Job Hunt: Infinity

I rediscovered Baxter Magolda in the past few months as I’ve been doing reading for my new role as Coordinator of Tutoring. I wanted to dive into the literature of learning and tutoring, and boy have I done that. I’ve gotten through two full books, several articles, and am now into the “additional reading” portion of the Oxford’s Guide for Writing Tutors. The past couple of months have been busy with implementing changes and the new year, but I hope to increase my reading time soon. I have learned or re-learned a whole heck of a lot, which is kind of a fun twist now that I’m writing about learning. Baxter Magolda came up with three principles of learning, outlined here from https://www.geneseo.edu/tlc/baxter : "Validate Students as Knowers" - Students reported they learned better when professors conveyed a caring attitude, which ranged from taking an interest in their extracurricular activities, to talking with them rather than at them, to creating test formats that per...

Perry is one of my favorite theorists when it comes to student development. I really like the way he describes the thinking process that happens, and how people are challenged. I see it a lot in some of the people I interact with regularly, and try to think of their thought process through Perry’s lens. During this time of polarizing politics and us vs them rhetoric from prominent politicians, I try to remember Perry. I try to remember that not everyone can hold two truths and reason out which one to believe. I try to remember not everyone has experienced the process of cognitive dissonance and many have never become comfortable with it. Here’s a good explanation of the stages from https://organizations.missouristate.edu/guide/125687.htm : Perry's Theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development: 1. Basic Duality- Seeing the world dichotomous: good-bad, right-wrong, black-white, facts, authorities have correct answers 2. Multiplicity Prelegitimate- Seeing there may be other answers, ...

Right, so these three people who wrote about psychosocial identity development of students back before some current professionals were born. Why do they matter? What does it matter? Do we actually use these theories? Do theory-to-practice professionals think: Aha! I know why you’re struggling here, you’re in Chickering’s third Vector! Maybe some people do think that, I can’t say I ever have. I do think about some of the struggles students go through and try to use frameworks to better understand 1) how they might be feeling 2) what this means for their success and 3) how I can help them through the struggle. I was at a party recently and I was talking with some folks about homeschooled students who are pushed through high-level academics at young ages. Yeah, I know, you totally want to go to these parties. Homeschooling is a common practice around where I live, especially in the rural areas. To be clear, I’m not disparaging homeschool students or families. This is just an example of us...

Chickering is where many student affairs development theory classes and conversation start. I think of it as the foundational theory of where we started to really look at how college students develop. It provided a framework to think about the changes students experienced and how we can use that framework as professionals. Chickering believed that going through identity development is the main type of development during young adulthood, which is when (at the time) most white men attended college. The vectors are based in Erikson's theory. The seven vectors include: Developing Competence, Managing Emotions, Moving Through Autonomy, Developing Mature Interpersonal Relationships, Establishing Identity, Developing Purpose, and Developing Integrity. Students go through the stages sequentially, starting with developing competencies, such as intellectually and interpersonally, learning to create a positive self identity, creating clear purpose and commitments, and then to developing a “pe...

As student affairs enters our annual Month of Recognition , and we share all of the Warm and Fuzzies of the jobs we do, we should also recognize the knowledge we need to function as competent professionals. Our jobs aren’t just fun and games - we’re also often trained in development, risk and crisis management, and mental health awareness. We should be doing more this month than trying to recruit people and tell everyone how wonderful our jobs are - and how they can just remain in college the rest of their lives. Over the next month, I, along with a few friends (hopefully), will go over psychosocial, cognitive development, racial identity development, sexual identity development, engagement, and success theories. This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list, and I had to make choices, right or wrong, of what to include. I’m hoping to hit the main ones that most of us reviewed in grad school, along with some we may have forgotten. As a side goal, I wanted to make sure I had a wide scope...

Today I attended and presented at a conference. One you probably haven't heard of. It ran from 9am-around 3:15. It included 3 sets of sessions, an opening key note, and lunch. The sessions offered a pretty wide variety of topics. The main theme (note: not  a theme to which adhere, but which the entire conference was focused on) was leadership education, meaning those working with student leaders. The conference attendance was small compared to big NASPA, less than 100 people.

In 2015 when I attended the national NASPA conference, I took down some thoughts for me to blog about later. One of those bullet was: Why are we here? What are our motivations? What do we want to gain? Are we considering our motivations when planning our days?