Constructing a Critically Conscious Reciprocal Mentoring Framework Through a Salon of Sorts

• In Event: Critically Conscious Reciprocal Mentoring: Reimagining and Renewing the Egalitarian Learning Community

Abstract

The traditional notions of mentoring evidenced within the hierarchical confines of higher and PK-12 institutions evoke an image of the senior educator assigned to the task of didactically initiating the junior educator or graduate student into the cultural, structural, and moral norms of the academic world. In the most benign circumstances, the mentor’s inculcation of norms on the mentee is characterized by benevolent false generosity for the well-being of the mentee - the traditional mentor acting as a point of reference for the mentee who is attempting to survive impersonal and arbitrary organizational norms (Magill and Rodriguez, 2015). At its worst, traditional mentoring preserves the imbalance of power by imposing a banking model (Freire, 1972) where the mentor deposits the institutionally ordained funds of knowledge to the mentee; thereby, solidifying a transactional relationship where the mentee is either rewarded or reprimanded for their ability to mimic the voice, vision, and values of the education mentor and institution.

Paulo Freire tells us, Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning (Freire, 2000). The Critically Conscious Reciprocal Mentoring (CCRM) framework was conceived through a commitment to this egalitarian ethos; however, this theoretical lens must be married to the lived experiences of those who have enacted the practices of CCRM if the framework is to be fully encountered and realized. Conceived in the value propositions of equity and liberation, CCRM is nourished through the agency of persons who are committed to dismantling the normalized power imbalances fostered through traditional mentoring structures (Giroux, 1981; Giroux, 1983; Habermas, 1984). Simply put, If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed (Freire, 1972).

This narrative case study (Yin, 2017; Creswell, 2016) draws from a purposive criterion-based sample of eleven university graduate students and faculty and details the phenomenon of the emergence of an egalitarian learning community known as The Salon of Sorts. Thick descriptive narrative data derived from semi-structured interviews provides informative insights and transformative depictions of the emergence of the CCRM within both university and PK-12 formal and informal learning space. Like the 18th and 19th century French and Italian predecessors who formed the tradition of the salon (Aut Delectare Aut Prodesse. Either to please or to educate), the 21st century Salon of Sorts participants engaged in dialogue and dialectic exploring topics of importance, interest, and intrigue. Unlike the European salon forbearers’ who often gathered for mere gratification, the contemporary Salon of Sorts remained committed to intellectual activism where each person’s knowledge and experiences reciprocally informed and guided other person’s in social and cultural movements that challenged hegemonic norms across various educational institutions and cultures. These problem-posing inquiries and dialogically constructed understandings dismantle traditional hierarchies that distinguish student from teacher; thus, the CCRM framework was created and subsequently implemented among the higher education and PK-12 students and faculty who serve as a model case for the implementation of the Critically Conscious Reciprocal Mentoring (CCRM) framework as pathway to achieving an egalitarian learning community.

Author

• Kevin Russel Magill, Baylor University