Elena L. Bashmanova

The wide spread of various mentoring practices in universities has actualized the issue of studying and systematizing their influences on students, teachers, non-teaching staff and the organization as a whole. This study is devoted to the variety of types, aspects, elements, relationships, internal and external factors of mentoring practices functioning at the university. The study was carried out in line with the systems approach. The author made an attempt to form understanding of mentoring as a meta-practice that determines the humanistic core of higher education and contributes to the implementation of the mission to help a person find his/her purpose, mastering ways to achieve this purpose. The relevance of this problem is due to the increasing speed and complexity of political, economic, social, technological changes in the environment, often having a nature that threatens the successful personal development of individuals participating in educational relations. The purpose of the article is to analyze the meta-functions of mentoring, such as development, involvement, increasing trust, promoting uniqueness and diversity, and also to substantiate the essence of mentoring as a meta-practice to support the humanistic vector in the development of higher education. The author uses systems, transdisciplinary, humanistic approaches and theory of change to develop a mentoring model as a meta-practice that supports the humanistic development of the university. She also explains the need to study the effects of introducing formal mentoring programs when designing university development strategies. The theoretical significance of the study is ensured by the substantiation of the key idea of mentoring at the university to promote the achievement of independence and self-efficacy of the individual, as well as by updating the role of mentoring in the formation of a program of change in higher education in the context of technocratization, digitalization and dehumanization of the environment. The practical significance is as follows: the concept of mentoring as a meta-practice has been developed; the threats to the implementation of the humanistic role of mentoring in the development of universities are substantiated; recommendations were formulated for the university to design and “live” the meta-practice of mentoring as a necessary and important part of its life.