Promoting communal care for wellbeing in graduate education: Community building, belonging, and navigating the COVID-19 pandemic

Academia is a stressful occupation. Globally, faculty report stressors related to mounting expectations for research and scholarly productivity in the context of simultaneously increasing instructional workloads, administrative duties, and student expectations. As a result of these increased demands and expectations, faculty report experiences of intense stress, worry, depressed mood, emotional exhaustion, diminished self-care, and overall sense of compromised wellbeing. This chapter explores self-care within graduate education and argue for the inclusion of communal care practices to support wellbeing. It positions community building as a communal care practice that extends traditional notions of self-care. It also adopts reflexive ethnography to unpack the subjective experiences of wellbeing, including those incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter utilizes Bronfenbrenner's (1994) ecological theory of human development to deconstruct the sense of belonging and efforts to build community within academia, reflecting on resulting impacts on wellbeing. It identifies microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem factors that facilitated or impeded the efforts to build community in context of the social-cultural locations as faculty. The chapter highlights the importance of modeling self-care through community building in graduate-level practice, scholarship, and policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Building intercultural mentorship, wellbeing, and wholistic practice in graduate education: Scholarly reflections on playbuilding, storytelling, and the arts

Academia is a stressful environment for graduate students and faculty due to high expectations, comprehensive assignments, and diverse roles and responsibilities. Faculty report stressors related to high demands for scholarly productivity, teaching excellence, and administrative duties. These high expectations are often heightened by increasing class sizes, limited administrative support, decreased funding opportunities, and busy schedules. There are also increased pressures for racialized faculty groups. More recently, professors have also been facing an increasing number of COVID-19-related stressors, such as remote working, childcare obligations, research delays, secondary trauma, and mental exhaustion. Educational researchers suggest that in a context of an increasingly changing academia, mentoring and community-building have the potential to promote growth-fostering relationships while supporting individuals' sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and competency. Considering the importance of mentorships and wellbeing in graduate education, as well as artful practices for learning and teaching, the authors shares their perspectives of play-building as they continue to develop intercultural relationships through collaborative writing, storytelling, and understandings of the Creative Process, as well as two Indigenous pedagogical tools: the Medicine Wheel and the Two Row Wampum Belt. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Supporting student and faculty wellbeing in graduate education: Teaching, learning, policy, and praxis

Promoting and sustaining wellbeing have gained prominence in a globalizing world, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Higher-education institutions are increasingly expected to consider and support the wellbeing of their students, staff, and faculty. Within higher education, new understandings are emerging about the intricacies and intersectionalities of psychological, social, and cultural factors that impact wellbeing of diverse individuals, including Indigenous, international, refugee, immigrant, and other marginalized groups. There is growing recognition that learning and working within academia are stressful experiences for faculty and graduate students. The need to understand wellbeing in general and wellbeing in graduate education, in particular, is also evident in the reports and studies that indicate an emerging crisis of wellbeing among graduate students and faculty. This book recognizes new pressures impacting graduate students and their supervisors, teachers, and mentors globally. It provides a range of insights and strategies which reflect on wellbeing as an integral part of teaching, learning, policy, and student-mentor relationships. The book offers a uniquely holistic approach to supporting the wellbeing of both students and academic staff in graduate education. It showcases optimized approaches to self-care, self-regulation, and policy development, as well as trauma-informed, arts-based, and embodied pedagogies. Particular attention is given to the challenges faced by minority groups including Indigenous, international, refugee, and immigrant students and staff. Providing a timely analysis of the current issues surrounding student and faculty wellbeing, the book appeals to scholars and researchers working across the fields of higher education, sociology of education, educational psychology, and student affairs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Indigenous and immigrant voices for healing and wellness in graduate education

The importance of healing and wellness is a local, global, and historical concern, especially for Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island/North America and across the world. Since the COVID-19 pandemic commenced in March 2020, the issues of sustainability and wellbeing have been shared intensely in virtual graduate classrooms by Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. The space in which Indigenous Peoples and Settlers on Turtle Island/North America express intents for their education is uncomfortable. Decolonizing efforts to address systemic discrimination in graduate education require truths to be told and heard before there can be reconciliation for past and current injustices against Indigenous Peoples. Systemic discrimination is an impediment to Indigenous and Settler graduate students and faculty healing, wellness, and academic success as they pursue teaching, learning, and self-sustainability. Reading the literature on Indigenous and Settler voices in graduate education and discussing the emerging insights and reflections, this chapter identifies the challenges and the possibilities for graduate student and faculty healing and wellness. This spontaneous and honest atmosphere allowed to access the self of each other despite the diverse sociocultural backgrounds and experiences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)