Significant Learning, Significant Advising
The acknowledgment that advisees are learners and advisors are teachers may be the most powerful philosophical change in advising in 30 years. This article builds generally on the growing momentum to view academic advising as an extension of student learning, and specifically as an expansion of “Advising as Learning” in which Hemwall and Trachte (2005) argued that “learning as an organizing paradigm has profound implications” (p. 75). I develop this idea by applying Fink's (2003) learning paradigm to advising. The synergy in this paradigm can be harnessed to create advising that causes change in the advisee. Fink's method for developing opportunities for significant learning requires forethought and careful design when applied to the academic advising process.
Relative Emphasis: theory, practice, research
Contributor Notes
Bruce Kelley serves as the Founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at The University of South Dakota. He served previously as the Director of Academic Advising at Shepherd University. He holds a BM from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Trombone Performance and an MA and a PhD in Music Theory from The Ohio State University. He has presented numerous papers on Fink's theories and has published in the College Music Symposium and the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy. He is also co-editor of and contributor to Bugle Resounding, a collection of essays on music of the American Civil War. He can be reached at Bruce.Kelley@usd.edu.