7. Can academic advising qualify as a scholarly activity?
It appears that higher education is still in disagreement about whether its primary purpose is education or research, given that the criteria for hiring, promotion, salary increases, and tenure are more often research- than teaching-based. As Boyer (1990) said in his book Scholarship Reconsidered, “Almost all colleges pay lip service to the trilogy of teaching, research, and service, but when it comes to making judgments about professional performance, the three are rarely assigned equal merit” (p. 15). Boyer also stated that the academy must abandon its tired old “teaching vs. research” debate by reviving, refreshing, and redefining the concept of scholarship to include the wide range of methods teachers use to educate their students and the public at large.
As Halpern (1997) has observed in a recent draft of Scholarship in Psychology: A Paradigm for the 21st Century (APA, Division Two¹), “The stakeholders in higher education – students and their parents, faculty, taxpayers, regents/trustees, legislators, and prospective employers – want college graduates with the skills, abilities, ethics, and attitudes needed to participate in and lead our nation in a rapidly changing global context” (p. 7).
¹ Editor's note: Division Two of the American Psychological Association (APA) is the Society for the Teaching of Psychology.
Halpern has wisely concluded that
Diamond and Adams (1995) reviewed and synthesized the concepts of scholarship from the perspectives of many academic disciplines and concluded that an activity can reflect scholarship if it meets the following criteria:
Division Two has followed Diamond and Adams' lead by encouraging its members to think of scholarship “as contributions to the social fabric of psychology” (p. 9) and to adopt a five-dimension definition of scholarship “in which any single dimension or any of the five parts in combination can be considered scholarship” (p. 9). These dimensions are
When scholarship is defined in this manner, it becomes clear that several aspects of academic advising fit this concept. The models and methods of developmental advising can be
Still, it will be difficult to convince the academy of this conceptual fit because, as Halpern has stated, “It is interesting to note that most of the general public believes that teaching is the primary task of faculty, yet ... it tends to be denigrated and accorded the lowest status of any of the activities in which faculty engage, with the only exceptions being teaching-related activities such as advising and committee work that are generally not even recognized as activities that add value to the teaching and learning process?” (p. 12).
I am not saying that all advisers are scholars. An adviser who merely tells students what courses to take and then signs their registration forms is no more a scholar than a teacher who stopped learning after graduate school and who reads his lectures from the same yellowed notes semester after semester. What I am saying is that many advising activities can qualify as scholarship if they fall within Division Two's dimensions and meet Diamond and Adams' criteria.
For example, some advisers perform and publish original research, the results of which have demonstrated that sound advising practices are positively related to increases in critical thinking skills (Frost, 1991), the number of students on honor lists (Glennen, 1975), and retention and graduation rates (Glennen, Farren, & Vowel, 1996).
This type of research meets the criteria for scholarship because
The last point is supported clearly by Glennen, Farren, and Vowell's (1996) finding that well-delivered academic advising can improve the fiscal stability of an institution “by increasing retention and graduation rates, thereby increasing appropriations based on an enrollment-driven formula” (p. 38). These authors pointed out the impact of these advising outcomes when they explain that
The beneficiaries of improved retention and graduation rates are the students and the taxpayers. Individual students who have attained their academic goals have improved their chance of success in our competitive society. The additional fiscal resources they generate enable institutions to improve and maintain programs and services. The increase in retention and graduation rates demonstrates the accountability of institutions to their constituents. The investment in advising and retention efforts brings dramatic results and helps to offset budget reductions (p. 41).
But what about advising-related activities other than research? Can they be considered scholarly in nature? My answer is a confident yes.
If we turn our attention to Division Two's second dimension of scholarly endeavors, we find it is the integration of knowledge. Developmental advising is grounded in the work of developmental theorists who have attempted to explain the wide range of changes that occur during undergraduate years. Teachers of psychology are in a fortuitous position in regard to this dimension of scholarship because of their familiarity with these theories, which constitutes an excellent example of the use of discipline-specific expertise. A few examples of the changes that take place in college students – and the theorists who have attempted to explain these changes – are as follows:
Psychology teachers who synthesize the wisdom of these theorists to guide their advising activities clearly exhibit Division Two's second dimension of the integration of knowledge as well as its third dimension of the application of knowledge.
