Negotiating Role Dynamics in a Mentoring Project for A Scholarly Publication: A Trioethnography

To many tenure-tracked early-career scholars (ECS), the pressure to publish cannot be overstated and is particularly keen in institutions where output in international top-tier journals is employed as a major yardstick for performance appraisals. It is thus not surprising that mentoring ECS in publishing has gained increasing attention in recent years. There is a growing body of literature introducing and evaluating various models of mentoring. Such work, however, stands in sharp contrast to the limited research examining the lived experience of mentoring and being mentored. Much less explored is how such experience implicates role dynamics that are critical to mentoring outcomes. This chapter is an attempt to fill the gap. It narrates the roles the three authors experienced in a project, in which the first author (mentor) provided support to the second and third authors (mentees) to shape up a manuscript for publication. As the stories reveal, the collaboration created a delicate intersection of different work frames that the mentor and the mentees brought to bear on the project, shaping at the outset the ways they interpreted and enacted their own roles. Role ambiguity, role displacement and role reassertion were among some of the experiences retold.