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The Adviser as Teacher/Educator: Advising for Self-Development of the Life-Long Learner
E. R. Melander, Pennsylvania State University
How does a practicing advisee assess her adviser when the adviser frames his role as one of teacher/educator of a life-long learner? This narrative in the form of an imagined nomination letter for an Excellence in Learner-Centered Advising Award by an advisee identifies what she feels are the critical components and outcomes of her relationship with her teacher/educator adviser.
Dear Selection Committee:
As a graduating senior, I would like to nominate Mr. Dreamer, my academic adviser since I was an entering freshman, for the Excellence in Learner-Centered Advising Award. Mr. Dreamer meets and exceeds the criteria for excellence in advising. He knows his subject matter—how to educate the individual learner in his/her own self-development—exceedingly well; he uses a learner-centered pedagogy that actively motivated and engaged me in the process of learning skills and developing the knowledge base needed for the mastery of the discovery advising curriculum, and, most importantly, he transformed my perspective of what it means to be an educated person—both enlightened and empowered—and what I needed to do to take charge of my own education. And he did this not only with me, but with all of his advisees.
It took me a while, but, with the guidance of Mr. Dreamer, I eventually came to understand that the subject of my “real” major in college was me—my own education and development as a learner, as a knowledge constructor and user, as a problem-solver and decision-maker, and as a responsible contributor to the several worlds that I now and will inhabit. I also understood, however, that to earn a diploma, I would need to select and meet the requirements for a traditional major as identified in the university's academic degree program catalog. So, when people have asked about my major, my response has been that I have a dual major: I have been working to achieve subject matter mastery in both my “me” and my catalog majors. The challenge has been to identify a set and sequence of educational experiences—some formal courses and some informal learning exercises that would lead me to the simultaneous realization of the requirements of both my majors.
My “me” major has centered on my education as the agent for my own development as a life-long learner and educational planner. Mr. Dreamer served as my personal “learning coach” for my “me” major. We came to describe my role in our relationship as an “analyst for self-learning and self-development.” His frequent reminder—it almost became a mantra—was, “It's all about knowledge and developing your own powers for determining what it is and how to gain it, organize it, evaluate it, and use it in practice.” And then he would go on to elaborate: “In becoming an educated person, you will need to develop mastery knowledge and skills in how to function in three domains: the world of your own mind, the world of higher learning and knowledge creation; and the world at large, including the natural, cultural, and work worlds. As the agent for your own learning, you are responsible for developing mental capacities for constructing knowledge, making meaning, framing understanding, energizing imagination, forming judgments, and solving problems in all three domains. As a student, you are simultaneously learning how to develop these mental capacities and how to function in the university environment in order to meet your educational goals. What you learn as a student should carry over to the worlds of culture and nature—and, most assuredly, to the world of work, where you will be empowered to create your own career rather than fulfill one defined by the label of your discipline major.”
Together, we engaged in a continuing dialogue aimed at identifying the key questions relating to me as a developing learner and as a navigator of the educational environment of the university. We thought of these questions as organizers for defining the curriculum of learning experiences for my “me” major. We came up with four basic learner development questions:
- How shall I define myself as an educated person and, in turn, use that definition in identifying the goals and purposes of my “me” major?
- What basic learning skills and knowledge activities are essential to my achieving mastery of my own self-development as a learner?
- How do I establish a curriculum of personal educational experiences needed for my development as a master learner and educational planner?
- How do I reflect on and assess progress toward reaching my educational objectives and, in turn, make appropriate adjustments in my self-directed curriculum?
We established a collaborative process for developing responses to each of these learner-centered questions. In brief, it consisted of our considering each learner development question as a learning problem and, to resolve it, we followed a problem-based learning protocol. I would conduct an initial assessment of my current understanding and skill levels with reference to a particular question and then design a proposed learning agenda of things I needed to know and ways I would come to know them. Together, we would reflect on the adequacy of my initial assessment and proposed learning agenda and jointly come up with revisions to fine-tune them; I would then implement the revised learning agenda and develop reflective learning products to demonstrate what I had learned. As the semesters progressed, we would recycle through these steps, together reflecting on learning outcomes and progress in my goal attainment, and I would follow-up with re-designs and revisions in my learning agenda.
Along the way, under Mr. Dreamer's guidance, I set as my goal as an educated person the development of my own powers of mind so that I could be the agent of design, analysis, and interpretation of my own future learning development experiences and actions. As initial learning objectives, I chose the dual tasks of evaluating my own status as a learner and of developing knowledge about the learning opportunities and expectations embedded in the institution's educational environment. For my second stage learning objectives, I chose the setting of my own learner development goals and, in turn, the design and evaluation of my own learning development curriculum and, simultaneously, the selection of my catalog major.
