Exploring master's students' perceptions of mentoring support for reflection in a one-year employability-oriented mentoring program

The continuously evolving labor market increases the need to develop students' employability competencies in higher education. Engaging in reflection is crucial for developing these competencies, as reflection supports students in learning from their experiences and identifying their skills gaps. Nevertheless, without guidance or structure, students find it challenging to engage in deep levels of reflection. Therefore, mentoring programs are frequently introduced to provide reflection-inducive conditions. Existing research has already demonstrated the positive relationship between mentoring and reflection but has not explored students' perceptions of which types of mentoring support actually induce reflection and how these relate to the depth and content of reflection. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 master's students in an employability-oriented mentoring program in higher education. Data were analyzed using direct content analysis and co-occurrence analyses. Results showed that autonomy support, empathy, trust, and availability especially induce student reflection. Regarding reflective depth, students mainly reflected on the levels of reflection and critical reflection. Psychosocial support (i.e., empathy, trust, and availability) especially evoked students' critical reflection. All students reflected on non-cognitive and cognitive content, but only half of them were about affective content. Finally, the results suggested making a distinction between reflecting back, up, and forward, which is in line with the feedback literature (feedback, feedforward, and feed up). The findings add depth and specificity to the scientific discourse on mentoring and reflection in higher education, and provide practical guidance to mentors on how to stimulate reflection in students.