First Year Students: Development of the Whole Person

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First Year Students Development of the Whole
Person Why Bother? May 11, 2009A supported
and understood student becomes an engaged
student, an engaged student is a retained
student, a retained student with continued
support is a successful student.

• ACAD 101 NEW INSTRUCTOR TRAINING
• Frank Ardaiolo, Ed. D.
• Vice President for Student Life
• Winthrop University

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2005 How College Affects Students (Vol.2) A
Third Decade of Research (1989-2002)
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What can we conclude about knowledge
acquisitionand cognitive growth?

1. Significant between-college effects on knowledge
   acquisition and cognitive growth are inconsistent
   and, when found, quite modest in magnitude.
2. Learning and cognitive growth during college is
   due much more to within-college academic and
   nonacademic experiences than to the
   characteristics of the college attended.

(Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)
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Developmental Theories of Student Change

• Psychosocial development, including identity
  formation theories focus on content of
  development, e.g., vectors identity statuses,
  dimensions (Erickson, Chickering)
• Cognitive-structural theories seek to describe
  nature processes of change (Piaget, Perry,
  Kohlberg, Gilligan)
• Typological models categorize individuals
  according to distinctive characteristics (Kolb,
  Holland, Briggs)
• Person-environment interaction theories models
  focus on environment that influences behavior of
  individual (Astin, Kuh)

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CHICKERINGs VECTORS OF DEVELOPMENT in EDUCATION
AND IDENTITY

• DEVELOPING COMPETENCE INTELLECTUAL COMPETENCE,
  SOCIAL COMPETENCE, AND PHYSICAL AND MANUAL
  COMPETENCE
• MANAGING EMOTIONS THE INCREASING AWARENESS OF
  ONES FEELINGS WHICH MUST BE INTEGRATED WITH
  ONES ACTIONS IN ORDER TO ALLOW FLEXIBLE CONTROL
  AND EXPRESSION
• MOVING THROUGH AUTONOMY TOWARD INTERDEPENDENCE
  ESTABLISHING EMOTIONAL INDEPENDENCE FREE OF
  CONTINUAL AND PRESSING NEEDS OF REASSURANCE,
  AFFECTION OR APPROVAL
• ESTABLISHING IDENTITY REFERS TO A CLEAR
  SELF-CONCEPT AND COMFORT WITH THE SELF OR PERSON
  ONE FEELS ONESELF TO BE

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CHICKERINGs VECTORS OF DEVELOPMENT in EDUCATION
AND IDENTITY (2nd ed., 1993)

• DEVELOPING MATURE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
  INVOLVES INCREASED TOLERANCE, ACCEPTANCE AND
  APPRECIATION OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS
  AND THEIR CULTURAL DIFFERENCES WITH INCREASED
  CAPACITY FOR MATURE RELATIONSHIPS BASED UPON
  GREATER TRUST, INDEPENDENCE, AND INDIVIDUALITY
• DEVELOPING PURPOSE THE ASSESSMENT AND
  CLARIFICATIONS OF ONES INTERESTS, EDUCATION AND
  CAREER OPTIONS, AND LIFE-STYLE PREFERENCE
• DEVELOPING INTEGRITY THE DEVELOPMENT OF A
  DEFINED AND INTERNALLY CONSISTENT SET OF VALUES
  THAT GUIDE ONES ACTIONS

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Students out-of-class interactions with peers
and the nature of their extra-curricular
experience Important implications for
cognitive growth learning

• Extend and reinforce the ethos of the
  academic program
• Expose one to people, ideas, and perspectives
  that challenge assumed views of the world
• Importance of student affairs professionals
• (Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)

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Physical Presence BUT Psychological Absence on
Campus!

