From Student Support to Transformative Education: Reinterpreting University Mentoring Through the Lens of Education for Sustainability

Abstract

Mentoring is widely recognized as a strategy for supporting students’ academic and personal development, yet its role in the Education for Sustainability (EfS) remains poorly understood. Meanwhile, universities have expanded sustainability policies, governance structures, and curricular initiatives, although these institutional commitments do not necessarily translate into transformative educational experiences. This study introduces the Mentoring Readiness for Sustainability (MRS), a conceptual framework describing a university’s capacity to align strategic commitment, organizational structures, educational practices, and relational culture so that mentoring can support EfS. This study combined conceptual framework development with documentary analysis of institutional sustainability evidence from 76 Spanish universities. Institutional indicators were interpreted through the proposed MRS framework to explore organizational configurations associated with sustainability-oriented mentoring. The findings reveal considerable variation in the institutionalization of sustainability, with strategic and structural dimensions generally more developed than educational integration. They also suggest that institutional sustainability should not be equated with institutional readiness to foster transformative mentoring. The study contributes a novel conceptual construct linking Education for Sustainability, higher education mentoring, and organizational readiness, providing a foundation for future research to operationalize and validate MRS and examine its relationship with student agency and transformative learning.