Benefits and motives for peer mentoring in higher education: an exploration through the lens of cultural capital

Abstract

Despite the large and diverse cohorts recruited annually across the globe to university sport programmes, few studies have assessed the value of peer support within sports education settings. Even more surprising is the lack of research to have explored the encounters of peer mentors who help deliver these schemes and the impact it had on their professional development. Conducted at a post-92 English university, this study explored the benefits and motives of students volunteering to become peer mentors in their second year of university. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key concepts as the guiding theoretical framework, the study suggests that participants, who were predominantly first generation to attend university, engaged in peer mentoring to develop cultural capital for their chosen professional field, but also to give back and support the development of social and cultural capital for mentees. Practical implications for developing future peer support programmes are presented, as are future research avenues and limitations.