Reconciling the knowledge of scholars & practitioners: An extended case analysis of the role of theory in student affairs

This paper utilizes a critical post-pragmatist epistemological lens in tandem with an extended case analysis to explore how student affairs professionals process truth claims related to student experience. Findings from the study, which include the limited usage of formal theory and the iterative reconstruction of informal theory, are used to demonstrate the utility of critical, theory-engaged methodology in educational research. Implications for future research and methodological decision-making are offered

A Theory-Driven Reappraisal of the Historiography of Normal Schools

Mainstream historiography understates the importance of normal schools; as a result, historians cannot fully appreciate normal schools’ influence on institutional forms. We support this contention through a review of: 1) the description of normal schools in synthetic histories; 2) literature specifically on normal schools; and 3) a reappraisal of each using social theories that illuminate relationships between people, institutions, and society related to normal schools. The dominant historiography of American higher education relegates the normal school to a discursive cul-de-sac whereby they offered roughly the same academic rigor as a high school and are quickly superseded by teachers colleges (Brubacher & Rudy, 1976; Rudolph, 1962). While recent literature acknowledges that normal schools expanded access for women and allowed for curricular innovation (Geiger, 2014; Thelin, 2011), mainstream historiography still underplays the normal school movement’s role in generating adaptive changes. Literature focused specifically on normal schools casts them as an attempt to democratize higher education and society (c.f. Ogren, 2005; Pacheo, 2013; Taylor, 2010). Our reappraisal of normal school historiography utilizes three social theories. Institutional isomorphism contends that coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures lead normal schools to resemble universities (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Similarly, structuration supports the idea that social institutions become homogenous through repeated social practice (Giddens, 1979; Giddens & Pierson, 1998). Finally, postmodern theories—specifically organized anarchy and critical feminism—demonstrate the extent to which an institution’s goals are inherently ambiguous and change over time—clearly the case for normal schools (Manning, 2013; Scott & Davis, 2007)

Normal schools revisited: A theoretical reinterpretation of the historiography of normal schools.

This paper utilizes a critical post-pragmatist epistemological lens in tandem with an extended case analysis to explore how student affairs professionals process truth claims related to student experience. Findings from the study, which include the limited usage of formal theory and the iterative reconstruction of informal theory, are used to demonstrate the utility of critical, theory-engaged methodology in educational research. Implications for future research and methodological decision-making are offered

Narrowed Gaps and Persistent Challenges: Examining Rural-Nonrural Disparities in Postsecondary Outcomes over Time

Empirical studies have concluded that rural students experience lower rates of college enrollment and degree completion compared to their nonrural peers, but this literature needs to be expanded and updated for a continually changing context. This article examines the rural-nonrural disparities in students’ postsecondary trajectories, influences, and outcomes. By comparing results to past research using similar national data and an identical design, we are able to examine change over time. Results show narrowed gaps from the 1990s into the 2000s, but with rural students still facing persistent challenges and experiencing lower average rates of college enrollment and degree completion

STEM degree completion and first-generation college students. A cumulative disadvantage approach to the outcomes gap

STEM majors offer pathways to lucrative careers but are often inac-cessible to first-generation students. Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study, we conducted descriptive statistics, regression analyses, and group comparisons to examine differences between first-generation students and continuing-generation students across STEM degree, non-STEM degree, dropout, and no degree completion. Findings illuminate that generation status is related to STEM completion, but other factors are driving this association; for example, pre-college STEM factors have significant predictive power. Our implications suggest a need to further examine pre-college and transfer pathways to STEM and to explore the limitations of first-generation status as a categorization

The Professoriate and the Post-Truth Era: A Historiographic Analysis of Expert Judgment and the Destabilization of Objective Truth

This paper explores the role that distrust of expert judgment plays in conservative critiques of higher education. We propose that academics should abandon the insistence on truth as the standard for the evaluation of research quality. Doing so would separate conservative critiques of higher education from broader concerns over expert judgment via the substitution of judgement criteria more readily accessible to laypeople. Based on evidence about how expert judgment actually functions, we propose utility as a standard accessible to all. We show this by describing a historiographic model of expert judgment within the research university. We close with a call for scholars to acknowledge the conflation of facts and values in their work—that is, its post-truth nature

Normal Schools Revisited: A Theoretical Reinterpretation of the Historiography of Normal Schools

This article provides a theory-driven account of the emergence, development, and ultimate disappearance of the normal school as a unique institutional form within higher education. To that end, this article engages new institutionalism in order to construct a composite narrative from the historiography of teacher education which counters the cursory treatment of normal schools in popular and widely-used synthetic histories of higher education. This article also responds to the challenge of better integrating normal schools into the historiography of higher education and suggests future avenues for theory-driven history

A New Theory-to-Practice Model for Student Affairs: Integrating Scholarship, Context, and Reflection

In this article, we synthesize existing theory-to-practice approaches within the student affairs literature to arrive at a new model that incorporates formal and informal theory, institutional context, and reflective practice. The new model arrives at a balance between the rigor necessary for scholarly theory development and the adaptability needed to implement theories. Finally, the model elevates the importance of reflective practice among student affairs professionals as the means to evaluate both formal and informal theories

Engaging Disability: Trajectories of Involvement for College Students with Disabilities

This study draws on the narrative accounts of eight students with disabilities at a small liberal arts college in order to understand the connections between disability and student engagement. We found that disability plays a mediating role in the classroom; there are variations in access to institutional support; supportive peer networks are important’ and disability identity has a variable salience for these students. We also found that engagement for students with disabilities is multi-dimensional and multi-faceted. We include recommendations for supporting engagement for students with disabilities as well as suggestions for future research

Boys, Be Ambitious: William Smith Clark and the Westernisation of Japanese Agricultural Extension in the Meiji Era

This article examines the historiography related to the 1876 founding of Sapporo Agricultural College, the first institution of its kind in Japan. Focusing specifically on the involvement of William Smith Clark, who previously served as the president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, it argues that the nascent imperial ambitions harboured by both the United States and Japan are essential to a full understanding of Sapporo\u27s founding, curriculum and subsequent history. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources as well as theoretical perspectives on empire, this article depicts Sapporo as one small part of a larger campaign of westernisation