Mentoring at universities: A reconstruction within the context of higher education

Within higher education, formal mentoring programs seem to be a suitable concept for fostering student learning. Nevertheless, apart from methodological problems, the analysis of the empirical situation of mentoring programs at universities reveals deficiencies on a theoretical and conceptual basis, which to date have also led to an inadequate didactic design. By merging concepts from developmental psychology, learning theory and social psychology, the authors offer for the first time a way of structuring mentoring as a didactic concept within higher education. On this basis, the authors have developed preliminary suggestions for the didactic implementation of formal mentoring programs.