Chayla Haynes: There are many iterations. So what you’re looking at is the final version, but we wrestled with what it is we feel, we knew we critiqued each other. Um, we asked the literature what is, what relevant literature says about how, what is the, uh, theory to practice connection and how is that established? Um, so what you’re looking at as the final version. So this started with first problem posing among ourselves, thinking about how has all our years of experience teaching student development, working with students, um, our own research, how is it informing what it is we know about student development and how to translate, um, student development theory and practice? And so. I want to, I think it’s important to talk about the evolution, right? How, what, what was our process?

Heather Shea: All right. I think we are all set to go. Okay. Welcome to Student Affairs Now, the Online Learning Community for Student Affairs Educators. I am your host, Heather Shea. Student development theory helps us understand how students learn and grow, but translating theory into practice can still feel challenging.

In the new book called Student Development Theory in Action, the authors introduce a new framework designed to help educators connect theory, context, and practice. This episode is part two of our series with the authors, and if you haven’t yet listened to episode one, I encourage you to go back and start there.

In today’s conversations, we’re gonna focus on the student development theory in action model, the framework that serves as the backbone of the book, and explore how it guides research, teaching, and everyday student affairs practice. Student Affairs now is a premier podcast and online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs.

We released new episodes every week on Wednesdays, and you can find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Before we dive into the conversation, I wanna mention that if you would like to engage more deeply with the Student Affairs Now Learning Community and continue the conversation beyond the podcast, you can join us now on Patreon at patreon.com/student Affairs.

Now, as I mentioned, I’m your host for today’s episode, Heather Shea. My pronouns are she, her and hers, and I am broadcasting from the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabe Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe Ottawa, peoples otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home to Michigan State University, where I work.

Today we are joined a, again by the five co-authors of Student Development Theory in action. They are here to share about their work and insights from the book and the impact on the field. So let me begin by introducing them. Kristen Ren, who goes by Kris is a university distinguished professor at Michigan State University, whose scholarship focuses on student identity, lgbtq plus issues and equity in higher education.

Chayla Haynes Davison is a higher education scholar and student affairs leader with over 15 years of experience, and is the 2026 recipient of the A CPA Senior Scholar Award. Alex C. Lang is an assistant professor, associate director and program coordinator whose work focuses on how colleges and universities affect student development during and after college.

Cristobal Salinas goes by. Cris is a professor and associate dean of the graduate college at Florida Atlantic University. His research promotes access to higher education and explores the social and political context of educational opportunities. And finally, Rosemary Perez, who goes by Rosie, is an associate professor at the University of Michigan whose research examines equity, power and organizational change in higher education.

I am so glad you all are here. So let’s jump in. I’d love to hear a little bit more beyond the bio of what I just read, that you would like listeners to know about your work. And then to get us started, let’s start with the broad question. When you think about the role that models play in helping us make sense of student development, what do you think a good model should help us either see or understand?

And Kristen Ren, I’m gonna start off with you.

Kristen A. Renn: Thanks so much Heather, and thanks for having us here to talk about this exciting new model. Kris Ren, my pronouns are she and her. I have been at this work in student affairs for, as they say, since the last century and been teaching student development theory for about 25 years as well as doing research.

As we get started, I just wanna share with everyone that the ideas and opinions we express today come from our academic and scholarly expertise and are not necessarily representative of our institutional affiliations. So when I think about what models do for us, to me, they help consolidate into sometimes visual but not always visual ways of understanding really complex ideas and boiling them down to become comprehensible.

I’m gonna stop there because I know my colleagues have better and smarter things to say about what models. Let us see and understand.

Heather Shea: Awesome, Taylor. Welcome.

Chayla Haynes: Hi, how are you? Hi everybody. My name is Jayla and my pronouns are she and her. And, I have lots of experience in contemporary theorizing and thinking about how models, theories, and frameworks work in my teaching and in my research.

What I’d like to say about that is a mentor once told me when reviewing my work, particularly let’s say around my dissertation, because I did a grounded theory study as I started working on the analysis for my dissertation. A framework or theory emerged obviously from grounded theory.

And my mentor and advisor told me, your design of this framework is basic. It doesn’t quite capture the dynamic movement and relationship between ideas. And so please recognize your limitations. So I would say, we as academics recognize our limitations and actually. Designing, creating a image or a diagram that really conveyed or illustrated what we were articulating as theory.

And so I learned then in my dissertation work that I had to really collaborate with people in graphic design or people who had artistry backgrounds to ha help me think about how these illustrations work. And I’m certain I’m not the only person who’s done that. In fact a lot of the theories that, and models that we share and as part of this book include diagrams, and illustrations. And I would bargain that most of those scholars or researchers, tag team with someone who had a background in creating illustrations. And so we did too. For our model, we took some work and we’ll talk about that. It took some time to come up with what the visual, the what the visual of our theory would look like and what type of support we needed to actually bring that design to life in a way that clearly articulated the theory at hand.

Heather Shea: Shout out to the graphic designers on the Unsung Heroes of Student Development Theory Model Building. Alex, welcome back.

Alex C. Lange: Happy to be back. It’s been so long. Delighted to be here. When I think about what a good model should help us understand I think Kris Ren started hitting on this, but the idea of putting concepts together, right?

That models give us ways to make assumptions, predict, organize, and even determine action. And I get much of that from an article that Adriana KR wrote for the Higher Education Handbook in 2006 for Lincoln in the show notes. But I also think of, speaking of visuals I would also shout out Beyonce.

In some ways we’re still waiting for some visuals, but if you went to act one, you got some great visuals at the concert. I know I did. But that in many ways we should be able to see these concepts together. And that really good theory I think of Linda Tui Smith’s work in particular around this, in her book Decolonizing Methodologies.

She has a quote in there that I wanna read, that if it’s, if it is a good theory, it also allows for new ideas and ways of looking at things to be incorporated constantly without the need to search constantly for new theories.

I think this is why theories like self authorship, the model of multiple dimensions of identity Bron and Brunners model, ecological model, have really endured over time because they’ve been able to incorporate new ideas while keeping some of their core principles in pa in place.

