Want to improve young scientists ’ mentoring experience? Train their mentors in cultural awareness

Scientists who reflect on their racial and ethnic identities—as well as on those of their mentees—have the potential to be better mentors. And mentees of these scientists were also more likely to say their mentors were respectful of, and held space for conversations about, race and ethnicity. Those are the take-home message from a new randomized controlled trial—the first of its kind. “Race matters in mentoring,” says Stephen Thomas, a social behavioral scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park who was not involved in the new study. Mentoring is a fundamental part of a scientist’s path. Mentors help shape not only who young researchers will become, but also how they see themselves in their fields. But mentors often focus solely on the research, ignoring or downplaying their and their mentees’ personal identities—including race and ethnicity. Some seem to think that acknowledging identity gets in the way of doing good research, says Angela Byars-Winston, a counseling psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who led the new study, whereas others fear being inadvertently discriminatory. For example, “There’s always the danger of … awkwardness or of creating a difficulty where none existed,” a white, male mentor told Byars-Winston and her team during a previous study . A growing body of work highlights t he shortcomings of this mindset. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medi...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news