Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research

Book excerpt: With contributions from advanced, early career, and emerging qualitative scholars, Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research illuminates how qualitative research mentoring practices, relationships, and possibilities of inquiry and teaching come to life under different mentoring philosophies. What we can know in and about the world is inseparable from our approach(es) to knowing with and in it. And how we mentor in qualitative research matters to what we can know and do as qualitative inquirers. Yet, despite its importance, mentoring is rarely conceptualized as a practice inspiring or inspired by philosophy. This edited book opens a needed space for thinking about mentoring as a philosophical practice. Its thoughtful chapters and artful "mentoring moments" draw on critical, feminist, new materialist, post-structuralist, and other philosophies to make visible, interrupt, reflect, deepen, and expand mentoring practices within the qualitative community revealing what we can know, do, and become through them. Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research sensitizes readers to mentoring as a philosophical practice. As such, it is essential reading for students and researchers in qualitative research and higher education interested in mentoring practice and humanistic research values.