Dynamics of Tension and a Sense of Belonging in a Mentoring Community of Women Faculty

• In Event: Productive Tensions in Mentoring

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine perceptions and understandings of tension and a sense of belonging within members of a mentoring community: Curvy y Friends (C-Y-F) of women faculty in academia. C-Y-F consists of 18 women faculty, who are multi-cultural/multi-racial and work in various disciplines at multiple Institutes of Higher Education (IHEs) from 4 countries across 3 continents. The significance in the role of each member within the community changes depending on the expertise and availability necessary to support collaborative projects. C-Y-F’s main activities are based on constant collaborative interactions. Such collaborative behaviors are shaped by building rapport, trust, friendships and bonds with each other. Because members of C-Y-F are located in different geographical spaces, they utilize the technology to negotiate communication such as SKYPE and emails, and meet face-to-face biannually or annually. However, utilizing technology to work on research projects presents several challenges and may result in miscommunication, creative differences and or tension between the members.
Perspectives or theoretical framework
This study draws from the Community of Practice (CoP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as a lens to examine tension of a mentoring community. Typically mentoring involves a more experienced adult assisting a novice adult to success in a work environment (Angelique, Kyle, & Taylor, 2002) and there is a sense of hierarchy connected to power and expertise (Cohen, Cowin, Ciechanowski, & Orozco, 2012). A CoP serves as the context and content for the participation of its members, through which members develop an identity, make meanings and learn about the practice of community (Wenger, 1998). “Duality” is used in the theory of CoP to capture the concept of tension that become the driving force to change and sustain a CoP. Wenger (1998) identified four dualities in the CoP: participation-reification, designed-emergent, identification-negotiability and local-global. This study will explore the existence and dynamics of tensions through the four qualities characteristic of communities of practice.
Methods and data sources
Research questions include: (1) How and why members choose to participate in, contribute to, or temporarily abstain from the projects within the C- Y- F community? (2) How do members perceive and respond to tension in mentoring? Mixed research methods (Creswell, 2012) will be implemented. Application of IRB is being prepared for review at the University of Montana. A survey questionnaire that includes open-ended and likert scale questions will be distributed electronically to all members of the community. Social Network Analysis (Pinheiro and Carlos, 2011), triangulation, and constant comparative coding procedures will be implemented during data analysis.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions
Igraph will be used to show the structure and dynamics of tension in the community. Themes of tensions and a sense of belonging will be abstracted and presented.
Significance of the study
Research on the tensions within a mentoring community has not been found in the existing literature. It is essential to examine how tension and a sense of belong are created, negotiated, and resolved in a mentoring community for the 21st century. This study will fill in such gap.

Authors

• Ke Wu, University of Montana

• Nilsa J. Thorsos

• Anne L. Kern, University of Idaho

• Brittany Danielle Baldwin, Georgia State University