Chapter 19: Transformative Peer Coaching: A Critical Communication Approach to New Faculty Onboarding Available to Purchase

This chapter articulates a critical communication-focused model of peer coaching as enacted in new faculty onboarding, the Jump Start program, at a large, profoundly diverse public university. Jump Start is a multiphase new faculty onboarding program consisting of both online, in-person, synchronous, and asynchronous pieces. The role of mentors in Jump Start is critical and central to both the content as well the outcomes of the program. New faculty members dive into curricula and online fora created by peer mentors around the topics of SJSU’s work culture, resources, and practical challenges. Other topics focus more specifically on research, scholarly, and creative activities, teaching practices, and service assignments. Rooted in both critical pedagogy and instructional communication theories and practices, this model challenges educational developers and faculty peer coaches to identify and assess the social and structural forces that shape academic work, as well as how those forces are constituted in—and may be transformed by—mundane communication between peers. We will illustrate this model at work via the role of peer coaching in our new faculty onboarding program with attention to both the structural elements of the program and the synchronous and asynchronous communication between peers that leads to a culture of support and transformation.