Mentoring At-risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education by Buffy Smith (review)

In Mentoring At-risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education, Buffy Smith offers a model that focuses on the cycles of mentoring designed to help postsecondary institutions better serve at-risk students. The author’s thesis woven throughout the book is that faculty, administrators and staff (as mentors) are essential to exposing at-risk students to the hidden curriculum defined as “a set of unwritten norms, values, and expectations that unofficially governs how individuals interact with and evaluate one another” (p. 47). Her ideas are grounded by two-hour interviews with eight mentors and twelve mentees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as Smith’s mentoring experiences as a faculty member. The book is organized into six chapters, each building on the last to provide context, background, theory, and best practices related to mentoring in higher education.

Chapter 1 provides context to the other chapters by offering key definitions, background information, and a description of the research study and questions guiding the book. Smith begins with the benefits and value of postsecondary education and definitions of terms including “at-risk” and “mentoring.” She continues with an extremely brief overview of the history of mentoring and purposes of academic mentoring programs. Smith provides information about her respondents as well as themes that arose from the data and connection to the formal and/or the hidden curriculum. We learn that the research questions guiding the book are to understand the types of institutional cultural capital and social capital students need to succeed in college and the types of capital transmitted and acquired within mentoring relationships.

The principles of Smith’s conceptual framework including Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital, social capital, habitus and field are presented in Chapter 2. Smith describes each concept and their relationships to the mentoring process, offering mentoring as a social phenomenon that connects cultural and social capital. The structural inequities faced by underserved students both before and during college are highlighted throughout the chapter to illustrate the value of connecting students with “inside agents” that can unveil the hidden curriculum. Smith explains and provides examples from interviews about how “social capital is created through norms, reinforced by sanctions, and maintained through closure and information channels” (p. 34). The chapter concludes by noting the gap between institutional cultural capital and the social capital that mentees acquire through the mentoring process and the importance of narrowing this gap for at-risk students.

In Chapter 3, Smith describes the relationship between the hidden curriculum and the cycles of mentoring. Smith envisions the mentoring process as composed of three actions, each of which transmits varying degrees of capital to students: (1) telling students what they should do (advising), (2) advocacy, defined as motivating and connecting students with individuals on campus, and (3) showing and empowering students how to acquire the highest degree of capital from the mentoring relationship (academic apprenticeship). She then goes on to summarize the theoretical perspectives of mentoring thought to influence the cycles of mentoring including involvement, academic and social integration, and social and cognitive development. Through her three-cycle model, Smith aims to provide underserved students with access to the embedded and hidden capital of an institution. Unfortunately, with the exception of teaching students the appropriate and effective ways students should talk to professors (cited several times throughout the chapter), Smith provides few concrete examples of the “hidden curriculum.”

Chapter 4 focuses on best practices for restructuring mentoring programs to reveal the hidden curriculum to students. From a practical standpoint, this chapter is unquestionably the most valuable part of the book. Smith provides useful recommendations for restructuring mentoring programs to gain capital and understand the hidden curriculum including using a “networking” model of mentoring. Practical and specific suggestions are offered about developing, implementing, and evaluating a mentoring program such as what to discuss during training/orientation sessions and how...