Academic Advising Approaches by Jayne K. Drake & Peggy Jordan & Marsha A. Miller

Academic Advising Approaches by Jayne K. Drake & Peggy Jordan & Marsha A. Miller

Author:Jayne K. Drake & Peggy Jordan & Marsha A. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-09-02T16:00:00+00:00


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Academic Advising Informed by Self-authorship Theory

Janet K. Schulenberg

[Academic advisors] are positioned to facilitate a transformative experience for students—to help them make meaning around how the accordance or discordance of previous and current learning relates to their educational goals and aspirations.

—Kincanon, Translating the Transformative, 2009

Many theoretical lenses contribute to an academic advisor's endeavor to facilitate student learning. Self-authorship theory, a relatively new developmental perspective on human psychosocial maturation, is a particularly powerful lens for academic advising because it focuses on the way individuals understand the world and make decisions within it. In particular, it emphasizes the development of an individual's capacity to balance critical evaluations of information, personal beliefs and values, and relationships with others when setting goals and taking action. This kind of complex thinking is a distinctive learning goal of higher education (e.g., American Association of Colleges and Universities [AAC&U], 2002), and advisors have a significant role in helping students achieve it (Baxter Magolda & King, 2008; Lowenstein, 2011; National Academic Advising Association, 2006).

Although self-authorship involves multiple aspects of an individual's development, in general it is characterized by a shift from less depen­dence on an authority to an intrinsic understanding of self that guides decision making. Self-authored individuals can balance external influences to develop their own internally generated beliefs, goals, and plans of action.

A self-authored student will not blindly follow parental expectations or expect advisors to tell her or him the major that will be best, nor will a self-authored student single-mindedly follow a gut feeling or passion. … Rather, the self-authored student will consider both external expectations and internally defined goals and values. (Pizzolato, 2006, p. 32)



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