And so for me, good theory building is iterative. It is, yes. And and it keeps core ideas in place while we consider the new context that we have to inhabit with those theories.

Heather Shea: Thanks Alex. Rosie, how about you?

Rosemary J. Perez: Hi everybody. Rosie Perez, she, her, I have been at this work least teaching it for over 10 years and working with it much longer.

So when I think about good models, I think there’s a few things. So one being to Chayla’s point models show that development is dynamic. It’s, and it’s dynamic with purpose because arrow, just because there are arrows doesn’t mean everything moves in one direction or that everyone moves at the same pace.

And I can’t remember who wrote this article, I’m a bad org student, but, there was this article many years ago that basically said pictures not a theory. So can you actually explain the relationships between concepts? So the, A model might help us e explain a complex idea, but the picture alone doesn’t necessarily tell us very much unless we can explicate the ideas.

So I often think about how do I. Explain these ideas and relationship of process in a way that can be represented both kinda in rin text, but also visually when appropriate. And knowing that either is insufficient, but when they come together, that’s when models can be really powerful. Like a visual and some textual or, maybe oral auditory for folks who learn in different ways that it helps us paint a more robust picture than anyone.

Way alone.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Kris Salinas, welcome.

Cristóbal Salinas Jr.: Yeah, thank you. It’s good to be back. And hello again. Kris Salinas. My pronouns are him. He, him his. So what makes a good theory? I think I remember early on in my career, someone told me good theory can be applied to everything. And while, yes, I agree with it, but also they’re like, eh, not always right, because time and location matters, or time and location matters. Context matters politically geography culturally identity. So there’s so much more to it. But I really like what also Alex mentioned as well, that, and, or right, or or the you can always add more to it, but when I think about a good theory, it’s or a theory help us, it provide, it’s a guide.

A guide for us to understand a phenomenon or a topic. And that really help us approach it to make decisions better.

Heather Shea: Great. I think just as all kind of models theories go through various iterations, I’d love to hear a little bit about how this model came about, how did it evolve over time? And I think Chayla, I think maybe one place to start is to just talk a bit about the current models.

So if you, and we do have a visual for today. For folks who are listening to today’s podcast and not watching, we will link a PDF of this model in our show notes so that you can take a look. But Chayla, tell us a little bit about both how the model evolved and then can you walk us through the main elements?

Chayla Haynes: Yeah. So I wanna invite my colleague, Alex, into this conversations because together we conceptualize and mapped out what the beginnings of this would look like. Alex, won’t you start. How do we come together to start thinking about this idea, what this model look like?

Alex C. Lange: Yeah. I think we had some good conversation about one, we are not the first folks to think about a theory and practice model related to student development theory.

I think we can think of reasoning Kimball’s work. My work with my colleague Jody Linley and Stephanie Pelle and others who have really thought about what is the role of. Theory in our practice as student affairs educators, as folks who work in higher education. And we also thought about the work of both contemporary theorists and also sort of foundational theories and thinking about the role of both formal and informal theory, that formal theories often.

Those theories that have been systematically studied or empirically studied to some degree, whereas informal theories are often developed more locally on campus. When I was walking on campus this morning for the recording of this episode I was thinking about the ways that I know how students, I have this nice view of my window here of a campus intersection and I know exactly where students stop and talking to each other and where students will just keep on moving.

’cause we have both bike lanes and walking lanes on campus. And so in many ways I have. Informal theories about how interaction occurs on this campus, but I have formal theories of how interaction occurs generally in the college environment, right? So those are one way to think about those two differences.

We then thought about the context that students and practitioners occupy, which is often on college campuses, the classroom, right? In many ways, the classroom is the only place on campus that students are required to go to theoretically. And that. In many places, we know from the work of many scholars that the co-curricular context or what we’re calling the practice learning environment really also has an effect too.

And so we were thinking about how to bring all of these components together and how they all connected to and spoke to one another. And then we couldn’t ignore the sociopolitical context. I think in many ways we are in a moment where we’re all, many of us are thinking about that more than we did prior to this, but it’s not to say that we didn’t think about that before this model either, right?

So I think in our early conversations we were curious about how to bring all of these components together into sort of a cohesive, coherent whole,

Chayla Haynes: and. There are many iterations. So what you’re looking at is the final version, but we wrestled with what it is we feel, we knew we critiqued each other.

We asked the literature what is, what relevant literature says about how, what is the theory to practice connection and how is that established? So what you’re looking at as the final version. So this started with first problem posing among ourselves, thinking about how has all our years of experience teaching student development, working with students our own research, how is it informing what it is we know about student development and how to translate student development theory and practice?

And I want to, I think it’s important to talk about the evolution, right? How what was our process? And in episode one Kris talks about that, the the book took some time because we really wanted to be intentional and gr ground what we believe is a framing of how we think about theory and the translation process.

So we wanted to ground what it was we were writing about in this theory. And or in this framework. And we believe the framework serves educators well and thinking about how to serve students regardless of where you sit in the post-secondary context or in a higher ed context. So let’s talk about Alex did a great job talking about what the core components were, but I wanted to be sure I mentioned that there were several iterations of this where we wanted to be sure what.

We articulate as theory is being represented here in this illustration. So from a big idea context, student development in action as a framework is designed to help educators understand that theory is not something that needs to be memorized right, though. If we can use it in thinking about how we translate, apply, and reflect on our practice and our everyday work with students.

So therefore intercon interconnected components. On a broad level, the mar model highlights the social political context, the translation of formal theory, informal theory into action, the classroom and practice learning environments and theory building and assessing practice. Those are the four larger con.

The concepts. And so the four larger concepts, we spent time as an author team thinking about what do we mean by each of these? How are they defined? So in chapter one of our book, I believe it’s in chapter one Kris? Yes. In chapter one of our book, we articulate and define what do we mean by social political context, assessing practice, building theory, what is action translation and all those things.