Reflection and analysis of what I needed to learn and how I needed to develop in order to master my sense of agency resulted in the realization that among the basic competencies I needed to acquire as a learner were mastery of interpersonal knowledge about interacting with others and intrapersonal knowledge about my own ways of feeling and thinking about thinking, learning about learning, and knowing about knowing.
We realized that much of the knowledge and skills that I needed to acquire are available in the regular academic curriculum and co-curriculum of the university—though they are not typically organized and catalogued in ways that allowed me to readily match available learning opportunities with my self-development curriculum needs. We developed a mapping strategy to discover and locate relevant learning opportunities available in the university's educational environment. When we were unable to locate opportunities that matched my “me” curriculum needs, Mr. Dreamer would devise and then instruct me in learning modules complete with syllabi, knowledge development activities, and reflective assessment rubrics to help me fill out my curriculum requirements.
Finally, we attacked the problem of reflection and assessment of self-development learning gains in my “me” curriculum by agreeing that I would construct a series of “learning products” along the way that would summarize my immediate learning gains and my reflections on how far they moved me in the direction of accomplishing my learning objectives in the latest round of knowledge construction activities. These learning products were stored in a portfolio on my personal Web site and were accessible by both of us—and sometimes others—as we jointly shared reflections during our collaborative learning cycles.
I learned to be an analyst and planner of my own learning and development—to be an assessor of what I currently knew and what I needed to know, to be a designer of strategies and actions to gain needed knowledge, to be a self-developer of skills in knowledge construction and evaluation, and to be the author of my own personal benchmarks of success.
In my researching of campus learning opportunities, I made several interesting discoveries that I would like to provide as feedback to the educational community. One has to do with the lack of formal learning opportunities that focus on the development of intrapersonal knowledge and skills relating to leadership, imagination, cognition on cognition, and construction and management of knowledge in learning communities. More specific to my “me” major, I discovered the Bachelor of Philosophy (B. Phil.) degree program in which a student can create and complete his/her own curriculum under the guidance of a preceptor and earn a degree. The curriculum you design is subject to the approval of the B. Phil. Curriculum Committee, which has the authority to award a degree when evidence is provided to demonstrate that the student has achieved his/her educational objectives. I plan to petition the B. Phil. Committee for a degree for self-development in my “me” major, along with evidence of my achievements as a developing learner drawn from my portfolio of learning products. I expect to graduate with dual degrees in my two majors of “self-development” and my formal major curriculum.
Becoming an educated person became a passion, to the point of obsession, for me under Mr. Dreamer's guidance and instruction that centered on my “me” development as a learner striving to take charge of my own education and my own life.
Sincerely,
Mr. Dreamer's eternally grateful advisee
P.S. As a way of summarizing my nomination of Mr. Dreamer for the Excellence in Learner-Centered Advising Award, I offer this free verse tribute to him.
You Have Taught Me
Teacher,
You have taught me
How to learn
How to know
How to understand
My own capacities, my own humanity, my own worlds
So that I might better
Author
My own engagements with Life.
Teacher,
You have taught me
Through your instruction,
Your guidance,
Your inspiration,
To be more responsible and passionate
In my own habits of
Mind
My judgments, my choices, my actions.
Teacher, Teacher,
You have taught me
How to imagine,
How to discover.
How to fall in
Love
With what I might become.
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Mr. Dreamer, after the reading of her letter of nomination at the award ceremony, could only exclaim:
“She's got it; by Jove, she's got it! In the beginning, she was a bright and eager student, seeking direction and focus as she anticipated her undergraduate experiences and their outcomes. Through our relationship, she has transformed herself into a confident, competent self-directed learner and educational planner. She should not only be receiving degrees in her dual majors, but also an award for Excellence in Self-Development. She will do well in authoring her own life's experiences.”
About the Author
E. R. Melander is faculty associate, Center for the Study of Higher Education, associate vice provost emeritus, Undergraduate Education, and professor emeritus of Quantitative Business Analysis at the Pennsylvania State University. He can be reached at erm1@psu.edu.
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The Muse is a section of The Mentor devoted to poetry, short fiction pieces, art work, cartoons, and other forms of creative expression.
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Published in The Mentor on April 12, 2006, by Penn State's Division of Undergraduate Studies
Available online at www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/
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