The Power of Story: Narrative Theory In Academic Advising

By Peter L. Hagen

Contributing Editor: Julie Givens Voller. The Power of Story: Narrative Theory in Academic Advising acknowledges the power of story in academic advising. The power of story is present in advising interactions, in the unfolding of students’ educational stories, in the ways advisors’ own stories guide them, and in the impact of narrative skills that advisors possess. Activities and suggested readings are provided to enhance advisors’ ability to understand the power of story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781939213334

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Copyright © 2018 by: NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising.

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Cite this book as:

APA Style: Hagen, P. L. (2018). The power of story: Narrative theory in academic advising (J. Givans Voller, Ed.). Manhattan, KS: NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising.

MLA Style: Hagen, Peter L. The Power of Story: Narrative Theory in Academic Advising. Edited by Julie Givans Voller. NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising, 2018.

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rev. date: 06/26/2018

FOREWORD

The Power of Story: Narrative Theory in Academic Advising is different than any other publication from NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. First, it is written by a single author. NACADA’s previous book-length works have all been edited works with multiple authors. Second, it focuses on a single area of theory, providing a deep examination of how narrative theory deepens our understanding of what academic advising is and how advisors shape students’ lives. Third, The Power of Story is unabashedly grounded in the humanities.

For decades, the scholarship of academic advising has aligned itself with social science perspectives and ways of knowing. In our efforts to be taken seriously by college administrators and by the majority of our faculty peers, academic advising strove toward the scientific ideal. Advisors who advocated a humanistic, constructivist view of knowledge creation suffered in silence. No more.

The Power of Story shifts the narrative (if you will) of academic advising scholarship. Its message is clear—while social science and positivist approaches can tell us much about academic advising, they cannot tell the whole story. A story I heard from Marsha Miller, NACADA Managing Editor, illustrates this point. In a conversation with a Gates Foundation associate (staff member) at the 2013 Gates Foundation Convening, the associate remarked that to improve completion rates, colleges needed to use better predictive analytics and data in order to connect students with academic advisors at just the right time. Then, once the student was in the advisor’s office—that is where the magic happens. The associate understood that meeting with an academic advisor helps students succeed, persist, and graduate, yet he was at a loss to describe what might be happening inside that office that was so special.

But advisors know. The magic is the creation of a life story. And The Power of Story gives all of us the language to find that magic and describe it to others. This book names the magic—magic we have had all along, but struggled to articulate.

Advisors from many places, from diverse institutions and backgrounds, helped bring this book to life; drafts move to chapters and chapters become a book in no small part due to insights provided by peers who volunteer to review drafts and revisions. Peter and I relied on their honest feedback every step of the way. We owe a debt of gratitude to the NACADA members listed below who provided comments and suggestions at various points throughout writing and production. Their efforts are greatly appreciated!

Reviewers

Jamie Bouldin, Stephen F. Austin State University

Pat Folsom, University of Iowa

Sarah Howard, The Ohio State University

Annie Kelly, Loyola University Chicago

Andrea Legato, Western University - Canada

Holly Martin, Notre Dame University

Alyssa Mittleider, Iowa State University

David Singleton, College of Southern Nevada

Damian Whitney, Webster University

Jeanette Wong, Azusa Pacific University

We also extend heartfelt thanks to copy editor Regan Baker and NACADA Graphic Designer, Jackson Andre. Regan’s attention to detail was crucial to the process, as was her willingness to work creatively across styles and formats. Jackson designed the covers and helped ensure that all graphics included in the book were both functional and pleasing to the eye. Thank you both for being such valuable members of our team.

Moreover, this team and this book would not exist without the vision and hard work of Marsha Miller, NACADA Managing Editor. Marsha helped set this project in motion back in 2013, as you will read in the preface, and she has guided its development from conception to final publication. From finding and communicating with reviewers, coordinating their feedback, and selecting and negotiating with the production house, as well as editing multiple drafts and production proofs, Marsha’s knowledge and skill, both as a writer and a leader, ensured the success of this project.

This is Marsha’s last book as Managing Editor for NACADA before she retires. And let me be clear: the fact that academic advising is now considered a profession, with a scholarly literature base of its own, is due in large part to Marsha Miller. She nurtured writers (and editors!). She planned large projects down to the smallest detail. And she is a scholar and author in her own right, with deep knowledge of advising as both a practice and a field of study. Marsha’s hard work and vision have laid a foundation of academic advising scholarship upon which any future successes will be built. Academic advisors and college students for generations to come will benefit from her legacy.

