Cultivating Educational Resilience as a Communal Act through Storytelling

• In Event: Supporting Peer Mentorship for Doctoral Scholarly Development

Abstract

Purposes and Objectives
Although educational resilience has been associated with ‘inherent traits, natural abilities, or personal character and temperaments,'' such framing does not account for institutional structures that create opportunities for success or failure (O’Conner, 2002, p. 856). Chbeir & Carrión (2023) define resilience as “the process and outcome of adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands” (p. 144) The purpose of this ethnographic inquiry is to analyze the process of building resiliency through the doctoral journey within embedded relational structures in a peer mentorship community. I ground this inquiry with a key question: What is the role of community in building educational resilience among Black doctoral students?
Theoretical Perspectives
I utilize Black Feminist Theory to emphasize a focus on the Black woman’s struggle in everyday life (Alinia, 2015). Black feminism also highlights and engages with the many aspects of women's identity, which is significant because it allows us to talk about being race and gender inequality (Toliver, 2021). I use Narrative Theory to articulate how stories are shaped by individuals’ lived experiences and serve to help them make sense of the world and their place in it (Hostein & Gubrium, 2000). For Black women, communal storytelling promotes the ability to cope, solve problems, try solutions, and helps people understand themselves and others (Toliver, 2021).
Methods or Modes of Inquiry
This autoethnographic inquiry draws from the autobiographical genre of academic writing. This method analyzes and interprets the lived experience of the author and connects researcher insights to self-identity, cultural rules and resources, communication practices, traditions, premises, symbols, rules, shared meanings, emotions, values, and larger social, cultural, and political issues (Poulos, 2021).
Results and Scholarly Significance
The journal notes and guided reflections in the mentorship community became a source of recreating autoethnographic narratives of resilience, not as a personal trait but an institutionally responsive systematic process that counters the barriers experienced by Black doctoral students. In the narratives, I highlight how I build resilience through guided self-reflection and storytelling in community with others. As Hildon and her colleagues state “the process of constructing and reinterpreting past events in the light of more recent ones is essential to developing resilience” (Hildon et al., 2008, p. 738).
Golde (1998) noted that doctoral students in the first year of their journey often ask questions, such as, “Can I do this… Do I want to be a graduate student…? Do I want to do this work…[and] Do I belong here?” (p. 56). Reflection and storytelling in community was a way to sustain myself through doctoral candidacy. Since limiting feelings such as self-doubt, imposter syndrome, ongoing racial stress (Edwards, 2019) are not just individual, collective acts of reflection and storytelling can be a source of healing and resilience among doctoral students.

Author

• Angela J. Williams, Educare of Washington DC