Complexity thinking mentorship: an emergent pedagogy of graduate research development |
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| Authors: | Nadine M Kalin Daniel T Barney Rita L Irwin |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Art Education and Art History , University of North Texas , Denton, USA kalin@unt.edu;3. Department of Visual Art , Brigham Young University , Provo, USA;4. Faculty of Education , University of British Columbia , Vancouver, Canada |
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| Abstract: | In this article we articulate a view of mentoring that extends into interactive and relational forms, fostering a redefinition of traditional roles and practices within mentor‐protégé models. From the perspectives of a senior administrator and two assistant professors, we revisit the mentoring spaces and relations within which we were engaged while working in an approach to arts‐based educational research known as a/r/tography during dissertation research projects. From our interconnected experiences, we propose a framing of the intersections between a/r/tographic research and mentorship informed by complexity thinking. We analyzed our work together while deconstructing the ways in which we have supported and unsettled each other. Through narrative inquiry we share reflections from dissertation research experiences, while also describing patterns of an emerging pedagogy of mentoring within higher education that we term complexity thinking mentorship. Borrowing from complexity theory, this conception of mentorship attends to the specific conditions of redundancy, decentralized control and diversity as being facilitative of evolving change and insight within graduate student research development. |
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| Keywords: | graduate student mentoring dissertation research complexity thinking a/r/tography |
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