I am blessed to call Marsha both a colleague and a friend. I am grateful beyond words for all I have learned from her, and for the gift that she gave me when she offered me the opportunity to edit The Power of Story. Working with Marsha and Peter to bring this book to life has truly been a labor of love.

It has been my privilege to contribute to the birth of this book. I have known and respected Peter since early in my advising career, when I had the opportunity to work with him at what was then the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey (now Stockton University). All the things I love about him are in this book—his humor, his deep knowledge of literature and music, his passion for thinking deep thoughts, and his talent for pushing those around him to think more deeply and carefully as well.

I anticipate this book will push you to think more deeply; it does the same for me each time I read it. If your academic background is in the social sciences (as mine is), you may find parts of it challenging. The structure and style are likely different than those to which you have become accustomed. But this is how we learn. Discomfort and confusion are generally signs that you are on track to learning something new. I encourage you to persist. The rewards for both you and your students will be immense.

—Julie Givans Voller (Editor), December 11, 2017

PREFACE

What do imagination, interpretation, and narrative have to do with academic advising? This book is an attempt to examine that question. Along the way, we will draw upon theories and concepts that have their home in the humanities, such as hermeneutics (the art or science of interpretation) and narrative. Ideas like these have become more prominent in the field of advising in the past ten years, with an increasing number of articles in our journals and presentations at our conferences. It is high time to draw together some of these ideas and to reflect on the contributions that the humanities can make to academic advising.

We will look at the place narrative, hermeneutics, and even literary fiction hold in academic advising. This requires a new way of thinking about advising, one that acknowledges the power of story in our advising interactions, in the unfolding of the stories of our students’ lives, in the ways that our own stories guide us as we seek to guide students, and in the ways that advisors should be educated.

To see advising through the lens of narrative requires us to suspend, at least for a time, dearly held principles common to many of us having to do with how knowledge itself comes about. Advisors who understand and take to heart the power of story in advising can set aside the yearnings for prediction and control that the use of statistics seeks to bring about, because these advisors know that despite its unimpeachable importance to advising, statistics can only give us part of the story. These advisors know that interpreting students, like interpreting texts, is not the gradual discovery of pre-existing truths, but is rather the construction of knowledge and truth. And because these advisors view knowledge as constructed and not discovered, they resist subscribing to just one method of interpretation. They seek to become comfortable with ambiguity until a workable interpretation can be reached. They understand and take to heart the power of story in academic advising.

Perhaps you are already an advisor who understands and takes to heart the power of story in academic advising. If so, this book is for you. You will likely find a language to express what you have always known. But perhaps you are an advisor who remains skeptical about the value of the humanities to advising. If so, this book is especially for you. May your eyes be opened to seeing advising through another lens.

This book is intended to be of help to all advisors, not as a self-help or how-to manual, but as a fundamental and fundamentally new way to view advising. It is not put forward as a method, nor as the one and only one true way to view advising. It is intended to show the intrinsic and necessary relationship between advising and the humanities such that theories from the humanities can benefit us in advising without requiring us to cast aside theories from other fields of thought and inquiry. Last, it is intended to open up new possibilities in advising research and new languages for advising researchers.

But you will not find a method in these pages. I do not seek to advance a style or approach that we might call narrative advising, tempting though that might be. Narrative advising is not a new way of advising. Narrative is not new wine in old bottles; it is the bottles themselves. Narrative and narrative theory structure the way advising is done and the end toward which we practice it. Narrative theory informs academic advising; narrative advising is thus a tautology. You have been a narrative advisor for your whole career as an advisor. In these pages I argue that you practice academic advising that is informed by narrative theory, and you have always done so and will continue to do so for as long as you remain an advisor.

This book came about one day at the NACADA annual conference in Salt Lake City in 2013. I was standing in the lobby of the conference center, minding my own business, when up stepped Marsha Miller, the NACADA Managing Editor, who asked So, what’s your next writing project? Not wishing to seem empty-handed or -headed in front of this respected colleague and dear friend, I stammered out Well, I’m thinking of a book-length study on narrative and advising. I thought to myself that I would be off the hook, because no one in their right mind would want to publish such a study. But her response was immediately supportive and inspirational. She urged me to get a proposal to her as soon as possible. I handed a scrap of paper to her the next day with this book sketched out. I thank her for her willingness to go out on a limb and support this project. Her support has remained as a steadfast rock throughout this long process, and I thank her most humbly for that.

