Performing Mentorship in the Digital Space

• In Event: Performing Mentorship as Reciprocal Relationship

Abstract

In light of current global circumstances, the digital space has become a crucial site for ongoing mentorship in research and education. Yet one may wonder- how can the digital space facilitate the same opportunities for trust, vulnerability, safety, and support that is often found in mentorship relationships? Research teams and educators alike may struggle to enact meaningful collaboration, knowledge sharing and mentorship—as opposed to cooperating on purely administrative tasks such as on funding applications (McGinn, et. al. 2019)—especially when connecting digitally. Studies show few take the time to engage in a self-reflexive practice to identify barriers embodied within and/or arising in the mentorship relationship (Yassi, et. al., 2016; Petrarca & Bullock, 2014; Rodricks, 2018).
The co-presenters in this symposium recently embarked on a national research collaboration exploring mentorship within the field of arts for social change and arts education. Alongside the field studies taking place in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal (described in the previous presentations), our fourth research site is a reflective inquiry into how we perform reciprocal mentorship in a digital space amongst our team of research collaborators, research assistants, and the principal investigator.
As presenters in this symposium, we will share preliminary reflections on our mentoring experiences and activities within the first eighteen months of our research partnership and open a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of mentorship in research collaborations and in the digital space. We will share the findings of our qualitative analysis from interviews within our self study and describe the arts based inquiry methods we facilitated in our digital collaboration.
Drawing from our background in the arts, we will further introduce the notion of mentorship as performance that can be enacted in diverse ways. Participants will gain an understanding of introductory arts-based activities to open further dialogue on the way we perform mentorship within our teaching and research practices, with particular focus on interdisciplinary collaborations and mentorship in digital spaces.
As a result of attending this session, we anticipate participants will:
Identify and/or facilitate diverse activities through which research teams and educators can engage in reciprocal mentorship and self-reflexive practice
Conceptualise mentorship as performance in order to explore participants’ practices, language, relationships and methods of engagement in spaces of mentorship
Gain insights into the unique features of engaging in mentorship in digital spaces with interdisciplinary collaborators
Collaborative research teams are a valuable site for formal and informal mentorship between collaborators and student assistants. Conceptualising mentorship as a performance can help researchers, teachers and students to reflect on their mentorship experiences and develop more ethical, reciprocal and meaningful mentorship relationships, whether their mentorship is enacted in person or online. Arts-based practices can become spaces of mentorship as well, while also opening space for self-reflection on mentorship experiences.

Authors

• Nicole Armos, Simon Fraser University

• Callista Chasse, University of Lethbridge