But I’ll offer you a brief iteration here. What we mean by social political context, it, we it’s all consuming, it’s all encompassing, which is why in the illustration we have this blue circle and the arrows within the blue circle to, to convey that the social political context is constantly evolving and shifting depending on where you are.

That time is not constant. It is constantly moving. And so depending on where you are. The sociopolitical context will continue to shift, which is why we have the arrows to simulate motion and movement and shifting context. The context includes thinking about the historical context and the geographic location.

The contextual factors shape the systems and environments that students live, learn, and work. And we also can think of the social political context influencing why two students at the very same institution are having highly divergent developmental experiences. They’re not the same person. The system and the social political context, any environment shapes their learning in different ways.

So when we want you to read our model from left to so starting with the head and as Kris helped us or remind us that. Our model is one of the first to, in, to think about the theory to practice connection, inserting the educator within the model. So what role does the educator play? And, our informal theories influence how we size a situation up.

What is it that we think we’re seeing? What is it that we believe is important for a student’s development? And formal theories, as Alex already conveyed, are usually those theories that are directly derived from empirical research over time. Both matter, both are important. That’s why we wanted to centralize it here.

So if you read our model for left or right the multicolor head is meant to represent that, hey, all of us are different. We all have our own individualized, informal theories lived experiences, presuppositions identities that shape what it is we think we know and what it is we think we see and how we’re interpreting and making sense of formal theory.

So with this illustration, we’re hoping that the color variation re reflects a sense making process that this is individual as much as it is connected to a larger profession or a group of people, maybe your colleagues in the office that you work in, or for us nationally who study identity work and thinking about student lived experiences.

So we are personal beings, but we’re also connected to a larger humanity when thinking about the work of student development. And it’s important that within this head we understand what our positionality is, how our own experiences and identities or experience with privilege, power, and oppression are shaping what it is we see, what we believe to be important.

In the text I use as an example, a, a student affairs educator may believe that it’s important for students to live on campus, that the. On campus learning experience contributes largely to what it we want undergraduate students to learn. That might be an informal theory informed by their own lived experience living on campus.

And that might not be one that everyone shares. So those informal theories shape what it is. We think we know how we interpret students’ potential and what developmental outcomes we pursue. So this, if you’re reading from left to right, which is what we hope you do. So you go from this head and you see this dual direction arrow in the center.

And so the dual direction arrow is one of the most important visual elements within our framework. And it re, it represents the translation process between theory and action. Translation is not a linear step. So we use gradient color. To simulate flow that there is movement back and forth between how someone learns theory and thinks about applying it.

It, we need to be in constant reflection from the head, right? Moving left to right in translation on our positionality and the context. Thinking about the reflective process. So we in included not just a dual direction arrow, but also the gradient color to, in, to suggest that the translation process is reflective and it moves back and forth between theory, interpretation, action and reflection.

And w this model posits. As educators think more critically and develop a a reflective lens, they’re better to equipped to establish the theory to practice connection, ensuring that their developmental interventions, which are those actions at the end point, are not only evidence-based, but also equity-minded and culturally responsible to the benefit of all students.

The circle that you see there in the middle of translation, we thought it important to overlay the translation process over the context by which we apply theory in the classroom learning environment and the practice learning environment. There’s no hierarchy between the two.

Our epistemological point of view is.

We’re in large part student affairs, higher ed scholars. And so we see the benefit that students live, learn, and work across the classroom learning environment and the things that might not be considered the classroom learning environment. So that might be the residence hall that might be their leadership in the student organization.

That might be their externship, that might be a study abroad experience. The practice environment and the classroom learning environment both matter within this model. And translation happens seamlessly, which is why we overlay the translation arrow across the classroom and practice learning environment.

We want to also establish that we believe the practice learning environment, the classroom learning environment mutually shape one another. So there’s no hierarchy between the two. Both matter in this context and the translation process happens across. So those actions are the result of interventions that support theory, building and assessment.

So once we develop an intervention that is theoretically grounded and culturally responsive, that we’ve had time to apply over the classroom learning and practice learning environment, there’s some sort of intervention that, or action or decision step that we make. But we believe that those actions can help us assess practice.

And as Alex stated at the front end when we were talking about what is theory, that it creates new opportunities without having to create new theory. So that action contributes to our assessment of practice and theory building is a constant process that informs each other. So when educators.

And we, like I said in episode one, educator is a broad term that we use that describes folks who work directly and indirectly with students. That could be mentors, supervisors, instructors, student affairs, folks like us, and institutional leaders, all of us who are working with students. As we think more critically and reflect on our work, we naturally begin to critique theory, adapt it, refine it, or expand it.

So that is the theory building and assessment process in a nutshell, this theory in our framework, the S-D-T-I-A framework pos that theory building is an inevitable outcome of reflective practice. And that it provides a pathway to assessing our practice at a large scale through institutional program evaluation and even in smaller ways through mentoring and personal assessment of the work we do.

So we can create those. Formative learning moments for students, but also to evaluate our own practice at a professional level. What is the impact of our work in the day to day? So what I’d like to say, and before I open it up to our colleagues, what’s so cool about this book and this framework is that we ground the framework across each chapter as a reader reads about a set of theories or theory.

We use the framework to pose developmental questions to a reader at the end. How might they move through pieces of this framework to address the developmental issues at the core or at the center of this particular theory? What’s also cool is in our companion website, we offer pedagogical resources and.

There’s several. What I’m learning are like tabs within a website. I’m not a website builder, although I created the content and we were as a team, work together to improve that content to make it user friendly. So what users will find educators and students is that in the teaching methods and teaching activities we provide, we articulate how this particular assignment or activity or approach to teaching student development theory is emphasizing or prioritizing the formal and informal theory portion or prioritizing how to understand in the the social political context or this particular assignment is really getting at translation in these ways.

So we connect. Each assignment to how, which component of the SDTI framework. This is really helping a student or a faculty member, instructor or mentor really emphasize in their development with students. So I think we’ve done our best to try to create a seamless thread between the book and the pedagogical or the online resources that anyone can use as they think about using our book and using this framework in their day-to-day practice.

