Swarming and Distributing: Alternative Movements in Mentoring and Faculty Development for Women in Educational Leadership

• In Event: 33.063 - Living and Learning in a Global Network: Mentoring, Professional Development, and Leadership

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes
This study 1) examines the relationship between mentoring and faculty development among women faculty in educational leadership, including how they create and use knowledge and activities related to mentoring and professional development in their roles as academics; and 2) interrogates how the activities of reflective and creative intelligence in mentoring and faculty development are supported and constrained.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Assistant professors with multiple sources of mentoring, especially from colleagues within their professions, tend to be successful in research and scholarly productivity (Peluchette & Jeanquart, 2000). Incorporating mentoring into the fabric of an academic unit (educational leadership programs) and institutions (schools, universities) is an important investment in people and integral to higher education as a learning community (Lumpkin, 2011).
We use distributed intelligence (Pea, 1993), distributive leadership (Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001, 2004), faculty mentoring in educational leading/leadership, and swarming (Gutiérrez, Pardo, & Kloos, 2006; Wong & Looi, 2012) as a conceptual framework to explore the relationship between mentoring and faculty development. These are creative expressions of intelligence understood through systems of support in which women faculty in educational leadership participate. It is important to consider how swarming intelligence is constrained/organized by both social and material conditions given the challenges faced by women at the intersection of gender and other social positions.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
We employ a form of life writing (English 2006) — life stories ( Marselis, 2013; Umanath & Berntsen, 2013): where the lived realities of individual faculty development are made public. This enables an articulation of mentoring experiences as exceptionalities given variances in context, dispositions of individuals and responses to events.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Participants included eight women faculty in educational leadership who are in mentoring relationships (informal, formal, individual, multiple or transnationally). They constructed narratives in response to three prompts, in two-week cycles by exploring their understandings of, aspirations and motivations for seeking and applying knowledge gained through mentoring experiences to their academic lives. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results and / or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments /points of view
Participants created and used tools and activities to support mentoring and faculty development of self and others in educational leadership programs (i.e., faculty, students). They mediated: positionality (self-organizing related to race, gender, immigration status, language); relational repositioning (changes in relationships or movements (social, political, physical, metaphysical) that promote or demote mentoring and/or faculty development through relationships (i.e., swarming, exiting), and distributing intelligence — creating and using knowledge about mentoring in educational leadership and leading activities to support self and others (students and faculty).
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
Leadership in distributed mentoring offers a theoretical concept that attempts to diminish the hierarchical nature associated with leadership in schools and universities with an emphasis on individuals (mainly White men) performing in isolation. We give attention to the praxis of women academics from diverse backgrounds who “do leadership and mentoring” work in spite of organizational structures not configured for distributed leadership.

Authors

• Zorka Karanxha, University of South Florida

• Vonzell Agosto, University of South Florida

• Laurette Maria Stacy Bristol, Catholic College of Mandeville

• Christine Wanjiku Nganga, The George Washington University