I thank her as well for conscripting Julie Givans Voller as editor for this project. Julie’s insights and visions have had a profoundly positive impact on this work. I treasure this working relationship as I have our friendship for the past 20 years. This whole idea began back in 2008 when Julie invited me to speak at Arizona State University. That presentation helped me to gather together my thoughts on advising and the humanities. It was published in the Fall 2008 issue of the NACADA Journal as Imagination and Interpretation: Academic Advising and the Humanities (Hagen, 2008).

Years ago, Eric White, my supervisor at the time, said to me earnestly one day, I want you to do what you can to raise the level of discourse about academic advising. I have never stopped trying to obey that injunction. But this book could not have come into being were it not for me having the privilege of also working in recent years with some of the best minds in advising theory: Sarah Champlin-Scharff, Janet Schulenberg, Hilleary Himes, and Marc Lowenstein. Marc especially played a key role in saving me from my own excesses in Chapter Four. I thank him for that and for our wonderful friendship and collaboration over the past two decades. Leigh Shaffer was very generous of his time and interest in the early stages of this project. I shall always treasure our discussions.

I wish to credit Professor Christine Gayda-Chelder, of Stockton University, for showing me the ropes in Theory of Mind and for helping me see the connection between this important concept from the field of cognitive neuroscience and academic advising.

I wish to extend my thanks to several friends and colleagues who have given generously of their time to read and critique earlier versions of chapters: Brittany Jenniss, Stockton University; Robert Gregg, Stockton University; Christy Carlson, Trent University; and Joyce Buck, Penn State University. And special thanks and love to my wife, Joyce Hagen, who has probably read and provided critique to more of my writing over the years than anyone should have to do.

Last, Richard Trama deserves my thanks for working with me on ways to present the ideas contained in this book to an audience. He understands and has taken to heart the power of story in academic advising. He, like the others mentioned above, has helped me see how the humanities and advising intersect. But neither he nor the others are responsible for any excesses that remain herein. Such claims that you may regard as excessive must remain my responsibility.

INTRODUCTION

Narrative … is a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change—a strategy that contrasts with, but is in no way inferior to, scientific modes of explanation that characterize phenomena as instances of general covering laws.

— Herman (2007), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, p. 3

This definition of narrative points to a schism within both the practice of and research within academic advising. It recapitulates a schism within society itself. It is a schism that we will examine in a variety of ways throughout this book. Put simply, we can view narrative as the construction of meaning, the cultivation of understanding. By contrast, more scientific approaches to the practice of and research in advising seek to discover pre-existing regularities that can be expressed, as Herman says above, as laws, which enhance prediction and control.

While we may yearn for the comfort of prediction and control, this book seeks to convey that such scientific approaches only give us part of the story. We need careful sifting of the data, yes, but we also need to look at how well stories are told.

Polkinghorne (1988) suggested a more radical focus on narrative when it comes to making knowledge claims in the human sciences:

The realm of meaning is best captured through the qualitative nuances of its expression in ordinary language. The disciplines of history and literary criticism have developed procedures and methods for studying the realm of meaning through its expressions in language. The human disciplines will need to look to those disciplines, rather than to the physical sciences, for a scientific model for inquiry of the region of consciousness. (p. 10)

I am not advocating that practitioners and researchers in advising dispense with scientific modalities, but only that we also hear from the humanities, that has so much as-yet-untapped power to offer academic advising.

I do, however, advocate that narrative is central to the practice of academic advising. Advisors listen with rapt attention as their students’ stories unfold and in return tell stories of their own. This story telling is no idle chatter to pass the time pleasantly. Engaging in narratives may well be the most thorough and most efficient way that advisors have to come to understand the student before them and to be understood by that student.

Moreover, students’ lives and educations can fruitfully be thought of as narratives as well. Such narratives might not ever be up for the National Book Award or the Man Booker Prize, but they are no less important to the protagonists living them out. In a certain sense, we could say that advisors help students craft one of the more important chapters in the ongoing narrative of the rest of their lives: The Story of My College Education. Advisors, skilled but often unacknowledged or unwitting narratologists, do what they can to lead, guide, and attract students to build an education that meshes well with that ongoing narrative of their lives. The college education chapter, done well, is a bildungsroman, a story of acculturation that coheres and makes sense in terms of the larger work within which it is found.

Every story requires an author and a reader. Often the student serves both roles in this tale of acculturation. They write the story for themselves. But often there is a wider audience with differing expectations—parents, siblings,