Mentoring was first developed in the United States of America in the 1970s within large corporations to support junior staff [1] but has now extended to other contexts, including the university-based education platforms of health professionals [2-13]. Over the years, the reforms in the education of health professionals have contributed to the doubling of life expectancy during the 20th century [4]. However, in the beginning of the 21st century, health advances were not being shared equitably due to gaps and inequalities in health education that existed between and within countries. To advance opportunities for health equity within and between countries, a call for redesigning the curricula of health professionals was made. Instructional and institutional reforms were proposed, and these would be guided by two outcomes—transformative learning and interdependence in education [5]. As transformative learning is considered an outcome of instructional reforms, specific recommendations were made, such as the strengthening of educational resources with special emphasis on the capacity development of faculty and academic staff, including those of medical schools in Africa. Through the provision of rewarding and stable career trajectories and performance-based constructive assessment, the need to increase investments in the education of educators was highlighted.

Mentoring is difficult to define, but the Standing Committee on Postgraduate Medical and Dental Education described it as a process “whereby an experienced, highly regarded, empathetic person (the mentor) guides another (usually younger) individual (the mentee) in the development and re-examination of their own ideas, learning, and personal and professional development. The mentor, who often works in the same field as the mentee, achieves this by listening or talking in confidence to the mentee” [14]. Although mentoring is considered to be central to education in academic medicine and other health professions, it is inhibited by the increased number of clinical, administrative, research, and other educational demands on academics, thus reducing the time they need to devote to a mentoring relationship [11-14]. Unfortunately, the unique challenges encountered by women in academics have not yet been satisfactorily addressed [1,5,8,12]. The absence of mentorship has often resulted in a failure to retain junior academics in higher education institutions or within academia altogether.

It is helpful to gain some insight into the global context of dental education to appreciate the need for mentorship programs that enhance the careers of academic staff who are preparing for the future generation of oral health care professionals. It has been estimated that under 3 to 5 billion people across the world are affected by oral diseases [15]. The World Health Organization has therefore focused on increasing the awareness of oral health worldwide, as it is considered to be an important component of people’s general health and quality of life. Unfortunately, oral disease is still a major public health problem in high- and low-income countries, and the burden of oral disease is growing in many low‐ and middle-income countries [16,17]. Untreated oral disease is a visible reminder of existing health inequalities, and ensuring access to adequately trained oral health professionals has become critical [18].

The following two approaches have influenced the practice of dentistry globally: the odontology and stomatology models [19-21]. Odontology is the study of oral disease and disorders of the oral cavity, including their diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. Stomatology is the study of the mouth, and it connects general medical health and disease with diseases of the mouth [21]. The duration of dental education across the world ranges from 5 to 9 years [20]. Unfortunately, there are limited details about dental education in Africa despite the oral health challenges in this continent [22-24] and in other countries where inequities in access to oral care are also evident [25]. The presumption that colonization influences dental education in Africa and other places could have contributed to the calls for the decolonization, indigenization, and transformation of oral dental education [26-28].

In light of the recommendation to transform the education of health professionals in order to strengthen health systems in the 21st century [5], professional bodies like the American Dental Education Association have made calls for major changes in the training of oral health professionals [26-31]. A 2-phase project named “Advancing Dental Education in the 21st century” is a current driver of change in the United States of America. The project aims to develop practical strategies that dental and allied dental educational institutions can implement to address long-range challenges related to finances, education, scholarship, diversity, and the need to change disease and practice trends by 2040 [32-36]. Similarly, a partnership between the American Dental Education Association and the Association for Dental Education in Europe, which have strong historical relationships, led to the creation of another project named “Shaping the future of Dental Education” [37-41]. The first meeting between the two associations was attended by over 180 participants who represented 39 countries and sought to explore the roles and capabilities of dental educators in impacting global dental health education.

Curriculum changes were recommended by the two projects to prepare oral health professionals to address more diverse, multicultural patient populations; older patients with dental needs and comorbidities; younger patients with fewer restorative and prosthodontic treatment needs; and vulnerable, disadvantaged populations with unmet needs [32-41]. These professionals would require skills for serving as good team members and team leaders of intra- and interprofessional teams as well as skills in communication, collaboration, supervision, critical thinking, and problem solving. These professionals would also need to understand scientific methods, evaluate research findings, and decide what to incorporate into patient care. Additional factors that would impact dental education in preparing oral health professionals for 2040 and beyond would include skills for addressing the social determinants of health [36] and adapting to different teaching and learning methodologies [41,42]. To achieve the goals of the change processes that were set out for the 21st century, the capacity development of academic staff was considered to be essential for their recruitment and retention. This was in line with earlier recommendations of the American Dental Education Association [5,35,43,44].

The quality of academics and their willingness to lead the transformative changes in dental education have become essential. Due to having little to no previous experience and coming from diverse backgrounds, novice academics can readily feel overwhelmed, unsupported, and discouraged in their attempts to meet the demands of success in academics [6,7,26]. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to present a protocol for a scoping review that aims to map out literature and produce an evidence-based synthesis of data regarding the mentorship of academic staff in dental faculties.

The fifth stage of the JBI framework for scoping reviews is collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. The PRISMA-ScR [49] will be used to guide the reporting of the scoping review protocol and will subsequently be used to structure the reporting of the full review.

The search for appropriate literature has commenced, though it has been delayed due to the sudden death of the librarian during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we aim to present the results before the end of the 2021 academic year.

The sixth stage of the JBI framework for scoping reviews (consultation with stakeholders) is incorporated into this section. The prevalence of oral diseases across the world is still a major concern, and there are calls for additional oral health professionals to improve access to care [15-17]. The two change projects that are referred to in this paper [32-42] provide a framework for the training of oral health professionals during the 21st century that is in line with the recommendations of the Lancet Commission [5]. Higher education institutions cannot ignore these transformational drivers of change in dental education. Upon entering a career in academia, there is the expectation that novice academics can meet the increasing demands of teaching, scholarly activity, and research; perform administrative tasks; and participate in both university and community services [7]. Oral and dental care play an important role in the health and well-being of the population. Further, mentorship will help mentees to fulfill their career aspirations and will contribute to meeting the oral health needs of the population. Therefore, the purpose of the proposed review is to identify the goals of mentoring programs for academics in dental faculties and determine how these programs were structured, delivered, and evaluated. As this review will only include data that are already in the public domain, ethics approval will not be sought. The data generated from the scoping review will be accessible upon request, as the library of the University of Western Cape is developing a data management plan for storing and sharing research data securely on the university’s research data repository [50]. However, the articles selected for review will be selected regardless of methodological quality and the risk of bias, as analyzing these factors is outside of the scope of the review. This may be a limitation of the study.