Colleagues, do you have anything to add?

Kristen A. Renn: I say something that I forgot to mention in part one that one of the originations of the framework for the book. Was we had two, they were then doc students, they’re now full on graduated PhDs. Dr. Michelle Lao of Ohio State University and Dr. Brandon Smith, who graduated from Michigan State University.

They did focus groups with current graduate students, learning student theory, instructors of college student development theory, and practitioners about how do people learn theory best, how do they apply it? And that was part of this kind of, the idea for putting the person actually in this model kind of came from that.

And the this process of translating Arrow came out of that conversations. So people teaching, learning and using student film theory, so I think that’s part of what as Chala talks about, like formal informal theories and how people actually go through that reflection process in these larger sociopolitical context to result with action.

That’s part of where this kinda came from. And it shows in how we develop the framework, but also the book and the companion website.

Chayla Haynes: And I also, I wanna mention, I think you need to visit the website because this is where you’re gonna find the color version of our model in the book. It in the paperback book, correct me if I’m wrong, Kris Wr, it’s in a black and white version, so you can see some of this movement, but in the online version, you’ll really get to see, for example, we intentionally use the same color scheme from the person to the translation, to the word action to show that those three components are anchored.

They work in relationship to each other, and there’s a constant movement between what we understand is informal theory and formal theory, how we translate it into action. That process is, has a flow or it is. It’s cohesive and they’re in relationship with each other. So that’s a little bit difficult to see in the gray scale.

So that’s the challenge sometimes that for those of us who create models and frameworks, we would love to be able to show and have the opportunity like student affairs now. And Heather has provided us to actually explain it to show the relationships. ’cause a lot of times when we’re introduced to this work or a model or framework, it’s just the black and white version and you don’t have an opportunity to interact with the scholar or the researcher or the creator of that model.

And so we also have to say this model had several IT iterations and our first one was very basic. We definitely tapped into a graphic designer to help us build this framework into kinda bring to life what it was we were attempting to showcase about something that could easily be taken for granted or is difficult to pinpoint.

And. Our day-to-day work where, what’s happening, when, what happens first. And so we did our best to try to unpack it, unearth it, and then connect it to how you might engage in mentoring and teaching of student development theory, training folks to use it. Folks who will be institutional leaders, folks who already are, folks who are engaged in mentoring and supervision.

So we hope it offers people some great utility.

Heather Shea: Fantastic. I have a, I have one other question because I think this is a relevant piece of the application, and that has to do with if part of the context around the action involves assessing practice. Does the bottom arrow also imply that practitioners have a role in theory building?

Chayla Haynes: Absolutely.

Alex C. Lange: Yeah.

Chayla Haynes: Absolutely. As I said the model posits that theory building is inevitable. So the more you engage in it, the more you reflect on positionality and context and a and the resulting action or intervention and try to apply that intervention, then you ultimately are assessing how effective was this?

Did it meet the needs of students in the same way, in the ways that we had hoped? Did it achieve the developmental outcomes? And so you might determine at the end, those practitioners might determine, this theory even, or combinations of theories are inadequate in some way. Why, what how might I expand, adapt?

So that’s the bottom arrow that then feeds into the informal theory you’re thinking about.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Chayla Haynes: Then you. Can engage in some applied research in your work where you assess students’ attitudes, perceptions where you start thinking about what your teaching evaluations, even 360 evaluations and supervision, and how might you create new formal theory in practice that works well with some of the theories we introduced in this book, and then maybe even write about those.

And so one thing one thing I like to think is that one big idea, and I know that matters a lot to Heather, she, us at the end, so I’m offer mine at the front end, is that, that it’s an invitation. It is an invitation to those to help us engage in this work that we all offer. Some indigenous, not as knowledge.

We all offer expertise that matter. And write those down, write those ideas down, and engage in this work with us. That is how theory evolves and stays relevant. For today and tomorrow.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Chayla Haynes: So yeah, PR practitioners are deeply involved in this work. Educators at every level.

Heather Shea: Fantastic. I have a couple of other questions in Kris. Sure. I think if maybe I could ask you about, one of the things that stands out is the way, it’s not just about listing theories, and this probably gets a little bit to what Alex was saying towards the beginning, that a good model allows for entry, PA points and a conversation to happen around existing theories, the introduction of new perspectives.

So why, can you talk a little bit about why that was important and how does this approach help connect theories that either currently exist or might exist in the future? Together.

Kristen A. Renn: Thank you so much, Heather. That’s like we. Wanted to build a framework that could endure for some time. I don’t wanna put a number of years, but maybe an intellectual generation.

I’m not sure about that or even what that looks like. But the idea was to create a framework that had this kind of movement in it, that theory building in it that does do what as Alex had quoted Linda Tui Smith saying a good model has space for more. But, it does what it needs to do.

That was a terrible paraphrase, I apologize. But thinking about, this model itself doesn’t focus on exactly what stages or phases or positions or outcomes a student development. We’re looking for student development. It’s a process model about how to apply theory and practice, and then how to work that translation point.

I do in some ways think about it a tiny bit, and sorry, colleagues, I haven’t said this out loud to you before. Surprise. I think about it almost as a little bit of a developmental model for the educator themself or the learner, right? Like the person who is in that embodied, theory is embodied.

I think we, many of us would agree. So it’s how I develop myself as an educator in reflecting, applying theory in the classroom, figuring out it worked, it didn’t work. I’m gonna try to get a different way. So it really has that aness that ability to expand, to include the educator in it and the educator in changing contexts.

And whether that’s my larger sociopolitical context or, the different set of students I have in the classroom or the digital classroom from year to year, right? We know how those things can change. And this model, by not specifying, this is about how somebody goes from dualism to multiplicity a very important shift.

It really helps us think about what are the aspects of different models. That we’ll look at that. Help us as educators put that theory and practice in a policy context, a teaching context, a practice context or even when we need to be educating up as it were in our organization. Heather, in your role at Michigan State University, you have to do a lot of educating of vice provost and president about why student element theory matters, in our designing, helping every Spartan learn, thrive and graduate.

