Peter M. Magolda

Proceed with Caution: Uncommon Wisdom about Academic and Student Affairs Partnerships.

Collaborations between student affairs professionals and faculty are typically viewed as essential to the creation of successful student learning environments. Not so fast, says Peter Magolda, who warns that collaborations are more complicated than they may first appear. Embark on joint ventures with care.

Border Crossings: Collaboration Struggles in Education.

Abstract In this article, a qualitative program evaluation of a state-funded educational renewal effort between a university and a local school district is reported. The collaborative venture illuminated some of the dilemmas, paradoxes, and solutions inherent in reforming American education. More important, this venture revealed the complexities inherent in the ever-popular desire for collaboration between higher education and other culturally distinct organizations (e.g., local school districts). Works by W. G. Tierney (1993) and H. Giroux (1992) are the theoretical anchors for the analysis of this case study. A primary conclusion is that educators who are interested in reform must not only encourage border crossings but they must also provide the border “crossers” with the technical, political, and cultural frameworks to support these efforts.

Nonrational Classroom Performance: Ritual as an Aspect of Action.

Through the presentation and analysis of two extended examples, the authors develop a clear conceptualization of ritual as formalized, symbolic performance and show how such a conceptualization allows us to look at ritual as an aspect of action rather than as a type of action. As an aspect of action, ritual is to be found in nearly all classroom action and helps us understand how the most mundane and ordinary of activities carry with them powerful cultural messages.

College Student Involvement and Mobilization: An Ethnographic Study of a Christian Student Organization

This manuscript uses a case study of a faith-based student organization to explore the interrelationship between student involvement and mobilization in student organizations. the authors explore the types of cocurricular offerings students perceive to be especially meaningful and document ways effective organizations mobilize students to enact political agendas. the study answers two questions: (a) How can student organizations be structured in order to create optimal learning environments for students? and (b) How do student organizations mobilize students to achieve their political aims? the authors also include recommendations to structure meaningful co-curricular activities aimed at answering these two questions for both secular and faith-based student organizations.

An Unholy Alliance: Rethinking Collaboration Involving Student Affairs and Faith-Based Student Organizations

This essay, based on an ethnographic study of a collegiate evangelical student organization residing on a public university, explores the estrangement involving this organization and the larger university. The author explores the optimal relationship between evangelical student organizations and public universities. The essay concludes with recommendations centering on ways to rethink student affairs and faith-based student organizations’ alliances.

Introduction to the Nonrational in Education

The air lies still across the coliseum. The murmurs and shuffling quiet as the black-robed figure of the Superintendent approaches the podium. Dr. Laffer pauses for effect. Her gaze moves from her right to her left taking in the packed audience of the families and friends of today’s graduates. Then she looks downward at the graduates themselves. A small smile grows upon her face. Spread before her are 14 rows of peaceful and hopeful young adults beautifully arrayed in 14 blue and white columns in a natural symmetry that represents all that is good about American education. With calm voice Dr. Laffer addresses her audience, “Twelve years ago you began your schooling. It seems like an eternity to you, but to your parents it seems like yesterday. Whether an eternity or a mere moment, in that time, you have matured from small children to young adults. There have been many influences in your life from your parents to your siblings to your friends, but certainly some of those influences were found among your teachers and schoolmates. Part of who you are today grew in the education that you have pursued here. We are confident that your learning during these years is only the beginning of much more learning to come whether that future education is found in college or work.” Dr. Laffer’s address continues for only a few minutes more and then, to polite applause, she returns to her seat on the dais.

School Ritual as Performance

That people construct the social world is a commonplace assertion in the education literature today; how they construct the social, however, is less frequently addressed. To the extent that a social analyst does address the mechanisms used in social construction, the discussion is overwhelmingly in the realm of language; the focus is on what people say and what the researcher hears. Yet from the earliest work in theoretical sociology to the most recent postmodern influences in cultural studies, the influence of performance has been known. Durkheim’s well-known 1912 study The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1965) identified ritual performance as one key mechanism in the construction of the social. Since then, social analysts, particularly social anthropologists, have recognized ritual as an important social mechanism. And yet when it comes right down to it, with only a few notable exceptions (e.g., Lesko, 1988; Magolda & Gross, 2009; McLaren, 1999 little has actually been done to develop ritual into a key component of the social analysis of education. Educational ethnographers appear to prefer to listen to what their informants say rather than to observe what they perform. Ethnographers’ evidence draws from their interviews with informants rather than the detailed visual and aural descriptions that one often finds in the classic ethnographies of tribal societies.

