Mentoring in neuropsychology: How theory and practice can support diverse mentees

ABSTRACT

The academic literature on mentoring is well established, with a large body of published “best practices” regarding mentoring outside of neuropsychology. Specific attention is given to the need to diversify mentors, mentoring practices, and giving voice to a new generation of academics and practitioners through the mentoring process. Still, the field of neuropsychology has much to learn and implement consistently in practice from this well-established literature base and trove of resources and best practices. Existing literature in mentoring argues for compassionate mentoring and moving away from a mentee deficit model, to a model of having clear expectations of mentors to address the needs of all their mentees (National Academies of Sciences & Medicine, 2019), but with particular attention given to women, historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups, first-generation college students, mentees with disabilities, sexual and/or gender minority individuals, and mentees with intersecting identities. Evidence-based practices and programs with a focus on culturally responsive mentoring are a new area of interest both in terms of program development based on theory and measurement of mentee-mentor outcomes. Women in Neuropsychology (WIN) is a special committee of the American Psychological Association, Society for Clinical Neuropsychology (SCN; Division 40), dedicated to facilitating success and well-being among women and gender non-binary individuals in neuropsychology (https://scn40.org/win/). This article serves as an introduction to the WIN/JCEN special issue on mentoring in neuropsychology. Articles included in this special issue are focused on this specific topic relative to the discipline of clinical neuropsychology to develop, operationalize, and highlight best practices in mentoring with attention to the need to end racist/sexist treatment of women and historically marginalized racial/ethnic individuals; develop culturally humble mentoring approaches and clinical practices; and fix the leaky pipeline limiting access to marginalized individuals to contribute to the field of research and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuropsychology
• mentoring
• diversity
• cultural competence
• cultural humility
• supervision

Acknowledgments

This special issue has been the result of the important work completed by members of the Women in Neuropsychology (WIN) committee of the American Psychological Association and Society for Clinical Neuropsychology (SCN; Division 40) from 2020 to 2022. These members include Melanie Chandler, Ph.D. (Term: 2015–2021); Sarah Raskin, Ph.D. (Term: 2016–2019; 2019–2022); Cheryl Silver, Ph.D. (Term: 2015–2021); Kelsey Thomas, Ph.D. (Early Career; Term: 2018–2021; 2021–2024); Kayla Steward, Ph.D., Student Representative (Term: 2019–2021); Jasmine Dixon, M.S., Student Representative (Term: 2020–2022); Emily P. Morris, M.S., Student Representative (Term: 2020–2022); Katherine Bangen, Ph.D. (Term: 2021–2024); Erica Dawson (SCN Communications liaison); Erin Kaseda, M.S. (Term: 2021–2023); Stella Kim, PsyD (Term: 2021–2024); and Zanjbeel Mahmood, Ph.D. (Term: 2021–2023). The work of these committee members led to the idea to approach the journal to organize a special issue and develop and conduct the survey on women and mentoring that is included here. The authors are also grateful for the guidance and support of Lisa J. Rapport, Ph.D., Editor, and Julie Suhr, Ph.D., Associate Editor, of the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Neuropsychology. Their guidance and feedback were instrumental in developing the call for papers, editing the mentoring survey, fine-tuning the idea of the sage advice piece, and supporting us through this special issue process. Most importantly, Drs Rapport and Suhr challenged us to be bold in approaching the topic of women and mentoring in neuropsychology and to call out sexist and racist practices that have been harmful to the discipline.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported that there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.