Like, how do we do that? So that’s I think that it’s not a framework about frameworks, but it’s a framework that has that ability to grow with the educator along the way.

Heather Shea: Yeah. I’m really glad that we’re doing this as a separate episode because I think this really is a novel approach and having a deeper dive into what is unique about this model.

And I think Kristie just touched on this, is that it’s really about this meta it’s not a meta-analysis of theory, but it’s like a meta application maybe. I don’t know. I’d love to hear what other folks think. What stands out, what components stand out for you about the model?

What about it do you think is novel? I’ll just throw that out to the group and whoever wants to jump in.

Cristóbal Salinas Jr.: I can jump in really quick. And I think it was stated by our, in the last episode as well. What I really is the formal and informal theory. Because the way that we’ve been socialized, so we have been taught is that if it’s not published by a.

Scholar or a big name. It is not theory. But I think what really informs me I don’t know if it informs my thinking, but it’s really impactful for me that this framework highlights is that we all have knowledge, we all have theory, right? So I think about my own experiences of when I was learning English and translating for my parents in the K to 12 system.

How did what does it mean developmentally, right? In theory. Even as a leader, right? Or as a in my resume, similar things. If it is not, I think what this framework does is also challenges a lot of the institutional institutions of how we perceive theory and leadership that we and empowers that we, the us, the I, us.

Knowledge carriers or knowledge holders.

Yeah,

Heather Shea: I love that.

Rosemary J. Perez: I’ll add that, the model and the approach to the book reminds us that we have agency, though it might be constrained and that can be, agency in terms of revising our own thinking agency in building new theory agency in maybe shifting small elements.

We might not be able to change everything about the practice, but we can make some shifts in our work and that agency. Matters. ’cause it doesn’t always feel like we have it, but it can be, small micro shifts. Not everything is going to be the biggest change to that end. It reminds me of something a dear colleague Bob Reason used to say all the time. He would go so what what’s the so what of this? And the model pushes us as we think about our relationship to theory, to connect it to the so what? Yes, you’ve read this, you can tell me what the content is, but so what if theory isn’t living and breathing, we don’t take it to do something meaningful, then honestly it’s not particularly important, at least to me, intellectually, there’s value to adding, but in an applied field, right?

I always want to think about the so what. It just reminds me of that.

Heather Shea: Anyone else? Yeah, go ahead Alex. I

think

Alex C. Lange: in terms of a component of the model that resonates with me is the translation piece. In another place I would call this metacognition. So bring another meta into here, right? How we think about our thinking. I think oftentimes when I teach student development theory, students are initially frustrated because they’re like how do I.

Take this idea of moving from dualism to multiplicity into this context. And if I can’t immediately see it, then it’s not use, it’s not useful. In some ways I think our model is actually it’s hard because I want the person and. Three parts of the model, not just on the left side of the model.

Because in many ways the person is the translator, the person is the person thinking about how to put this into context, right? In the previous episode Kris Salinas brought up the example of how, theory might look different in Iowa versus Florida, right? Florida is my state of origin and Iowa.

I spent a good chunk of time doing my doctoral work there and would totally agree with that statement. And to say that part of our metacognitive work as educators is to think about the ways to translate this model, to translate theories into those different contexts, not only based on the context itself, but our own lived experiences and positionality, right?

I, used to work full-time in LGBT Resource Center, for instance. And when I would come and do safe zone trainings for people, I knew a few things right off the bat. I knew one that most folks perceived me as white, despite my multiracial background. And like my whiteness gives me an in with other white folks pretty immediately.

I also know that my nails being painted, my at times dangly earrings or makeup would often put people at unease, right? And so that I’d have a room of people who had very different orientations to being in the room for that training and that my job was to. Leverage my positionality to both put people at ease while engaging them in conversations that might prompt discomfort or dissonance in many ways.

And so that translation piece for me is the real key cornerstone of this, the cornerstone of the model, right? Is that you’ve really got to think about how the context you occupy who you are then affects how you move these theories between the theory and the action components.

Heather Shea: Wow. That, I am now in this mode of all of the different applications, right? And all of the different ways that as a practitioner I might think about not just the one-on-one engagement with students, but as that larger what, what do we do with this within our work and how we structure and frame programs.

Alex, I’m gonna stay with you for just a moment. ’cause I think one of the things that really resonates for me is how it highlights that role that student affairs educators play in both kind of assessing and making evaluative assessment of the individual programs or interventions, but also about how they’re, they have a role in that activating of the developmental processes and theory building.

Can you talk a little bit about how this might look in real life related to, you gave the example of a safe zone training with the LGBT Center, where else might you see practitioners having an influence on individual developmental processes or at the institutional level?

Alex C. Lange: Totally.

And I really appreciate what Rosie shared about that folks still have a ton of agency even when they don’t feel like it. Yeah. I think in some ways, as I’ve, spent over a decade in this field at this point. I think in some ways we’ve now overemphasized structure at some degree to the detriment of agency of individual educators and practitioners.

And so some examples I would think through one is we talk in the book often about how reflection and critical reflection can be tools that practitioners use to spur development. Often we think of that in the one-to-one context. I had one of my advisees. In here a couple months ago, and she was really frustrated about some things that were happening in a class.

And, I asked her just questions like, what? Tell me more. What do you think that says about you? And when I asked her that question, it was like, oh, that’s really the heart of it, is that you’re worried that this reflects on you rather than something broader, right?

And that’s in the one to one context, but we can think of our colleagues who work in career services or service learning, thinking about reflection more broadly and have to structure a reflection from beginning to end, right?

That folks might enter a service context, an internship context, a career context with a particularly binary or dualistic mindset about their work. And then by the end of that experience that perhaps we’re moving them more to multiplicity or sort of a relativistic standpoint or a self-authored standpoint to some degree.

I think the other thing that is so hard about student development is the time, the temporal aspect of it. I think this is why people move to diagnosis in student development theory. Because student development takes time. People just don’t change overnight. They don’t just change within the semester or year of our assistantships or our work context.