• Many students systematically fail to recognize
  the value of learning
• What we can say with fair confidence at this
  point is that most students who leave high school
  and enter college bring with them a set of
  attitudes and beliefs about schooling and their
  interaction with educational institutions that
  tend to insulate them against learning rather
  than to prepare them for it p.47.
• J. Tagg (2003), The learning paradigm college.
  Bolton, MA Anker

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Students exist on campus but fail to engage with
campus to overcome this we must understand

• Learning is a complex, holistic, multi-centric
  activity that occurs throughout and across the
  college experience. Student development and the
  adaptation of learning to students lives and
  needs are fundamental parts of engaged learning
  and liberal education (p. 8).
• LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON THE
  STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004

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Liberal Education must be

• one that prepares us to live responsible,
  productive, and creative lives in a dramatically
  changing world. It is an education that fosters a
  well-grounded intellectual resilience, a
  disposition toward lifelong learning, and an
  acceptance of responsibility for the ethical
  consequences of our ideas and actions. Liberal
  education requires that we understand the
  foundations of knowledge and inquiry about
  nature, culture and society that we master core
  skills of perception, analysis, and expression
  that we cultivate a respect for truth that we
  recognize the importance of historical and
  cultural context and that we explore connections
  among formal learning, citizenship, and service
  to our communities.
• Association of American Colleges Universities,
  October 1998
• concerned with habituation in moral conduct as
  well as with its theoretical analysis. It must
  educate the whole person, the appetites as well
  as intellect.
• John Brubacher, On the Philosophy of Higher
  Edcation,1977, p. 82

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Learning Reconsidered is

• an argument for the integrated use of all of
  higher educations resources in the education and
  preparation of the whole student. It is also an
  introduction to new ways of understanding and
  supporting learning and development as
  intertwined, inseparable elements of the student
  experience.

• student centered as a comprehensive, holistic,
  transformative activity that integrates academic
  learning and student development, processes that
  have often been considered separate, and even
  independent of each other.

(LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004)
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So what is LEARNING?

• Learning is a complex, holistic, multi-centric
  activity that occurs throughout and across the
  college experience. Student development, and the
  adaptation of learning to students lives and
  needs, are fundamental parts of engaged learning
  and liberal education. True liberal education
  requires the engagement of the whole student
  and the deployment of every resource in higher
  education.

LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON THE
STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004
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The key components of learning areCOGNITION
MEANING MAKING

• Cognition involves the thought processes that
  people use to analyze and synthesize information
  in order to make meaning of a situation or to
  decide how to respond to it. Cognitive
  development builds the capacity for reflective
  judgment, which describes a persons increasing
  ability to take information and context into
  account when developing judgments or making
  decisions.

• Meaning making comprises students efforts to
  comprehend the essence and significance of
  events, relationships, and learning to gain a
  richer understanding of themselves in a larger
  context and to experience a sense of wholeness.
  Meaning making arises in a reflective connection
  between an individual and the wider world.

(LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004)
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Its about learning, not just teaching

• The idea of transformative learning reinforces
  the root meaning of liberal education itself
  freeing oneself from the constraints of a lack of
  knowledge and an excess of simplicity. In the
  transformative educational paradigm, the purpose
  of educational involvement is the evolution of
  multidimensional identity, including but not
  limited to cognitive, affective, behavioral and
  spiritual development.

• Transformative education, instead of the singular
  emphasis on information transfer of much
  traditional teaching, places the students
  reflective processes at the core of the learning
  experience and asks the student to evaluate both
  new information and the frames of reference
  through which the information acquires meaning.

(LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON
THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004)
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Its Really About Deep Learning and the Abilities
to

• Attend to the underlying meaning of information
  as well as content
• Integrate and synthesize different ideas,
  sources of information
• Discern patterns in evidence or phenomena
• Apply knowledge in different situations
• View issues from multiple perspectives
• (George Kuh, Engaged Learning Communities
  Students, Faculty, and Institutions, AACU
  Institute, Burlington, VT, 2005)

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• Deep Learning is learning that takes root in
  our apparatus of understanding, in the embedded
  meanings that define us and that we use to define
  the world.
• J. Tagg (2003). The learning paradigm college (p.
  70). Bolton, MA Anker

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Student Learning Outcomes

• Cognitive complexity
• Knowledge acquisition, integration, and
  application
• Humanitarianism
• Civic engagement
• Personal and interpersonal competence
• Practical competence
• Persistence and academic achievement

LEARNING RECONSIDERED A CAMPUS-WIDE FOCUS ON THE
STUDENT EXPERIENCE, ACPA/NASPA, 2004
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HOW DO YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN as ACAD 101 instructors?