The extent to which these processes of integration and application are worthy of being called scholarship is, of course, dependent upon the quality of their impact, which is Diamond and Adams' final criterion. These processes should be considered scholarly if they are successful in helping advisers enable students to take full advantage of their collegiate experience in order to leave their institutions armed with what Ryan (1992, p. 7) calls “the knowledge and skills needed to be active, articulate, and committed citizens who can provide new ideas, create and deal with change, and propose solutions to some of the political, social, and economic challenges we face.”
Advisers who monitor and evaluate the development of this knowledge and these skills in their advisees engage in what Halpern (1993) describes as student-centered outcomes assessment – although we might also refer to it as advisee-centered outcomes assessment. The data collected from this type of assessment can be used to make informed modifications in advising methods that will allow advisers to better help their advisees “select courses, plan careers, develop life views ... and monitor their own cognitive and attitudinal gains (or losses) while they are enrolled in college” (p. 37).
Before proceeding to Division Two's fourth dimension of scholarship, I would like to bring your attention to a small sample of the almost endless examples of discipline-specific expertise that advisers can bring to the process of advising. For example, psychologists can use their knowledge of cognitive processes and learning theory to help advisees develop more effective study skills. Many freshmen enter college in a state of outright cluelessness in terms of how to study because they have come from high schools in which the only thing they had to do to earn good grades was to remember what the teacher said and then give this information back verbatim – unscathed by critical thinking – to the teacher on tests. Explaining to advisees about the positive effects of increasing their study time (the total-time effect), spreading out study sessions instead of cramming (the distributed-practice effect), thinking about new material in a number of different ways (depth of processing), and attempting to relate the material to their own lives (the self-reference effect) can often produce increases in academic performance.
Just as there is an abundance of discipline-specific knowledge that advisers can use during the advising process, there is also a wealth of discipline-specific skills they can employ. The introductory sentence in the “advising skills” section of Virginia Gordon's (1992) Handbook of Academic Advising states, “Advisers' repertoire of advising skills and techniques usually develops from their own personal style and experience” (p. 55).
Although I do not doubt the validity of this statement for the majority of advisers in higher education, I would take issue with it for academic psychologists who serve as advisers. This section of Gordon's book reads like a veritable taxonomy of skills that psychologists use in their professions, including the ability to
Although the majority of these skills are associated with clinical or counseling psychology, many others are employed by psychologists in less applied areas (e.g., a cognitive psychologist can help advisees develop better decision-making skills and a learning theorist coming from the behaviorist tradition is well prepared to help students develop more successful study habits by establishing baselines and monitoring progress).
Academic advising activities also fit Division Two's fourth dimension of scholarship, the scholarship of pedagogy. Developmental advisers can help students improve their interpersonal skills and, when they empower students in this manner, they are engaging in the scholarship of pedagogy by using the findings of psychological research to improve their students' learning and their own teaching. For example, I use the knowledge I gained from surveys of students and teachers about behaviors they find irritating in the college classroom (Appleby, 1990) to help my advisees develop more appropriate classroom etiquette.
Students are often surprised to discover that they irritate teachers when they arrive late to class, wear hats in the classroom, or begin to pack up their materials before the class is over. Once they understand that these behaviors have the potential to drive an emotional wedge between them and their teachers, they often begin to reconsider the wisdom of these actions.
The same study also investigated teacher behaviors that irritate students. It is interesting to note that students report they are irritated by some teacher behaviors that fall into the same categories of the student behaviors that irritate teachers (e.g., students are irritated by teachers who arrive late for class, dress in an unprofessional manner, and continue to lecture after a class period has officially ended). This study supports Hettich's (1998, p. 351) notion that “a college course is a group experience in which all participants share responsibility for its success.”