This is truly lifelong work. As someone who studies this stuff, as many of us have who are on this episode. We know that really solid student development work actually takes years to understand. And so that I often think about my work as putting a chip in the iceberg so that developmental breakthroughs can happen eventually.

Like I I have an amazing therapist who I love and adore and she has helped me with so many things, but it’s not as if I went to one session and just had this immediate breakthrough, right? It is actually that the culmination of my experiences before that got me to there. So I just wanna make that caveat before giving some further examples, because I think the other ways that folks can think through this context is, for instance.

If you think about our colleagues who work in academic advising or even leadership programs, how cycles of experiences really matter, right? And so that a student who is in their first to second year experience, if we think about their context that they’re operating within they’re just trying to transition into the institution and get themselves settled, right?

Heather, you mentioned on the previous episode that you’ve been taking one of your kids on a lot of campus tours. For instance I’m sure a campus tour guide, like when I took my sister on campus tours, hates to see you coming. ’cause you ask very specific questions about developmental learning experiences compared to other parents and then perhaps other parents wanna talk to you and be like, that was a really good question.

How do you know that? But the idea here is that, that the student in their first year is often not going into advanced coursework. They’re trying to get through gateway courses, right? Correct. So those really important milestones that then determine their later major experiences first as a student in their third or fourth year who’s probably looking at more internships or more high impact experiences as we define them often through the National Survey of student engagement.

So those are the kinds of contexts and ways to think differently about this model and in the different environments that educators may inhabit and to even think about how these concepts might show up differently in different contexts. In addition to my work with LGBT communities, I’ve done a lot of intra and interracial dialogue groups, and I think the work of Zeus, Leonardo and Ronald Porter has really.

Influence the way I think about who feels safe in those conversations and whose discomfort is often mass is not feeling safe. I think of Carrie Taylor and Amanda Baker’s work about the differences between discomfort and dissonance and how my very context, my, I’m here in Colorado right now on the traditional homelands of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples, and how that context means a different kind of race dialogue than the kind of dialogue I had in Iowa than different dialogue that I had in Illinois than different dialogue than I had in Michigan.

That it’s not that we can just keep doing the same thing in the same context repeatedly, but we have to understand the history, the sociopolitical context of spaces to understand how to be effective educators.

Heather Shea: There are so many things going through my head and I’m also thinking about how we don’t have a lot of studies that, that track that over time.

So Kris knows that my area of interest for my dissertation was how students reflect back on an experience that might have had a high impact, even though the experience I was studying wasn’t officially labeled as such. So those longitudinal kind of points where students say, this is when something shifted for me.

We don’t necessarily, there’s only a handful of studies that attract that kind of development over time, but I think that time piece is really critical and I think for students who are in. In graduate school, they might be thinking, I’m gonna have this one interaction and it’s gonna completely change.

But we all know that it is a cumulative impact if you look reflect on your own development. It wasn’t until, years later maybe, that you thought, wow, I really, I got something out of that. And I think about this differently now.

Chayla Haynes: Heather, can I add something to what you’re saying?

Heather Shea: Yes.

Chayla Haynes: I think there are a lot of studies. So when we say things like there aren’t a lot of studies that track that. I think there are a lot of studies they’re happening on the ground. So I think, so what this model helps me, what stays with me, so much of it does. But I really like that assessing practice building theory portion.

Because when we think about action, the translation of theory to action, to create either policy, teaching, practice, research, and interventions that are culturally responsible and equity minded, I think about the, for one example, and all of us highlight, we all, each of us have a recorded video about how we, the utility of theory that’s included on the website for the book.

But I think about, I spent five, maybe six years working in orientation.

And I, as part of my role there, I created this like competency assessment model that was totally driven outta student development theory. So I had six years of data around.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Chayla Haynes: Students who worked with me, I’d like to say Jonathan McAldy, the current A CPA president was one of my orientation leaders at the time, had four years of data on undergraduate students thinking about the impact of leadership in orientation and what student leadership looked like. That was theory driven, but I was presenting that data, I was presenting that data at the institutional level to think about how might we restructure, restructure new student experiences. I was presenting that data at A CPA and naspa, and it’s very important.

So what may be missing is a way for us to bring that applied research to a higher level of visibility because I do think that there are practitioners doing the assessment and doing the theory building that we haven’t gotten to yet. Their voice is not. Raise perhaps to the level that maybe some of our research would be because we’re in a, the expected to publish on this stuff.

But I would argue the studies are there like six years of data a fully tested construct, validity modeled like assessment tool. So it’s there and it was all theory driven, yeah. But it’s it, I don’t it mattered to the folks at the time and to the practitioners at the time and for a while, long after I left working in orientation at that particular institution.

So I, I do believe it’s there and I think this model helps bring those voices into this. Yeah. And so maybe. When we think about the future of the S-D-T-I-A framework and the future of student development theory, how might we elevate those voices of practitioners that have all that great longitudinal data, institutional data around how they’ve managed these shifts and how they’re doing the work day to day over time?

Like most of us, we’ve been in our positions for a while. I think about my experience as a student affairs leader, that was 15 years of time and now I’m easily at just over 15 years as a scholar practitioner in higher ed. So like there, that’s lots of data, lots of data points and we just gotta figure out how to get it elevated.

But I think this framework allows us to at least document it and track it. Yeah. Also Kris Ren highlighted this about the thinking about the professional as a, as. It might be a professional development model, but it’s always also a way to articulate what our impact is. ’cause a lot of times for some of us, it’s hard to articulate what it is we do from day to day.

That would be, that is around mattering and great importance. I know how to assess practice. I know how to translate theory. I know how to create practice research, teaching pedagogical interventions that are theoretically grounded. I engage in theory building. I work across context, classroom and practice learning environments gives you all the language there to talk about what you do around students, the work of student development every day that sets you apart as a professional from perhaps someone who isn’t well versed or hasn’t been exposed to theory.

