One of the major areas of student support in Strategies for Academic Success (GE 101) course at JCTC extending orientation and advising. Jefferson Community and Technical College recognizes that faculty advisors do not have the time to meet all the learner needs for life/career/educational planning. Under Jefferson’s NEXUS Career and Educational Planning pathways, referral to life/career/educational providers and services by faculty, staff, and advisors becomes as important as the advising knowledge and skills they possess. Jefferson believes that any academic advising plan is inadequate if career and educational exploration and planning is not built into the plan.

Taking the lead from a review of the literature on the value of academic and social integration Jefferson believes that learning and constructing meaning are social

Prescriptive and developmental advising are the two most frequently used approaches to academic advising. Each has their place; however, in order to bring off an advising plan that incorporates developmental advising advisor training and advising time must become extended. What the Jefferson NEXUS and SUCCESS NOW plans are working toward is the inclusion of social constructivist advising along with prescriptive and developmental advising.

Using Michael Kirk-Kuwaye and Niki Libarios’ definitions, “From a theoretical standpoint, adding social constructivism to the prescriptive-developmental continuum adds an important third dimension to advising theory.”

· Prescriptive advising: The adviser (A) is an authority figure who has a one-way, top-down relationship to the student (S), setting a clear course and providing information that the adviser thinks the student needs.

· Developmental advising: The adviser works interactively to empower the student to reflect on and take ownership of educational planning and action.

· Social constructivist advising: Educational planning and institutional services are created by collaborative social interaction and knowledge creation among adviser, student, and important others (O).

“Though most advisers do intuitively adjust their advising approaches based on advisee responses, we propose that advisers broaden their approaches beyond the prescriptive-developmental continuum and include a more social constructivist approach.

In this expanded advising paradigm, advisers may make the initial approach by scanning through the three vectors: Do I need to tell/does the student need to know this now (prescriptive)? Does the student need to have this experience to move to the next level (developmental)? Who else should be brought in to the adviser-advisee dyad to advance advising goals (social constructivist)?”

http://www.psu.edu/dus/mentor/031205mk.htm

Expanding the Prescriptive-Developmental Advising Continuum: Using Social Constructivism as an Advising Approach for Students from High Relational Groups by Michael Kirk-Kuwaye and Niki Libarios, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Social Constructivism in an Advising Context
Social constructivist theory is based on the premise of learning through interactive dialogue and social dynamics and is defined as learning within a social context (Stage, Muller, Kinzie, & Simmons, 1998). It is grounded in the belief that knowledge is a product of meaningful social interactions. Furthermore, social constructivism acknowledges the role of culture in the construction of knowledge (Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994).