Empowering EdD Students: A Decolonizing Mentoring Model for Scholar-Practitioners in an Educational Leadership Doctoral Program (Poster 8)

• In Event: Scaffolding for Local Change-Making: Innovative EdD Supports Across Contexts

Abstract

In this poster, we present a graduate mentoring model that aims to empower first-generation, minoritized doctoral students in an educational leadership program at a public university in the Central Valley of California. Our mentoring model aims to decolonize the process of knowledge construction (Smith, 2012) between dissertation chairs and first generation, ethnically diverse doctoral students (Author, 2022). This model aims to challenge the traditional structure of mentoring at the graduate level which tends to embrace a colonial approach (asymmetrical power structure) in the understanding of teaching and learning. Our model emphasizes engaging in co-learning and mutual growth.

Doctoral students in this program consist of full-time educational practitioners in the K12 and Community College context. Students in this program are primarily first generation and they come from underserved groups. The EdD program is a 3-year graduate experience characterized by its emphasis on the development of scholar-practitioners through a series of learning experiences and the writing of the dissertation in practice. The conceptual framework guiding this discussion includes the notion of self-authorship, empowerment, and cultural wealth. Our work seeks to provide guidance to graduate faculty who work in culturally diverse contexts and whose pedagogical training as graduate mentors is limited.

In this poster, four key sections are represented. First, we identify some critical issues in graduate education. Second, we discuss key theoretical constructs that guided the development of the decolonizing mentoring model and the context of our study (Acuña, 2011; Caporale, 2020; Freire, 2000). Third, we discuss four relational conditions that need to be constructed in the mentor-mentee to avoid a colonizing approach and to foster graduate student empowerment. These relational conditions include a) nurturing doctoral students’ voices and expertise (Cook-Sather, 2006), b) appreciating students’ cultural wealth and stories (Yosso, 2005), c) honoring students’ advocacy agenda (Ginwright, 2016), and d) promoting epistemological skills through rigorous caring (Noddings & Shore, 1984). The fourth section describes specific practices to sustain the writing of the dissertation in practice (Kleinsasser, 2000; Rubano & Anderson, 1988; Witrz, 2006). These practices include a) patient/deconstructive questioning, b) creative dialoguing, c) organized argumentation, and co-created drafting. Conclusions emphasize the developmental outcomes that graduates of the EdD program identify as indicators of empowerment: a) the development of transgressive voices and creative selves, b) the consolidation of their professional agenda as community revitalizing agents, c) their epistemological creativity to become critical scholars, d) and their desire to act as compassionate leaders. Final considerations are offered.

Authors

• Virginia Montero Hernández, California State University - Stanislaus

• Juvenal Caporale, California State University - Stanislaus

• Stephanie Beaver-Guzman, Columbia College