Teaching and Mentoring Norms in Turkish Higher Education: Graduate Students’ Perspective

This study examines the inviolable and admonitory norms for graduate teaching and mentorship in the Turkish higher education sector. Research data were gathered using a quantitative survey from 633 graduate students at 100 public and foundation higher education institutions (HEIs) in Turkey. The Graduate Teaching and Mentoring Behaviors Inventory by Braxton et al. (Professors behaving badly: Faculty misconduct in graduate education, 2011) was used to evaluate normative behaviors. These actions were distributed and gathered under inviolable and admonitory norms by taking into account the severity of the sanction. Graduate students appear to place greater value on inviolable norms, according to the results of descriptive and inferential statistics. Additionally, the participants place more importance on the admonitory norms of mentoring and advising than they do on instructional techniques. The findings of the study suggest that significant differences do exist between graduate students’ perceptions of normative behaviors linked to mentoring and teaching by their gender, academic discipline, and occupational status, but not by the university type. Some implications are offered in the paper’s conclusion.