Mentoring through reflective journal writing: a qualitative study by a mentor/professor and two international graduate students

Universities and colleges seek to help all students succeed. However, foreign graduate students experience a different set of challenges than domestic students. Culture shock and writing in a foreign language are just a few examples that threaten their overall success. This qualitative participatory action research study describes and explains how two graduate students and a faculty mentor engaged in mentoring and structured reflective writing activities designed to address these challenges. The research data include a focus group interview, analysis of selected journal pages and conference presentations. Results indicate that reflective journal writing and mentoring help foreign graduate students de-stress, learn the tacit knowledge of the academy and participate in scholarly activities like conference presentations and publishing.