Humanistic Mentoring in Graduate Education

Abstract

In a global health pandemic context, a group 16 of education Master's students met voluntarily with their tutors in a virtual research support seminar, during the Saturday mornings of the first and second semester of 2020. This study aimed to know to what extent did mentoring and human tutoring characteristics emerge in a virtual research seminar experience. Through a qualitative research approach that included the analysis of the conversations and dialogues of the recorded sessions, insights showed that some of these characteristics emerged naturally along with the sessions, but as time passed, emotional and personal aspects were appearing more often than some others, showing that students felt more comfortable talking about themselves and supporting their classmates, as well as expressing their academic doubts and project thoughts freely because of humanistic tutoring approach. Most of them achieved the goal of finishing their project chapters on time. The humanistic and professional characteristics of teachers emerged as the main factors to develop this humanistic tutoring approach.