A Conceptual Approach to Transform and Enhance Academic Mentorship: Through Open Educational Practices

This paper offers guidance for policymakers and institutions keen on embracing Open Educational Practices within their mentorship strategies, advocating for co-creation and collaboration as foundational principles, to promote a wide range of open practices to foster transparency, inclusivity, creativeness, innovation and collaboration in academic mentorship. This conceptual paper explores the transformative potential of Open Educational Practices in the context of academic mentorship, which is per-se an open practice. We have adopted an integrative approach for our literature review, which is a non-systematic model, to help us to mitigate algorithmic biases presented in scholarly databases, for analysing and discussing literature, alongside the review of case studies to explore the intersection of open practices and mentorship in academia. We aim to highlight the profound impact mentorship has on professional development, knowledge dissemination, and collaborative learning. Drawing on a diverse selection of literature and case studies reflecting mentorship programmes both formally and informally in academic contexts, this paper provides concrete examples from practice of how Open Educational Practices can be seamlessly integrated into formal and informal academic mentorship as a driver to enhance knowledge sharing, foster inclusivity, and bolster the quality of mentorship relationships.