So I definitely think there’s utility there and data points there.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Yeah. I I, this is a preview to a future conversation, but just recorded an episode with folks who work in books and media spaces about campus and student college, journal of College Student Development, and a CPA books to talk about the ways that practitioners can get more engaged in writing projects.

That’s a whole other episode because I do agree with you. I think we have a lot of on the ground experiences that if we could tell those stories, it would illuminate more powerfully the work that we’re doing that is impacting the student experience. But, we don’t necessarily have that in a consumable way that that will help us influence that more broadly in the field. Okay. I’m gonna move us to some other practical examples. Would I, would you like

Chayla Haynes: me to stop sharing? I didn’t know.

Heather Shea: Oh yeah, I think we could stop sharing now. Okay. Folks who are listening or wanna follow up and keep following along.

I think it would be good. As we think about what is the use, what are various use cases? We talked a little bit about practitioners but in more of a one-on-one kind of scenario. Rosie, can you talk first about faculty members who might use the model when designing a class?

Maybe not a student development theory class, but like any faculty member who’s thinking about their course in biology or, community sustainability or whatever.

Rosemary J. Perez: Yes. I thought we were going there, but I think it, the premise still holds, right? Yeah. So I think in particular, this piece of thinking about.

There are opportunities to put students and everybody in a classroom in relationship with the content.

We know that helps people situate their learning. So if we were gonna think about this ecology example, Heather, that you raised, how do you, how did you, how do you think change happens?

Like how do you think these things got to be this way? What did you learn before you came here? People have kind of access to formal information, but also informal theories. Things that might be passed down culturally about why something exists or how it came to exist. So there are ways for people to engage with people around kind of informal theory before they move to relationships, to content.

And then I would hope, regardless of kind of the. Content or disciplinary setting. There are ways for us to think about what does this have to do with real life, right? When I think about students’ resistance to anything like what, particularly math. Why do I have to know this for real life? There are always implications, but we don’t always take them up.

So there are ways for instructors, both in higher ed and outside to think about either constructing activities. Again, chala and the rest of the group have designed right, some really wonderful ways to engage people, but that could be translated easily into other disciplinary settings to think about how does this content again relate to real life?

What we know from research would often suggest when students are engaged with real world problems, they learn more. It means more to them. So this book isn’t, this model isn’t just for student affairs educators.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Rosemary J. Perez: Though that might be the main audience, but I think this translatable piece might help us bring more people into the conversation.

To some Charla’s earlier points around, we are all responsible for supporting students’ development, even if we don’t necessarily make connections to that. But it is a broader responsibility in higher education.

Heather Shea: Yeah. So I think this, the other piece to this is a mat, fast forward five, maybe 10 years from now, what do you foresee in terms of new scholars, graduate students who are doing research using this model as a theoretical framework?

What kinds of studies do you think that they might be exploring? And Rosie I’ll love to start with you if other folks have one ideas to.

Rosemary J. Perez: Yeah, so I, I think there, one piece that I can imagine folks might be doing is really thinking about theory in action. Like how do people take, use theory in practice, right?

I think we have all of these things we say about we should use theory and practice, how much research we do about how people use theory in practice. I don’t know if we do enough of that really to think about what are some of the ways that make this easy and what are some of the challenges to doing it?

What are we doing that’s creating difficulty? I, as I think about folks, perhaps using components of this framework, right? The reflexivity piece as a guide to thinking about if you’re gonna use some student development theory, how do we engage in reflexivity? How do scholars come to see themselves as theory builders?

And then I’ll come back to the so what, so you might not be using this framework, but if you are grounded in these commitments. To theory in informing practice, then how are you gonna make your findings or results meaningful to multiple audiences? And then how might you make some recommendations or be in conversation with people who might actually use those?

Because I also think we are, many of us have been trained to put information out there and just assume it’s published. You should do what I said, wh why and if people have questions about how to use that, how to make it more actionable or what did you mean by that? Or I have some thoughts about this.

Would we be open to engaging in regular research practice partnership? That’s a component of my work that is a huge piece of putting theory in action. So it might not be all of it as a framework using research, but maybe some guiding principles to being a scholar who is in relationship both with their own thinking about practice, but with actual practitioners.

Heather Shea: Yeah.

Chayla Haynes: Heather, so can I add to that?

Heather Shea: Yeah, of course.

Chayla Haynes: I think I wanna build off what Rosie offered, ’cause it’s hugely important. I think when folks are thinking about this theory and thinking about the translation process, reflecting on positionality context and how we move from informal and formal theory and application I would argue that a lot of the action or interventions that are natural outcomes of this would expose the limitations of theory and would expose where we are engaged in institutional erasure or intersectional erasure and institutional failures.

So I think that some a lot of the opportunity for theory offers us to think more critically about our use of theory across the classroom and across practice. And to take into consideration the con the context by which theory application will be applied, right? It’s gonna expose the limitations and then research.

And our application would expose where we are engaged in intersectional erasure of populations. And I like to use, for example, to help folks understand what intersectional erasure is in my research I’ll say an institution often imposes a practice or a policy that’s meant to address the needs of diverse populations of students or address or engage in anti-racist practice, for example.

But the only thing that people of color have in common is oppression. It’s not that we experience oppression in all the same ways. So a lot of times the intervention that we create inadvertently engages in intersectional eraser, but until we apply it and assess its application, we may not know how in what ways.

So in thinking about the intersectional eraser, we also can, it exposes in research and practice. The ways institutions are failing our institu our policies, our practice the things that we set up with great intention are in actuality institutional failures and perhaps maybe causing some populations harm.

Perhaps maybe in inadequately addressing the needs of others. So I think that’s what application of this, whether in research or in practice, will help expose.

Heather Shea: Yeah. Yeah. As I’m thinking about the scrutiny on higher ed right now, and particularly on, on folks who are in senior leader roles, I think it’s, I’m curious about and I’m gonna send this to you, Kris Salinas, like how do you hope you know, whether it’s now or into the future, Kris?

Senior leaders will use it to reflect and evaluate their work and their potential impact on multiple identities and students and the ways that they’re showing up in their spaces on campus.

