Chickering & Reisser, Ch. 1 --- Why?

So, Stan and I got to chatting about our reading and we were thinking about exactly why DrM wanted us to focus on Ch. 1 so much. It was a very dense read with so much going on – a ton of history, different theories and theorists – it was difficult to digest. Many of the theories are so similar and since they often build upon one another, they kind of blend together. I think there’s even a blend of cognitive and psychosocial definitions as well (i.e. cognitive isn’t ONLY cognitive and psychosocial can be inclusive of cognition). I think really, the importance of Ch. 1 is that it provides the foundation, the framework, and the context upon which they build their vectors.

I thought the preface of the book was excellent. They told you exactly where they were coming from, what they believed, and what the goal of their theory was and wasn’t. I’m glad they stressed that there is no right model for every student – that you cannot apply every aspect of every theory to every student. On a larger level, they also said “the strength of higher education lies in its wide-ranging institutional diversity” (p. xvi-xxvii) that there is not a goal to prescribe one model for all institutions as the be-all, end-all, and cure-all.

I spent way too much time reading Ch. 1 because my brain has a tendency to wander through thoughts and I couldn’t help thinking of my undergraduate college experience at Mount Holyoke College and think about the ways MHC did and didn’t foster different types of development – the ways I found it superior, and the areas that could have been improved. After reading Ch. 1, I made a list of what I felt were my greatest developmental challenges, gains and experiences in each year of college. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand on this in the context of different theories as I go through this semester.