The Space Between: Negotiating Theory and Practice

Although there are a lot of books about teaching it is impossible to learn how to grapple the reigns of a classroom just from reading a book. This is because there are certain unpredictable elements to teaching or mentoring that are inherently bizarre or so mundane it is overlooked. For years I have heard from other instructors and the news media that the rate of education has declined in the United States. However, I had not noticed because I did not have to interact with students composition abilities and the students that I did work with at the high school level were advanced speech and debate students. Needless to say, I had a skewed sample of students.

However, I think that the skewed student sample is part of the chasm that exists between theory and practice. For example, this entire blog assignment asks each student to assess or relate course materials to their undergraduate experience, but people not taking this graduate level course would not be taking such a critical look at their undergraduate experience. I think I am comfortable saying that people do reflect on their experiences but not in the same way. I doubt that anyone is picking up Chickering's Vectors for light reading.

When I look back at my college experiences I have to recognize that I am a unique student because I am pursuing an even more advanced degree. I am not saying that graduate students are a different caliber of student, but I would say that students that decide to pursue a master's degree are atypical college students. I can easily reflect and say that when I started college I was not as individually motivated to excel. However, after I was academically dis-enrolled from Cal State Long Beach I gained a new perspective on life and college. For some reason, I was more invested in earning an education when I had to start paying for it. I became more invested in taking initiative and completing assignments for my own fulfillment and not merely for the graded aspect of a course. I became a more involved student not too invested in forensics but in many fields. I would say that I did end up adhering to most of the PTP steps outlined by Knefelkamp, even though I had not explicitly followed them to a T. It helped to demonstrate that difference.

In any academic field, I believe, it is important to know the base theories on which the field functions, but we must acknowledge that part of our role as educators and administrative professionals is to propel the research more in order to best address student's needs. This is why more schools are adopting online courses and make other significant changes because the skills and lessons that students are learning now are going to go to jobs that potentially do not even exist yet. The grounding of theory is the first step to be being able to meet and asses those students' needs and then in order to help our own as we continue to grow and learn through the education process.