3.2 Confessions of a doctoral supervisor: valuing interdependence  (Page 2/12)

In 2000, I founded Writers in Training (WIT), a semi-formal doctoral cohort that is affiliated with a public doctoral/research university extensive located in Florida, the institution in which I formerly worked. The group includes males, females, and various ethnicities; the students are all experienced teachers who perform leadership roles in their schools (e.g., department head, assistant principal, principal) and districts (e.g., curriculum specialist, assistant superintendent). In 2007 I was supervising 10 students—the number has been much larger in the past, but approximately two graduate each year with their doctorates.

Theorizing Interdependence in Graduate Education

Cohort mentoring, a form of group learning between faculty and students (Mullen, 2005) uses a team-based transformational model that makes group work the primary method of support, performance, and achievement (Michaelsen, Knight,&Fink, 2002). A gestalt philosophy of cohort mentoring honors“the whole,”reflected in the interdependence members share and the dynamic changes that occur within the group and each individual. At the doctoral level, the group functions as a cohort that joins doctoral students and their academic mentor(s) for a specified number of years and presumes a deeply relational, lifelong model of learning and leading (Mullen, 2005; Piantanida&Garman, 1999). Students in cohort mentoring situations“practice the very skills, thinking, and capacities that are needed to demonstrate to, and elicit from, others”(Mullen&Kealy, 1999, p. 36). In the educational leadership field, where school projects, programs, and processes depend on cooperative teamwork, it only makes sense to practice this skill within small groups.

The comentoring or collaborative structure of learning enables individuals who relate well as colleagues to progress together. A focus on mutuality stresses interdependent, reciprocal learning among all members, regardless of their status and rank within the group. The issue of belonging is also readily apparent, with membership extended to marginalized and underrepresented groups. Aligned with social justice agendas, academic mentors enhance diversity by including students of color in their learning circles and, in gender-dominated disciplines, females or males. They also affirm difference by discouraging cloning of faculty or student mentors, and by encouraging diversity with respect to topics of inquiry, in addition to racial, ethnic, and sexual identifications.

Applied to a support group context, co-mentoring can help members transcend problems inherent in one-to-one mentoring. For example, the accomplishments of school practitioner groups that exhibit a range in learning expertise can exceed those of a mentoring dyad. As another example, the important but unsettled issue of whether it is critical to construct mentor pairing with respect to similarities in gender, ethnicity, age, and discipline (e.g., Wilson, Pereira,&Valentine, 2002) becomes greatly diminished when groups are configured to reflect diversity and when knowledge and discovery are shared by the membership. Some students who represent traditionally disadvantaged groups may feel that mentors who are, for instance, ethnic would be more suitable but nonetheless draw strength from peers to whom they can best relate. And women university students, who often prefer female mentors because of the opening they perceive for personal contact and the value placed on interpersonal skills (Wilson et al., 2002), can also derive satisfaction from groups led by male mentors.