Development and field test of an intervention to reduce conflict in faculty-doctoral student mentoring relationships

Abstract

Mentoring is a critical component of graduate education. However, conflicts can occur between faculty mentors and their graduate students, which can undermine the quality of these relationships. We leveraged attribution theory and relationship science to develop a novel professional development intervention that combines attribution retraining to enhance faculty beliefs that they can improve their mentoring relationships, and conflict management training to build faculty skills in having productive problem-solving conversations with their graduate students. We piloted and refined the intervention, then conducted a field test of the intervention with life science faculty (n = 71) from U.S. universities. Participants were randomly assigned to an asynchronous self-guided condition or to a self-guided + synchronous facilitated peer discussion condition. We measured faculty beliefs, perceived skills, and self-reported behaviors when encountering conflicts before and after participating in the intervention. Faculty in both conditions reported significant reductions in the frequency of conflicts with their students, the time and energy they spent addressing conflicts, and the extent to which conflicts disrupted their research productivity. Faculty also expressed increased confidence that they could manage conflicts. Our results suggest that the intervention has the potential to improve faculty capacity to effectively navigate conflicts with their graduate students. Highlight summaryA mentoring intervention for faculty combining attribution-retraining and conflict management skill-building strengthened faculty self-efficacy and motivational beliefs and reduced mentoring conflicts.