~ Denise Strickland, Research Associate in the Department of Educational Studies
One of the fundamental goals of higher education is the transformation of students into scholars. Many metaphors are used to describe this transformation – caterpillars morphing into butterflies, empty vessels filling with the wisdom of the ages. The list goes on, but to what are these metaphors alluding? As members of the university community, how do we define this common goal? As someone who has, at one time or another, filled the roles of student, instructor, and researcher here at USC, I have had the opportunity to approach this question from many angles, and I have come to believe that much of this scholarly transformation is dependent upon a student’s enculturation into their chosen discipline.
This enculturation process has been studied extensively at the graduate student level[1][2][3], but critical thinking about this process in undergraduate education often revolves around the value of general vs. specialized education[4]. This is partly due to the fact that learning processes and goals of undergraduate and graduate students are often viewed as disjunct entities. However, students in today’s universities regularly engage in research projects and other exploratory activities (such as the USC Honors College senior thesis) that promote and enhance a deeper, more operational use of knowledge. It is therefore important that we consider this transformation from student to scholar at both levels of university education as integral to the university’s mission[5].
In order to examine this transformation, we must first clarify our terms. What do we mean by student and how is that different from a scholar? The modern definitions [6] are quite similar. A student is “one who attends a school,” and a scholar is “a person who attends a school or studies under a teacher.” A scholar does have the advantage of being someone who has “done advanced study in a special field.” However, these definitions do not help us clarify why there is a distinction between the two or why such a distinction is so important. For that we must turn to their etymologies. Student has the same Latin root as the verb to study, and along with it come the connotations of diligence and eagerness[7], of the “application of the mental faculties to the acquisition of knowledge.” Alternatively, scholar has the same root as school, one of whose definitions is “a group of persons who hold a common doctrine or follow the same teacher,” hence the term school of thought[8]. When compared in this way, we can see that although we define these words similarly, the features of the two concepts are vastly different. A student is someone who is acquiring knowledge, while a scholar is someone who belongs to the group of like-minded individuals engaged in the process of creating knowledge in his/her academic discipline. But how does a student become a scholar? How does one become a member of an academic discipline? The theoretical response is enculturation, but what does that entail?
First, it requires that students begin to view academic disciplines not just as bodies of knowledge garnered from the past, but as active fields of study. In an ongoing Honors College Biology class taught by myself and Briana Timmerman, we introduced our students (all non-biology majors) to the concept of biology as a discipline, as a culture of individuals, as a school of thought. We then asked that each student investigate scholarship in their own chosen field by interviewing professors or other professionals. They were asked to investigate concepts central to scientific thought, such as What constitutes evidence? and How do you determine when scholarship is credible?. Students were often surprised to even discover that scholarly research took place in their field. After their investigations, students shared their findings, allowing the class to discover that while the disciplines shared certain concepts, how they used and interpreted those concepts varied widely.
Second, students engage in the process of cultural transmission[9]. Our assignment required that cultural knowledge be directly transmitted via interviews, but often this process is much more subtle. As students read books in their field, receive lectures, and write papers for classes within their major, they begin to see how content and worldview build upon and shape each other. In science, progress is explained as a series of clever experiments, revealing the values of careful design, logical reasoning, and a reliance on evidence. A few lucky students also hear about failed experiments and wrong turns, revealing the playful, creative side of science. Literature students learn to rely on the text, to see the author as a whole person, to search for the back story and the deeper meaning. Gradually, students build a repertoire of beliefs, heuristics, and tools for navigating their academic world. For students engaged in individual research efforts, this cultural transmission may be more structured, and is certainly more rapid, as contact with a mentor (be they faculty or graduate students[10]) helps students gain more tacit knowledge about their field[11].
Third, the transformational scholar does not merely acquire culture as they once acquired knowledge, but engages in a “reflective, conscious, and active” process referred to as cultural transmutation[12]. Cultural transmutation describes the formation of a personal subculture, as the individual and the existing culture interact[13]. It is the process by which one actively becomes a member and creator of a culture. Once a person is fully participating in a culture, they see the world through the lens of that culture. They use the conventions of thought within that field to evaluate existing knowledge and construct new knowledge. This is the hope that every professor has for their students.
This then, is the transformation of student to scholar delineated here for your consideration. These ideas are not new, but they are worth highlighting and revisiting. I find that as I have moved from student to teacher to researcher, my perspective has changed. I look upon my own transformation (still under way), and I seek out experiences that help me participate more fully in the culture of my field. As an instructor and occasional mentor, I try to create opportunities for my students to examine their own scholarly transformation, and when I return to graduate school in the near future, I hope to find professors there that will do the same.
It can be easy, caught up in the day to day rush of university life, to forget what pushes us forward, for what we are striving. My personal goal in writing this has been to prompt a reconsideration of our purpose here at the university. Whether you agree with my basic premises or not, if you have taken the time to read to the end of this article, then I will have succeeded. I would be even more delighted if, while considering our broader purpose, we each paused to examine our own transformations and the roles we have to play in the transformations of others. As faculty and staff, are we encouraging and mentoring our students to really see our disciplines? As students, are you seeking opportunities to engage and truly become scholars? If the answers to these questions are no, then we have a lot more than thinking to do.
[1] Boyle, P., Boice, B. “Best Practices for Enculturation: Collegiality, Mentoring, and Structure.”
The Experience of Being in Graduate School: An Exploration: New Directions for Higher
Education, June 1998, 87-94.
[2] Turner, J. L., Miller, M., & Mitchell-Kernan, C. (2002). Disciplinary cultures and graduate education. Emergences, 12(1), 47-70.
[3] Golde, C. M., & Walker, G. E. (Eds.). (2006). Envisioning the future of doctoral education: Preparing stewards of the discipline. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
[4] Boyer, E. L., & Levine, A. (1981). A quest for common learning. In D. DeZure (Ed.), Learning from “Change.” Landmarks in teaching and learning in higher education from “Change” magazine, 1969-1999 (pp. 93-94). Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing.
[5] González, C. (2001). Undergraduate research, graduate mentoring, and the university’s mission. Science, 293, 1624-1626.
[6] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. (2009). Retrieved April 4, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/.
[7] Harper, D. (2001). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved April 5, 2009, from http://www.etymonline.com/.
[8] Ibid 6
[9]Shimahara, N. (1970). Enculturation – A Reconsideration. Current Anthropology, 11(2), 143-149.
[10] Robinson, S., & Golde, C. M. (1999, November). Waffling and flailing: Undergraduates in pursuit of the Ph.D. Paper presented at the conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Miami, FL.
[11] Gerholm, T. (1990). On tacit knowledge in Academia. European Journal of Education, 25(3), 263-271.
[12] Ibid 9
[13] Mendoza, R. (1989). An empirical scale to measure type and degree of acculturation in Mexican-American adolescents and adults. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 20(4), 372-385.
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