Students on professional placement learn alongside experienced practitioners who may be described as mentors, coaches, supervisors, preceptors or cooperating teachers. The terminology differs between professions, but these roles share an important educational purpose: helping a novice learn through participation in authentic professional work.
Effective mentoring is more than:
Professional expertise often involves thinking that is difficult for novices to see. Experienced practitioners notice relevant information, anticipate problems, compare alternatives and make decisions quickly. Students may observe the resulting action without understanding why the practitioner acted that way.
Coaching can make this normally invisible expertise accessible.
For example, rather than simply telling a student teacher to change an activity, a mentor might explain what they noticed in pupils’ responses, why this indicates a particular misconception, and why they would change the next task.
Similarly, a clinical preceptor might explain which information in a patient presentation attracted their attention, why it altered their level of concern and what additional information they would seek before deciding what to do.
The aim is not to make students permanently dependent on expert guidance. Effective coaching helps students progressively take greater responsibility for noticing, reasoning, acting and evaluating their own professional practice.
Coaching, mentoring and supervision during practicum have a moderate positive effect on pre-service teachers’ professional performance ➕➕➕➕ [1]. The strongest evidence suggests that making expert thinking visible may be particularly valuable: interventions involving cognitive modelling produced substantially larger effects than those without it [1].
Healthcare evidence points in a similar direction, although it mostly evaluates the mentor rather than the student. Preceptor-development interventions generally improve mentors’ knowledge, skills, confidence and teaching capability, and some studies demonstrate changes in mentoring behaviour [2,3]. In the newer review, all 27 interventions demonstrated learning-level outcomes, six assessed behaviour-level change and one reached the highest level of evaluation used by the authors.
Across healthcare interventions, common areas of development include clinical teaching, feedback, supporting clinical reasoning and critical thinking, reflection and debriefing, assessment and managing challenging situations [2,3].
There is not yet strong evidence that one particular coaching model, training format or supervision structure is best. Healthcare studies also provide little objective evidence that improving mentors subsequently improves students’ clinical performance or patient outcomes [2,3].
The quantitative Impact rating comes from a meta-analysis of experimental and quasi-experimental studies examining coaching, mentoring and supervision of pre-service teachers during practicum [1].
After two extreme outlying effects were removed through influence analyses, 12 studies showed a moderate positive effect on instructional performance (d = 0.41, 95% CI 0.16–0.66). Heterogeneity was moderate-to-substantial but below the RIPPLE threshold for a Quality deduction (I² = 67.61%). The effect was clearer for instructional performance than for lesson planning considered separately.
The most important moderator was cognitive modelling—where the mentor made their reasoning explicit while also demonstrating professional practice. Studies containing cognitive modelling produced an effect of approximately d = 0.90, compared with d = 0.28 for interventions without it, and this moderator difference was statistically significant [1]. This is an observational moderator across interventions rather than a direct randomised comparison of cognitive modelling versus no modelling, so it should not be interpreted as proof that cognitive modelling itself produces an effect of 0.90.
Healthcare evidence provides important corroboration but is methodologically different.
Griffiths et al. [2] reviewed 21 interventions designed to prepare registered health professionals to support undergraduate students during clinical placement. Most interventions were developed in nursing, although the review also included midwifery, pharmacy, radiation therapy and multidisciplinary health-profession programs. The preceptor was explicitly defined as a practising health professional who provides supervision and teaching while simultaneously undertaking clinical responsibilities.
Most studies were methodologically modest: 86% used pre-post designs, only two were rated high quality, and outcome measurement frequently relied on self-report. Nevertheless, 81% reported positive short-term changes in preceptor knowledge, skills, attitudes or confidence, and 62% included some assessment of behaviour change. No study demonstrated an effect on healthcare quality, and objective evidence connecting preceptor development with improved student learning was largely absent.
The interventions nevertheless show considerable agreement about what preceptors need to learn. Feedback was included in 18 studies; education theory, clinical reasoning/critical thinking and conflict management in 11 each; reflection or debriefing in 10; formal evaluation and clinical teaching skills in nine; and communication in seven [2].
Liu et al. [3] provide a newer review of 27 interventions developing clinical nursing preceptors. Their search covered six major databases and included experimental, quasi-experimental and mixed-method studies. Six primary studies were rated high quality and 21 moderate quality.
All 27 studies demonstrated outcomes at the authors’ Kirkpatrick Level 2, indicating changes in knowledge, skills, attitudes, confidence or related learning outcomes. Six included Level 3 outcomes involving changes in preceptor behaviour or student ratings, while only one controlled study reached Level 4 according to the review’s criteria.
The most frequently addressed competencies were clinical teaching methods and strategies, evaluation and management, constructive interaction and feedback with students, and planning or organisation of teaching.
The newer review is encouraging, but it does not eliminate the limitations of the healthcare evidence. More than half of its studies used uncontrolled pre-post designs, questionnaires dominated outcome measurement, reliability and validity were frequently poorly reported, and long-term and student-performance outcomes remained uncommon.
Qualitative synthesis provides further evidence about the nature of effective mentoring. A JBI systematic review of 21 qualitative studies identified five recurring mentoring competencies in nursing: developing an interactive relationship, working effectively with others, goal-oriented mentoring, supporting students’ professional development and supporting the learning process [4]. A subsequent review across interprofessional healthcare placements similarly identified competencies concerned with creating an effective clinical learning environment, supporting students’ learning and developing the mentor role [5].
