Navigating the lonely sea: peer mentoring and collaboration among aspiring women scholars

Abstract

A group of pre‐tenured female faculty members is shown to advance from professionally isolated individuals to a collaborative group of writers through the peer mentoring process. The autoethnographically based approach to the analysis of self‐narratives exploring this transformation revealed experiential, emotional and developmental commonalities that guided the women's navigation of the tenure track at a large public research university via understanding of self, others and the environment. In contrast, the women's prior experiences with the traditional dyadic approach to mentoring resulted in feelings of isolation, professional self‐doubt and questioning of purpose. The researchers suggest that peer mentoring among female faculty in a higher education context offers an effective mentoring approach toward supporting women in forging scholarly identity.

Keywords:

• feminism
• mentoring
• professional identity
• professional socialization
• scholarly development