I also use the irritating behaviors identified in this study as examples in the social psychology section of my introductory class when I discuss the fundamental attribution error. Students usually attribute their own irritating behaviors to external, situational causes (e.g., I was late to class because my alarm didn't go off.) and don't realize that their teachers may attribute this type of behavior to students' internal, personal characteristics (e.g., laziness, apathy, immaturity, or disrespect). Helping students – and ourselves – to overcome this type of egocentrism in the classroom is surely a good example of the scholarship of pedagogy.
Finally, advising can be an example of Division Two's fifth dimension of scholarship, the scholarship of teaching and learning. This dimension is reflected in the activities of academic advisers when they assimilate and disseminate knowledge about advising to colleagues, students, public audiences, and the larger community of scholars. Books such as Hettich's Learning Skills for College and Career, Morgan and Korschgen's Majoring in Psych?: Career Options for Psychology Undergraduates, Wood's Is Psychology the Major for You?, and my Handbook of Psychology are examples of this type of scholarship.
The fact that I am publishing this article on the topic of academic advising is also a good example of this dimension of scholarship.
The National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) serves as a bountiful resource for advisers who engage themselves in scholarship's fifth dimension. This organization
Concluding Remarks
To begin my conclusion, allow me to revisit the seven questions I posed at the beginning of this article and to consider the answers that I believe my evidence has supported.
When we teach our students metacognitive skills, we teach them how to think about and understand their own thought processes and how to construct strategies to use their thought processes more effectively. Developmental advising serves the same purpose, but on a much larger scale because it enables students to
In other words, advising helps them to form a more meaningful schema of their undergraduate education and to understand how they can use the outcomes of their education to thrive in a world that is changing faster than it ever has before.
I'd like to put the finishing touches on this paper with two quotations. The first is from Gordon, (1988, p. 109) who is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the topic of academic advising today. She describes three outcomes for advising in this quotation, which summarizes much of what I have presented to you today. She says that successful advising is taking place when student are
I am very fond of this quotation because it suggests that successful advising can produce positive outcomes not only in our students' professional lives, but also in their personal, social, civic, and spiritual lives as well.
The purpose of higher education is not – and should not be – limited to the production of employable people. We must constantly remind ourselves that we have the opportunity to affect our students in a multitude of ways that can help them to become more well-rounded human beings.
I can think of no better way to explain this well-roundedness than to present you with my second concluding quotation, written 146 years ago by Henry Cardinal Newman in his book The Idea of a University. In this volume, Newman clearly sets forth the purpose of higher education by saying that:
University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, cultivating the public mind, purifying the national taste, supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life.
It is the education which gives us a clear and conscious view of our own opinions and judgements, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them.
It teaches us to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophisticated, and to discard what is irrelevant.
It prepares us to fill any post with credit and to master any subject with facility.
It shows us how to accommodate ourselves to others, how to throw ourselves into their state of mind, how to bring before them our own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, and how to bear with them.
The educated person is at home in any society, has common ground with every class, knows when to speak and when to be silent, is able to converse, is able to listen, can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably when he or she has nothing to impart.
Ramos (1994) asks us to “Think of academic advising as a course offered to our advisees” (p. 91). He suggests that when we advise, we should think of
It is my sincere hope that this paper has provided you with information that will enable you to help your students grow within their personal, social, intellectual, spiritual, civic, and professional dimensions. Brewer (1993) challenged teachers of psychology to “Provide students with the experience and understanding they will need to make the world a better place in which to lead productive and fulfilling lives” (p. 180). As academic advisers, teachers of psychology can contribute to the accomplishment of this lofty goal by helping students to
In summary, let me say that advisees are not the only beneficiaries of academic advising. The opportunity to teach, advise, and mentor undergraduate students for almost three decades continues to reinforce my belief in – and to fuel my enthusiasm for – the dynamic process and the positive outcomes of the teaching-advising connection.
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