Cristóbal Salinas Jr.: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and the framework really does a good job at setting that space because we think of a social political context, it can change and there’s a lot of things coming through when we think of a social political context.

So the framework of the book, it also supports the developmental informed leadership making sure that decisionmaking remains grounded on how students actually experience the institutions, right? So if we think about the framework, it can also help identify the gaps between the institution, what the institution claims to value, and what its system actually rewards, and how.

Leaders, our administrations are moving forward in decision making.

And what assumptions we are making or they are making about student readiness or student success, but also it can help provide clarification of what student success means. Beyond retention and completion as those. Terms are often brought up to that conversation.

And I think the framework really emphasizes a lot on, on, on it can help think about the self and so on. And when we do that, it is, it’s important to think about the decision making that we’re making and how that’s going to impact the students and what assumptions we might have.

But what really, I really appreciate also about the book and the framework. It offers leaders, senior scholars, senior leaders or senior scholars, I mean everyone. A language and co concepts to better understand how institutional practices interact with race, gender, class, disability and other other identities. And some, I don’t wanna say new identities because they’re not new, it’s just new in. That textbook that they haven’t brought up before.

And again, and how power and organizational culture shape shapes the student experience.

But if we truly believe in holistic student development, when the, we need to also show up in the budget, in the staffing and evaluating the systems and how the action impacts the social economic context of the students and so on.

So I’ll stop there.

Heather Shea: I could not agree with you more as we’re like in the middle of budget and, justifying it’s all kinds of decisions right now. It’s fantastic. So we are running short on time. So I would love each of you to just share one thing that you would hope people remember or think about when they think about the student development theory and action model or framework.

And then if you would like folks to be able to get in touch with you, if you would like to share where they can find you, that would be great. Kris Salinas, I’m gonna start with you. Final thoughts.

Cristóbal Salinas Jr.: One final thought is when I think about the book, one thing that I that I hope that a reader takes away is that and I can, and I’m saying this because I can hear people saying this book is not critical, right?

And I think that’s what this framework also aims to do, right? Because it is critical it, but you as a reader. You have to incorporate those other lenses, that theory is missing. So when we think about critical, I hope that our reader as in the book in includes their positionality as the framework states, but also includes their experiences and and other things that the theory hasn’t captured to make it a better theory to capture more than we have already.

Heather Shea: Thanks, Kris. Rosie, how about you?

Rosemary J. Perez: I hope that people take away that we all have the potential to be builders of theory. Even though many of us are discouraged from thinking about ourselves in this way, we always have the capacity to add to what we know, how we know, and how we use theory. And if folks would like to continue this conversation they can find me on LinkedIn or my institutional email, which is available on the University of Michigan website.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thanks Rosie. Alex, what’s the one thing you would say?

Alex C. Lange: Yeah, just continuing really what Rosie shared that that we can all be, many of us are on the call practitioner scholars, but that practitioners can be scholar practitioners and I really encourage folks to look into the work of Jane Jones’ boss, who has really done a lot of good work tracing the lineage of practitioner scholarship and how that has been uplifted and not in time.

And she’s got a lot of great work. And we can link in the show notes as well. And posting by me on Blue Sky, it’s Alex Seal.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you. Kris Red,

Kristen A. Renn: I’m building from this. I say what I want people to take away is like you see yourself, you are the body in the model. That’s what I want take away like.

That is you and you have some latitude and some flexibility. But you’re in it, it is up to you. I can be found at the Michigan State University website or on LinkedIn.

Heather Shea: Awesome, thanks. Thanks Kris. And Chayla.

Chayla Haynes: The only thing I’ll say is that our book and our S-D-T-I-A model builds on a legacy of student development theory scholarship.

That many of us trace back, at least for me, when I was introduced in 1998 to what we know as the green book in our field. But this book our book and the model tackles what is the enduring question? What does applying student development theory actually look like in everyday practice? And with, we hope the model answers that question and helps educators across campus build stronger theory to practice connections to the benefit of every student.

Heather Shea: Awesome. Thank you all so much for being here today for sharing both the overarching perspective about the book, but also digging in really deeply into the model. This has been an incredible two-part conversation. Also wanna thank all the folks who are watching or listening. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, you can also connect with us more deeply.

With the Student Affairs Now community through our Patreon. We have always been more than just a podcast. It’s a learning community for people who care deeply about higher education and student affairs. For the past five years, we’ve created space for conversations, mostly within an episode, right?

Among people who are on the screen to inform, inspire, and affirm the work. But we wanna bring that to the folks who are watching. So we are excited about our Patreon, where we will be including both discussion guides, facilitated book club conversations, some bonus content and opportunities to help shape those future discussions.

If these conversations have ever sparked an idea for you or for your work, or helped you feel more a part of a community we’d love to have you join us. You can learn more at patreon.com/student affairs. Now. Huge thank you as always to Nat Ambrosey our incredible producer. Thanks, Nat, for everything you do behind the scenes to make every episode possible.

And again, to all of our listeners and viewers, thanks for being a part of our learning community here at Student Affairs. Now, I’m Heather Shea. Thanks for watching and listening, and let’s make it a great week.

Websites: 

Promoting At-Promise Student Success Project: https://pass.pullias.usc.edu/

Article citations: 

Sutton, R. I., & Staw, B. M. (1995). What theory is not. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(3), 371-384. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2393788

Books: 

Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). Zed Books.

Kezar, A. (2006). To use or not to use theory: Is that the question? In J. C. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 21, pp. 283–344). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4512-3_6

Taylor, K. B., & Baker, A. R. (2019). Examining the role of discomfort in collegiate learning and development. Journal of College Student Development, 60(2), 173–188. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2019.0017

Leonardo, Z., & Porter, R. K. (2010). Pedagogy of fear: Toward a Fanonian theory of “safety” in race dialogue. Race Ethnicity and Education, 13(2), 139–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2010.482898 

Boss, G. J., & Dunn, M. (2021). Boyeristic tendencies: A look into the life history of student affairs scholar-practitioner. Georgia Journal of College Student Affairs, 37(2), 120–139.