Background: There has been a growing number of educational institutions which incorporated formal mentoring programs in their curriculum. When the mentoring program is given as an optional service, a good number of students avail of it, while some do not. Among those who attend the mentoring sessions are motivated mentees who initiate the mentoring sessions themselves.
Purpose: Discover the motivations of mentees who seek mentoring sessions with their mentors in the context of a formal mentoring program.
Research design: Qualitative; phenomenological research design
Data source: Semi-structured interviews of 12 university students
Data analysis: A researcher-constructed semi-structured questionnaire was used to interview participants about their mentoring experiences and their motivations to seek their mentors for mentoring sessions. van Manen’s ‘existentials’ and the analysis process of Sloan and Bowe’s hermeneutic phenomenological analysis were used in analyzing the interview videos and transcripts. Though frameworks are not normally used in phenomenological analysis, the Organismic Integration Theory (OIT) was used as a framework since the phenomenon of interest is the motivation of these students to seek mentoring, and motivation is covered by the OIT.
Findings: The motivations of the interviewed students are primarily identification and secondarily integration which were present in the experiences of most if not all mentees interviewed. The rest were present in half or less than half of the total respondents. Identification, a type of internalization where there is more relative autonomy and conscious endorsement of values and regulations, is evidenced when the students identify the things they get from their mentors as personally valuable and important to them. They experience greater autonomy and have a more internal perceived locus of causality. Integrated regulation results from bringing a value or regulation into congruence with the other aspects of the person, such as certain religious practices, valuing of family, studies, friends, and life choices.
Recommendation: Include training needs, such as giving advice and feedback, ways of helping the youth, setting goals, and relationship-building, in mentoring programs. Develop a mentoring program that is university-wide with cross-sectoral participation. Conduct research on instruments development, phenomenological studies of successful graduates, and mixed-method research on academic performance and adaptation capacity of students. Include mentoring programs dedicated to the youth in educational institutions and non-governmental organizations.