Teachers' views on student mentoring in educational institutions

In recent years, mentoring approaches and practices have grown increasingly prevalent in several disciplines. Education is one of these fields. While macrolevel mentoring contributes to the education system; micro-level mentoring benefits students by lowering dropout rates, increasing their academic success, assisting them in their career journeys, and protecting them from any problems such as bad habits they encounter in their personal lives. In this context, this study's primary goal is to thoroughly examine teachers' perspectives on student mentoring. This research employed phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research approaches, and was conducted through face-to-face interviews. It is critical that teachers have had experience related to student mentorship in phenomenological studies. Therefore, this study focuses on disclosing teachers' opions who experience this phenomenon. The target population of the study consisted of teachers working in Vocational and Techincal High Schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the Marmara Region. Purposive and the maximum variation sampling method were used to select the participants. The research study group consisted of 15 teachers chosen from different branches. The data obtained from the research were written down, and the thematic analysis method was utilized to discover the emerging themes. This research yielded five themes: definition, the function of the student mentor, the types of mentoring employed by the student mentor, mentoring strategies used by the student mentor, and difficulties experienced throughout the student mentoring process. Suggestions related to practice were made in accordance with the findings of the research. Keywords: Mentoring, Student Mentoring, Teacher Experiences