The Role of Peer Mentoring for Black and Latinx Doctoral Students' Success

Abstract

Students in doctoral education view mentoring as the most important aspect of their educational experience (Golde et al., 2005). Mentoring can affect student retention and dissertation completion (Cronan-Hilllix et al., 1986) and is typically received from the student's advisor. However, many Black and Latinx doctoral students do not receive the critical feedback they need from faculty to develop their academic skills (Williams, 2018). Given reported problematic faculty interactions within the traditional mentoring model (Johnson-Bailey et al., 2008), peers offer an alternative source of support. Few empirical studies examine the effects of peer mentoring for doctoral students of color. This qualitative study examines how six Latinx and Black doctoral students engage in peer mentoring and how they perceive its effects on their doctoral experience. The maximum variation sample includes students in five disciplines who were enrolled in one of three research universities in the Northeast. Critical race theory (Bell, 1992; Crenshaw et al., 1995) was employed to frame institutions of higher education as sites of deeply ingrained racism that inform how Black and Latinx doctoral students receive support from formal institutional sources (e.g., faculty, institutional offices). During semi-structured interviews, students discussed how they drew on their own community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) to create networks of support with peers, and the ways that peers provided them with much-needed guidance. Findings reveal how peers played a profoundly important role in helping students overcome significant challenges in their program while providing key information. Students often received multiple, simultaneous forms of support from a single peer, including social/emotional, academic, and financial-related. Peers provided different forms of navigational capital (Yosso, 2005) to students, pairing them with tools and resources needed to maneuver through complex systems that were not designed for their success. Data also illuminated how students received resistant capital (Yosso, 2005) in order to manage numerous challenges. Findings point to the benefits of facilitating peer mentoring for Latinx and Black doctoral students, along with significant improvements in institutional support services and advising structures.