Characteristics of Post Graduate Education Research Mentoring in Universities in Nigeria: Curricular Enhancement Strategies

Abstract

Globally, the post graduate education landscape simultaneously undergoes rapid and tremendous changes withemphasis on research through equipping students with the necessary skills and knowledge to foster the growth ofindependent, creative and lifelong researchers. Among the resources to facilitate this aim, mentoring plays a vitalrole. This paper investigated the characteristics of research mentoring provided to post-graduate students inuniversities in Southern Nigeria. Two research questions were used. Proportionate stratified sampling technique wasused to select 180 post graduate students for the study. A 27 -item questionnaire was used to collect data which wasanalysed using frequencies and percentages. Findings indicate that research mentoring across institutions wascharacterized by supervisor’s criticisms without providing insights, setting of unrealistic deadlines and expectations,and erosion of students’ self-esteem. Focus on improving technical research skills, communicating high expectations,self-monitoring processes, encouraging active knowledge construction process, widening networks for researchimprovements, and supervisor-supervisee brainstorming were almost lacking. The observed characteristics would notin any way serve as catalysts for research as they are most unlikely to promote quality post graduate research.Recommendations were made to propose curricular enhancement strategies to reinvigorate research mentoring forquality postgraduate research.