Ritual Critique and the New Pedagogy

If we understand ritual to be that aspect of action that is a formalized, symbolic performance, then we come to realize that nearly everything that happens in a school includes some ritual and every act has the potential for ritual effects. In other words, nearly everything that happens in a school is both effected by and affects the nonrational. And yet educators approach schooling as if it were a rational exercise. Examine any teacher’s lesson plans, or any grade-level curriculum, or any statewide objective and the assumption is that schooling is about the rational. But I hope by now, this book has convinced you that not everything in a school can be reduced to the technical logic of rational self-interest. We must learn to consider the nontechnical reasoning of the nonrational if we are ever going to understand what is actually happening in schools. In fact, this book argues that the nonrational aspects of schooling are ultimately more important to most students and teachers than the rational and yet, the nonrational is seldom consciously considered by either. Rarely do students and their teachers actually focus on the cultural politics exemplified in the symbolic struggle embedded in ritual. And even more rarely are the material politics that support and form these symbolic struggles recognized.

A Review of “Analysing Teaching–Learning Interactions in Higher Education: Accounting for Structure and Agency”

T here has been a proliferation of texts focusing on teaching and learning within the academy during the past decade. Some authors offer how-to guides or principles of good teaching, whereas others favor philosophical treatises; some scholars focus on pedagogies, whereas others privilege disciplinary content, or student learning. In this crowded, competing, and confusing market, Paul Ashwin’s Analysing Teaching–Learning Interactions in Higher Education: Accounting for Structure and Agency is a niche offering. The book is clearly written, intellectually refreshing, and theoretically sophisticated and provocative. Readers already familiar with teaching–learning discourses or the four alternative discourses (see subsequent paragraphs) are more likely to appreciate this text than are novice readers. At the outset, Ashwin acknowledges two concerns with contemporary teaching–learning research: it does not fully acknowledge or appreciate the mutual influence of students and academics (i.e., agency) as well as the influence of larger social contexts (i.e., structure) on teaching–learning interactions. Dissatisfied with simple, static, and discrete explanations or schema aimed at explaining the complex, intertwined, and inseparable teaching–learning phenomena, Ashwin offers alternative solutions. Five questions posed in the introductory chapter—highlighting the interplay of identity, culture, learning environments, and disciplinary knowledge—make explicit the book’s focus:

Engaging the Whole of Service-Learning, Diversity, and Learning Communities (review)

566 Journal of College Student Development it sets the stage for and shows the context of advising. On a personal note, this chapter convinced me that when done well, faculty advising can be even more powerful than professional advising (which is hard for me to concede having been a professional advisor for five years). Chapters 11 and 12, “Practical Legal Concepts for Faculty Advising” and “Faculty Advising and Technology,” provide straightforward advice and information about these two important topics. Habley outlines general legal concepts, basic principles of contract law, and management of student records with a focus on implications for advisors. White and Leonard cover a wide array of technologies which impact the delivery of advising and provide examples of best practices. Overall, the book fulfills its stated purpose of providing information and resources for administrators of faculty advising that will help them improve and enhance the delivery, organization, and impact of advising. What weaknesses it has are primarily structural. As is often the case with an edited work, there is overlap of information in several chapters. The information might have been more effectively presented in a different order and a summary chapter would have been helpful. I would highly recommend this book for advising administrators. For the professional or faculty advisor engaged in day to day advising activities, Academic Advising: A Comprehensive Handbook (2000) might prove a better resource. There is considerable overlap between the two books. Two important areas covered in depth in Academic Advising, but only briefly mentioned in Faculty Advising Examined, are the use of student development theory in advising and the diversity of today’s college students. On the other hand, in Faculty Advising Examined, the concepts of Advising as Teaching and the Philosophical Foundations for Faculty Advising are more fully developed. Both books provide valuable information about the practice and administration of academic advising. The choice between the two, if that choice must be made, depends on your role and interest in academic advising.