Mentoring from the Outside: The Role of a Peer Mentoring Community in the Development of Early Career Education Faculty

Developing an identity as a researcher and negotiating the expectations and responsibilities of academic life are challenges that many beginning education faculty face. Mentoring can provide support for this transition; however, traditional forms of mentoring may be unavailable, limited, or lack the specific components that individual mentees desire or need. In this paper, we draw on a community of practice perspective to examine and understand the complex and emerging nature of an informal peer mentoring community composed of beginning education faculty members from different institutions. Our engagement in this peer mentoring community is examined through reflections on our experiences and our collective narratives. The formation of our group began with our mutual desires for support in advancing scholarship and navigating the transition to academia and has grown into a community that supports us both personally and professionally as we develop our identities as educational researchers.