• Engagement is the proxy to learning.
• Lee Schulman, Change, 2002, pp. 36-44

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• Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J. H., Whitt, E.
  J. Associates (2005). Student success in
  college Creating conditions that matter

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Its about ENGAGEMENT focusing on what
students do during college is the best way to
enhance student success!

• The contribution of out-of-class experiences to
  student engagement cannot be overstated if an
  institution wishes to emphasize student
  achievement, satisfaction, persistence, and
  learning.
• (Elizabeth Whitt, About Campus, January-February,
  2006, p.2)

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To successfully engage students, YOU

• Focus on student learning. Period.
• By being partners in the educational enterprise,
  team teaching with faculty, creating enriching
  educational opportunities for students, fostering
  student success, with policies and practices that
  create seamless learning environments where
  boundaries between in-class and out-of-class
  learning are fuzzy.
• By hiring, training, and rewarding staff
  committed to student learning.

(Elizabeth Whitt, Are All Your Educators
Educating? About Campus, 2006)
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To successfully engage students, YOU

• Create and sustain partnerships for learning.
• By creating cross-functional collaborations and
  responsive units.
• By having cocurricular programs that foster and
  not compete or undercut students academic
  achievement.
• Hold all students to high expectations for
  engagement and learning, in and out of class, on
  and off campus.

(Elizabeth Whitt, Are All Your Educators
Educating? About Campus, 2006)
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To successfully engage students, YOU

• Implement a comprehensive set of safety nets and
  early warning systems.
• By insuring all these systems and services are
  not working in isolation rather all (faculty,
  student life staff, residence life staff, and
  student paraprofessionals) have the attention and
  draw upon resources of everyone who comes into
  contact with students in difficulty.
• By understanding how students spend their time
  and communicating relevant information to faculty
  and student life educators.

(Elizabeth Whitt, Are All Your Educators
Educating? About Campus, 2006)
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To successfully engage students, YOU

• Teach new students what it takes to succeed.
• By raising expectations for academic challenge
  and engagement in educationally purposeful
  activities.
• By requiring students to participate in
  experiences that lead to learning.
• Recognize, affirm, and celebrate the educational
  value of diversity.
• Invest in programs and people that demonstrate
  contributions to student learning and success.

(Elizabeth Whitt, Are All Your Educators
Educating? About Campus, 2006)
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To successfully engage students, YOU

• Use data to inform decisions
• Create spaces for learning
• Establish learning communities

(Elizabeth Whitt, Are All Your Educators
Educating? About Campus, 2006)
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Sources of Effects on Learning

• 1. Class size and content knowledge (-)
• 2. Instructional approaches and content
  acquisition
• Learning for mastery (.41 - .68 sd 16-25 ile
  points)
• Computer-based instruction (on avg. .31 sd, or
  12 ile pts)
• Supplemental Instruction (.39 sd, or 15 ile
  pts)
• Collaborative/Cooperative learning
• (.47 - .54 sd, or 18-20 ile pts)
• Active learning (.25 sd, or 10 ile pts)
• Small-group learning (.51 sd, or 19 ile pts)
• Service learning (, but size unknown)

(Pascarella Terenzini, 2004)
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Sources of Effects on Learning

• 3. Effective instructor behaviors
• Preparation and organization
• Clarity and understandableness
• Expressiveness/Enthusiasm
• Availability and helpfulness
• Quality and frequency of feedback to students
• Concern for, and rapport with, students

(Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)
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Sources of Effects on Learning

• The Curriculum
• An interdisciplinary, integrated core curriculum
  emphasizing links across courses and ideas ()
• Higher-order thinking skills can be taught
• Critical thinking (.23 SD 9ile pts.)
• Postformal reasoning (.65 SD 24 ile pts.)
• (Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)

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Sources of Effects on Learning

• 5. Social and out-of-class involvement
• Quality of student effort/engagement ()
• Interactions with peers ()
• Diversity experiences ()
• Interactions with faculty members ()
• On-/off-campus work (neutral, if part-time)

(Pascarella Terenzini, 2005)