentoring. Faculty mentoring and career self-efficacy were found to be significantly related to academic achievement of students. Impact of mentoring of business students on their academic success and career self-efficacy has been low but results are significant.
Introduction
In today's information era, business students need to be highly skilled in order to meet the complexities and challenges of the workplace environment. Business students are anticipated to be ready for work when they enter into the market. They encounter numerous problems in the process of transition from college life to the market. To enhance effectiveness of business students for facing all environmental issues, mentoring pedagogy may be used as an effective tool for their professional development. It has a positive impact on the personal and professional growth of youth (Levinson et al, 1978). Mentor can play a significant role through providing information, direction, inspiration, and guiding them in the process of effective transition (Levine & Nidiffer, 1996). This is why number of colleges offering mentoring is increasing (Haring, 1997). Mentoring for students may be used as a strategy in college to feel them associated and involved on campus and leads to improvement in their career as well as academic results (Pascarella, Duby & Terenzini, 1983). It may offer emotional and instrumental support to achieve the goal. It also helps students to cope with unstable personal situations and make them understand the outside world (Rauner, 2000; Freedman, 1993). It has a positive impact on the career development of MBA students (Dreher & Cox, 1996).
Thus, mentoring delivers career, social, and emotional support for self-exploration which leads to academic and personal outcomes for students (Johnson, 2006; Crisp & Cruz, 2009) and guide them to become a successful professional (Schlosser, Knox, Moskovitz & Hill, 2003). Mentoring is a process of faculty-student interactions for sharing and advising which has positive effect on student self-efficacy also (Vogt, 2008). It has been found that greater frequency of contact leads to higher levels of self-efficacy (Santos & Reigados, 2002). This study attempts to examine the role of faculty mentoring as predictor of academic performance as well as relationship of faculty mentoring with business student's self-efficacy.
Mentoring & Academic Performance
Mentoring has been a prevalent area of research in the field of business, education, and psychology for the past several decades (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). Research has shown the significant benefits of mentoring in the organizations, so it is logical to accept that it also benets students in business school. Researches indicate that mentoring is important not only for business people but equally for students (Crisp, 2009; Lockwood, 2006; Gilbert, 1985; Dreher &Cox., 1996; Nora & Crisp, 2007). Mentoring has been deseribed as "a formalized process in which a more experienced individual play a supportive role of supervisor, motivator for learning with a less experienced and knowledgeable individual, to facilitate personal and professional progress" (Roberts, 2000).
Mentoring has been identified as the most rewarding and important relationship a student can have with his or her faculty. Mentoring is considered as a proven development intervention and tool for learning, training and development to cope with organizational changes (Rigsby et al., 1998; Hunt & Michael, 1983). Mentoring has been considered as a part of the business school's pedagogy to bridge the gap between the theoretical and empirical concepts of students (George & Mampilly, 2012). Mentoring also stimulates the levels of academic achievements and promotes growth among the students (Jaccobi, 1991; Waldeck et al., 1997). Mentoring has a significant impact on mentored minority as compared to non-mentored minority student's academic success (Cantwell, Archer & Bourke, 1997).
Mentoring & Self-Efficacy
Mentoring is a process of directing and encouraging mentee to cope with challenges and complexities related to job and personal issues such as stress, motivation, work relationships, and performance (Rayle et al., 2006; Stewart & Knowls., 2003). In academics, mentoring is an established tool which may give positive impact on mentee outcome in terms of psychosocial intellect (Dubois & Neville, 1997; Vieno et al., 2007) and academic performances (Rayle et al., 2006). In an institution, psychosocial intellect is perceived as socialization process to campus life which involves self-confidence, social integration and well-being (Dutton, 2003; Santos & Reigadas 2005). Research conceals that the impact of mentoring program on student's outcome is indirectly influenced by the perceptions of self-efficacy (Rayle et al., 2006; Vieno et al., 2007). Self-efficacy is a person's belief in their capabilities to take the necessary actions to produce a specific outcome (Bandura, 1997). It has been explored that there is a positive correlation between mentoring and...
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