Mentoring Through Acknowledging Epistemic Truths

• In Event: Mentoring Approaches That Disrupt Assumed Truths Among Women Leaders

Abstract

Objectives and Purpose
Little is known about the experiences of Black women immigrant faculty in higher education (Hernandez et al., 2015; Smith, 2015), and what informs their research commitments, the methodologies they employ, or the epistemologies they bring to their research (Pajard, 2019; Tuitt, 2019). Additionally, less is known about how immigrant women academics are mentored regarding their research commitments and their career trajectory. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by exploring the role of mentoring relationships with other Black women horizontally and vertically, as well as the contributions of unexpected mentors in our professional and personal trajectories. A second goal for this paper is to add to the mentoring literature by discussing how our relationships and networks are productive sites of resistance to truths established through Eurocentric frames. We assert that our epistemologies grounded in race, migration, gender and class are co-constructed to provide a deeper level of understanding of our positionalities as researchers. We discuss our cultural and racialized identities as four African and Afro-Caribbean women academics and address the research question: How do our intersectional identities influence who we are as researchers, what we research, how we research, and who we research?
Perspectives/Theoretical Framework
We ground our work theoretically in transnational feminist epistemologies (Enns, et al, 2021) feminist co-mentoring practices (Nganga & Beck, 2017) and endarkened feminist epistemologies (Dillard & Bell, 2011). We believe these three critical frames allow us to cross academic borders entrenched in disciplinarity and offer opportunities for intentionally acknowledging our intellectual, social, and cultural contributions that are directly linked to our heritage and identity.
Methods of Inquiry
Methodologically, we employ narrative research design (Creswell & Poth, 2018), in the genre of scholarly personal narratives (Nash & Bradley, 2011; Porter et al., 2020). Our data collection procedures were guided by an Afro-Caribbean narrative practice called comparative collaboration (Bristol et al., 2012; De Four-Babb et al, forthcoming, 2022), which comprises “conversation, reflection, and interrogation that links past, present, and future and builds on cultural knowledge” (Bristol et al., 2012, p. 244).

Results and Scholarly Significance
We highlight the major themes that emerged from the data: Working as a Community of Researchers and Living Within and Between Contradictions. Within these themes we analyze how our “epistemic truths” are acknowledged and challenged through collaborations, non-hierarchical mentoring and working in community. These themes evidence the collaborative nature of writing and scholarship and also highlights how and why communities of practice are necessary because we see mentoring as consequential to education and research that produces truth telling. The AERA theme, Interrogating consequential education research in pursuit of truth, speaks to our ambition to highlight the ways in which our relationships as colleagues, friends and co-authors have worked to create exuberant well-springs grounded in our truth and a truth that many Black, women, immigrant academics know well. It is through this collaborative endeavor that we produce much of our scholarship.

Authors

• Kimberly N. Williams Brown, Vassar College
  Presenting Author

• Christine Wanjiku Nganga, The George Washington University
  Presenting Author

• Makini Z. Beck, Rochester Institute of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joyanne B. De Four-Babb, University of Belize
  Non-Presenting Author

• Theresa E. Coye, University of Belize
  Non-Presenting Author