For the Sake of Our Students &

Teaching: Walking the

Practice Walk with One Another

For the Sake of Our Students & Teaching: Walking the Practice

Walk with One Another

Julie Benesh, PhD

Agenda

Introduction

Practice/Habitus Theory

Reflections on Structure, Striving & Misrecognition

Covenants to Improve Habitus

Action Planning

What is practice?

Ingrained and reinforced ways of seeing, being, interacting and doing; learning or knowledge embedded in action (Raelin, 2007), similar to Bourdieu’s habitus

…a “human activity,” featuring “pursuit and institutional arrangement of internal and external goods under the governance of 'collectively established standards of excellence.’” (Symon & Cassell, 2012, p. 99.)

One of TCSPP’s Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs), “Professional Practice” which branches into specific Program Learning Outcomes

Prescribed liturgy, rituals or dogma associated with a given activity (“Doxa” in Bourdieu)

Deliberate, repeated behavior, doings, habits or rehearsal for better future performance (Ericcson, K.A. KrampeTesch-Römer, C., 1993)

“Practice” as (Overlapping) Categories

As Rehearsal/Preparation: To work up to an external standard

As Development: To work up to an internal standard,incrementally

As Ritual: To gain or expand access to a psychic space

As Habit/Routine: To ground actions in efficiency or effectiveness OR to self-soothe/comfort/focus

As production /performance process or external set of behaviors to deliver a particular creation

Something else?/Others?

Varieties of Habitus

Striving

Structural Sources of Differing Institutional Agendas Ground Versus Online

Clinical Versus Non-Clinical

Faculty Versus Staff

This Campus Versus That Campus

Administration Versus Faculty

Established programs Versus New Programs

Tradition Versus Change

Others??

Reflective Exercise I

Identify a partner to share with what you feel comfortable sharing, after reflecting on the following:

Consider your best work relationship across a significant professional difference. What supported it?

Striving Universities

“Striving” creates tension among faculty with disparate habitus as competing agendas and strategies play out and some embrace (strive along), others negotiate, and still others resist new norms (e.g., changes in mission, new programs, more emphasis on scholarship, etc.) especially when contradictory aims combine, like raising quality outcome standards and lower admissions requirements. (Gonzalez, 2014)

Have you ever heard…?

“THEY don't have the capacity to understand what we do.

“If THEY could do our jobs, they would have our jobs and if THEY wanted our role, they would have prepared for our role.”

“THEY don't get it.”

“THEY got theirs, now we gotta get ours.”

“We would never do some of the things THEY do--it is not our way.”

Have you ever heard…?

“We would never do some of the things THEY do--it is not our way.”

“THEY don't share our values, code of professional ethics, etc.”

“At some point THEY might develop/advance enough to see things our way.”

Reflective Exercise II

Identify a partner to share with what you feel comfortable sharing, after reflecting on the following:

Consider a time you felt uncomfortable around the expression of a difference. What contributed to it? How did it feel? What was the impact?

“Bullying:” Academic Style

Given norms of academic collegiality, aggression will be indirect, privileged members will engage in more direct aggressive behaviors toward less privileged and less direct toward more privileged.

Cost-cutting increases stress and stress results in passive-aggressive behavior.

(Keashly & Neuman, 2010)

Misrecognition: “It is what it is”

“Misrecognition” is the taking for granted of systematically reinforced practice accrued by habitus as disinterested, neutral and “just the way it is” instead of seeing it as the result of the exercise of power and agency (conscious or unconscious) on the part of its beneficiaries.

It is not entirely bad: without it less would get done—we would be in a constant dither of competition and non-alignment.

But it can be very bad.

Reflective Exercise III

Identify a partner to share with what you feel comfortable sharing, after reflecting on the following:

Consider a time you may have perpetrated misrecognition. What contributed to it? What was the impact?

Covenants

Covenants are solemn and binding agreements. They provide transparency and can help build community, alignment, inclusive practices and unity. Possible sources of covenants include:

TCSPP Mission & ILOs

Your Program’s PLOs

Symmetrical Leadership

Others?

Action Plan

As a result of this discussion I will…

ResourcesArgyris, C., Schön, D.A. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological review, 100(3), 363.

Gonzales, L. D. (2014). Framing Faculty Agency Inside Striving Universities: An Application of Bourdieu's Theory of Practice. Journal of Higher Education Vol. 85, #2.

Keashly, L. & Neuman, J.H. (2010). Faculty Experiences with Bullying in Higher Education. Administrative Theory and Praxis, Vol. 32, No.1, pp. 48-70.

Mullern, C.A., Bettez, S.C. & Wilson, C.M. (2011). Fostering Community Life and Human Civility in Academic Departments through Covenant Practice. Educational Studies: 47, pp. 280-305.

Raelin, J. A. (2007). Toward an Epistemology of Practice. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 6(4), 495-519.

Symon, G., & Cassell, C. (Eds.). (2012). Qualitative organizational research: core methods and current challenges. Sage.

Twale, D.J. & DeLuca, B.M. (2008). Faculty incivility: The rise of the academic bully culture and what to do about it. San Francisco: Wiley.