Leena Penttinen

Peer Group Mentoring Programmes in Finnish Higher Education––Mentors’ Perspectives

Peer mentoring is one of the most important guidance practices for first-year students entering higher education and academic life. We are interested in mentors’ roles and apply the ideas of group counseling in order to increase the understanding of peer mentoring. Other aspects of guidance––content, methods, and collaboration––are approached on the basis of the holistic career guidance model. The data were gathered via an online questionnaire (n = 784) from 20 Finnish HE institutions. The results show that peer mentoring is a positive experience. The main emphasis is on the personal, psychosocial aspects of the student’s life. We identified four mentor types based on used activities. The experience of mentoring can vary according to the mentor type.

Supporting Students' Pedagogical Working Life Horizon in Higher Education.

In this article, we introduce a model of a pedagogical working life horizon. It encompasses questions posed by individual students concerning their future and incorporates the idea of a working life orientation to the pedagogical possibilities within education. Working life orientation consists of three elements: individual relationship, knowledge and skills and employability. In the model, we aim to outline how an orientation to working life might be included in higher education, providing a broad perspective on the various pedagogical possibilities. There are two key pedagogical elements supporting the implementation of the pedagogical working life horizons model: reflection and an inquiring attitude. Our inquiry is a synthesis of socio-constructionist theories of career guidance, a review of international writing on career guidance and working life skills in higher education, adult learning theories and of our practical experiences as educators and scholars in the fields of guidance and adult education.