Exploring the Role of Mentorship within a Social Network to Develop Leadership in Engineering Educators

Stephen Mattucci; Makary Nasser

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Special Session: Engineering Leadership—The Courage to Change
Tagged Division: Engineering Leadership Development Division (LEAD)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47444

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Paper Authors

biography

Stephen Mattucci University of Guelph

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Mattucci was raised in the traditional territories of the of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations, Anishinaabek and Haudenosaunee Peoples (Southern Ontario, Canada). He has strong core values around continuous personal improvement, and love for learning. His post-secondary education includes three technical engineering degrees (two mechanical, one biomedical). Mattucci’s post-doctoral work shifted to focus on collaborative change management and communities of practice in engineering education at the national level in Canada, before beginning a faculty appointment in 2022 with a teaching focus. Mattucci’s favourite courses to teach are engineering design, mechanics (solids), dynamics, and anything related to leadership and professional / transferable skills. His favourite things to do are backcountry camping, and going on adventures with his family.

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biography

Makary Nasser University of Guelph orcid.org/0009-0001-1329-3266

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Nasser is a Biomedical Engineering Graduate student at the University of Guelph. His exploration in educational leadership initiated as he began working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant under Mattucci’s guidance. This introduced him to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) providing fresh insights and highlighting learning processes in educational leadership.

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Abstract

This work will explore characteristics of mentorship which promote educational leadership development. The work will be framed within the professional social network of the author and the author’s mentor and mentee relationships who are engineering educators at various career stages. Mentorship literature in the educational context primarily focuses on student-student mentor relationships, which demonstrate many benefits. Faculty and graduate student mentorship initiatives are often formalized around research and grant opportunities, including NSF grants to fund training efforts for faculty and scholars new to engineering education research. However, there is limited research around development related to educational leadership. Education leadership captures the numerous scholarly activities related to education, including forms of enactment (influence, enable, do), and dimensions of teaching (deliver, design, develop, disseminate)[UBC-CTLT, 2017]. Mentorship can occur through several different forms including: formal partnerships with defined roles, informal conversations, peer mentorship, and can bridge contexts between levels of seniority, across institutions, and focused within domains. Further, someone can concurrently identify as both a mentee and a mentor across their professional relationships. Utilizing a social network lens, aspects of mentorship can occur in various forms in relationships with mentors and mentees, with knowledge transfer flowing across the nodes within the system. The guiding questions for this work are: (i) How do mentorship characteristics influence the development of educational leadership through social networks?, and (ii) How do key mentorship characteristics differ based on the type of relationship and aspect of educational leadership? This paper will draw from methodologies including autoethnography, action research, critical reflection, and social network analysis. People (or ‘nodes’) within the social network (approximately 8 – 10 total) will answer a brief survey with open-ended critical reflection questions based on their relationship with the author. Thematic analysis will be performed on the responses, using the methods to promote the development of expertise from the Cognitive Apprenticeship Framework: modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration (Collins, Brown, and Holum, 1991) and an Educational Leadership framework: forms of enactment, and dimensions of teaching [UBC-CTLT, 2017]. The author will request a follow-up interview to discuss any responses which have the potential to add further depth to the analysis. Recommendations will be proposed to intentionally embed themes and strategies into mentoring partnerships, and educational leadership development initiatives. This work has strong connections to Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory (1978), where learning is inherently social, influenced by surrounding societal and cultural beliefs. There are many additional theoretical frameworks that have evolved based on situational contexts, which will be further explored based on the key themes identified. Effective mentoring has the potential to inspire agency, self-efficacy, improvement, and impact –qualities that can describe leadership. Leadership in engineering education often focuses on how educators develop leadership capabilities in students, overlooking how educators are developing as leaders themselves. Further attention to developing educational leadership capabilities in educators will have far-reaching implications on the continuous improvement of engineering programs, and engineering leadership initiatives.

Citation
Format

Mattucci, S., & Nasser, M. (2024, June), Exploring the Role of Mentorship within a Social Network to Develop Leadership in Engineering Educators Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47444

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This work will explore characteristics of mentorship which promote educational leadership development. The work will be framed within the professional social network of the author and the author’s mentor and mentee relationships who are engineering educators at various career stages.
Mentorship literature in the educational context primarily focuses on student-student mentor relationships, which demonstrate many benefits. Faculty and graduate student mentorship initiatives are often formalized around research and grant opportunities, including NSF grants to fund training efforts for faculty and scholars new to engineering education research. However, there is limited research around development related to educational leadership. Education leadership captures the numerous scholarly activities related to education, including forms of enactment (influence, enable, do), and dimensions of teaching (deliver, design, develop, disseminate)[UBC-CTLT, 2017]. 
Mentorship can occur through several different forms including: formal partnerships with defined roles, informal conversations, peer mentorship, and can bridge contexts between levels of seniority, across institutions, and focused within domains. Further, someone can concurrently identify as both a mentee and a mentor across their professional relationships. Utilizing a social network lens, aspects of mentorship can occur in various forms in relationships with mentors and mentees, with knowledge transfer flowing across the nodes within the system.
The guiding questions for this work are: (i) How do mentorship characteristics influence the development of educational leadership through social networks?, and (ii) How do key mentorship characteristics differ based on the type of relationship and aspect of educational leadership?
This paper will draw from methodologies including autoethnography, action research, critical reflection, and social network analysis. People (or ‘nodes’) within the social network (approximately 8 – 10 total) will answer a brief survey with open-ended critical reflection questions based on their relationship with the author. Thematic analysis will be performed on the responses, using the methods to promote the development of expertise from the Cognitive Apprenticeship Framework: modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration (Collins, Brown, and Holum, 1991) and an Educational Leadership framework: forms of enactment, and dimensions of teaching [UBC-CTLT, 2017]. The author will request a follow-up interview to discuss any responses which have the potential to add further depth to the analysis. Recommendations will be proposed to intentionally embed themes and strategies into mentoring partnerships, and educational leadership development initiatives.
This work has strong connections to Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory (1978), where learning is inherently social, influenced by surrounding societal and cultural beliefs. There are many additional theoretical frameworks that have evolved based on situational contexts, which will be further explored based on the key themes identified.
Effective mentoring has the potential to inspire agency, self-efficacy, improvement, and impact –qualities that can describe leadership. Leadership in engineering education often focuses on how educators develop leadership capabilities in students, overlooking how educators are developing as leaders themselves. Further attention to developing educational leadership capabilities in educators will have far-reaching implications on the continuous improvement of engineering programs, and engineering leadership initiatives.
AU  - Stephen Mattucci
AU  - Makary Nasser
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Exploring the Role of Mentorship within a Social Network to Develop Leadership in Engineering Educators
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47444
ER  -