Social justice mentorship amidst a pandemic

ABSTRACT

The pandemic’s rapid impact on higher education and ensuing move to remote learning introduced sudden and unexpected challenges for students and faculty. With the instantaneous switch to distance learning, doctoral student mentors and their mentees had to adapt not only to the lifestyle stresses of the virus, but also to new modes of communication, unfamiliar technology and time and space differences. Through this collaborative autoethnographic study, a group of doctoral students and faculty who engage in social justice research explore mentorship during a pandemic with a particular focus on how experiences with marginalization affect mentoring dynamics. Findings highlight the relational characteristics of mentorship, the adaptive processes specific to sociopolitical, institutional, and personal impacts, and supports toward continued commitment to social justice research.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• mentoring
• Covid-19 pandemic
• doctoral students
• collaborative autoethnography
• marginalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.