This chapter builds from the Model I and Model II theories-in-use frameworks (Tables 1.1 and 1.2) that Argyris developed to explore how individuals use their theories-in-use to produce action strategies that yield important consequences for their behavioral worlds and learning processes within an organization. I explore how faculty participants express Model I and Model II values as “value expressions,” and discuss how common elements in those expressions can have both positive and negative consequences for instructors’ learning about and from cultural differences between themselves and their students. Two focal questions guided this inquiry:
(1) How do instructors express Model I and Model II values in response to common culturally specific challenges CUNY students face both in and outside the classroom?
(2) What implications do these “value expressions” have for instructors’ propensities for engaging in single- or double-loop learning about their students’ culturally specific needs in developing responses to these challenges?
I evaluate how instructors’ value expressions informed their action strategies toward the ultimate goal of developing some broader psychological principles about how Model I– and Model II–oriented values contribute to the formation of Model O-I and Model O-II learning systems in MSI environments.
Teacher Values Shape Every Dimension of Student–Teacher Relationships
Following the premise outlined in Chapter 7 regarding K-16 instructors’ comparative challenges managing cultural mismatch, in this section I briefly review some trends in the K-12 research on how teacher values are formed and shape their work, which mirror a gap in the higher education literature where research on the impact of faculty values for their work is scant. Research suggests that teachers begin learning work-related values long before they join the profession – from their earliest experiences as children in cultural groups and educational experiences as students themselves (Clandinin and Connelly, Reference Clandinin and Connelly1987; Duffee and Aikenhead, Reference Duffee and Aikenhead1992; Lasky, Reference Lasky2005; Reeves, Reference Reeves2018; Tatto, Reference Tatto1996; Zembylas, Reference Zembylas2003). Formative experiences leave long-lasting impressions on teachers that persist as strong influences on their work-related values even as they complete teacher education and preparation programs (Lacey, Reference Lacey2011; Tabachnick and Zeichner, Reference Tabacbnick and Zeichner1984; Tatto, Reference Tatto1998). Teacher values impact several dimensions of their work, including their perceptions of: students’ instructional needs; students’ classroom behavior and performance; how much they think parents should be involved in making decisions in their students’ academic lives; which forms and sources of knowledge are considered to be valid; and their capacities to integrate multicultural perspectives into their teaching and classroom management styles as well (Barni et al., Reference Barni, Russo and Danioni2018; Clandinin and Connelly, Reference Clandinin and Connelly1996; Davis, Reference Davis1995; Elbaz, Reference Elbaz2018; Gholami and Husu, Reference Gholami and Husu2010; Gudmundsdottir, Reference Gudmundsdottir1990; Hashweh, Reference Hashweh2005; Larrivee, Reference Larrivee2000; Lewis, Reference Lewis2008; Lucas and Villegas, Reference Lucas, Villegas and Lucas2010; Olsen and Anderson, 1997; Pajares, Reference Pajares1992; Sirin et al., Reference Sirin, Ryce and Mir2009; Smith, Reference Smith2000; Vartuli, Reference Vartuli2005; Webb and Blond, Reference Webb and Blond1995; Willemse et al., Reference Willemse, Lunenberg and Korthagen2005). Teachers learn to clarify their values over time through processes of examining their beliefs, reaffirming those beliefs after considering alternatives, anticipating consequences of maintaining the same beliefs over time, and trying out the implications of their beliefs in practice (Raths, Reference Raths2001).
Teacher Values Left Unexamined Facilitate Professional Learning Challenges in Multicultural Classrooms
When variance in teachers’ values is left unexamined, teacher educators and school leaders are functionally complicit in enabling educators to impose their own cultural lenses onto their students in the classroom, by not preparing them to hold space for the norms and values students bring from their own cultural communities alongside their own (Davis, Reference Davis1995; Gay and Howard, Reference Gay and Howard2000; Townsend and Bates, Reference Townsend, Bates, Townsend and Bates2007; Welch et al., Reference Welch, Pitts, Tenini, Kuenlen and Wood2010). Ignoring the impact of teachers’ values on their work has particularly negative implications in diverse classrooms, because without opportunities for critical reflection, teachers are largely unable to take “account of wider historic, cultural, and political values or beliefs in framing and reframing practical problems to which solutions are being sought” (Hatton and Smith, Reference Hatton and Smith1995, p. 35; Kincheloe, Reference Kincheloe2004; Liu, Reference Liu2015; Liu and Ball, Reference Liu and Ball2019; Ryan, Reference Ryan1988). Lack of critical reflection also prohibits teachers from reflecting on ways in which their values are molded by teacher education programs and organizational socialization processes that reinforce Eurocentric and middle-class cultural norms and values (Beyer, Reference Beyer2001; Giroux and McLaren, Reference Giroux and McLaren1986; Mikami et al., Reference Mikami, Griggs, Reuland and Gregory2012; Solorzano and Yosso, Reference Solorzano and Yosso2001; Vargas, Reference Vargas1999; Yosso, Reference Yosso2005). Ultimately, both K-12 teachers and college faculty working with students from LIMCCs lack professional learning opportunities for exploring the ways in which their actions are guided by faulty cultural understandings that diminish their individual effectiveness.
Very little attention has been paid to how teachers’ personal values influence their abilities to engage in the kind of organizational learning that facilitates critical reflection on both their own cultural worldviews and those of others in diverse school contexts. More research is needed on how teacher values influence their propensities for learning effectively from cultural misunderstandings that arise when working with students from LIMCCs. Organizational learning about how to more effectively support diverse student needs is stymied in school contexts where educators lack the tools needed to reflect upon how their personal values inform their thoughts and actions in response to student–teacher cultural differences. From an action science perspective, they run the risk of remaining stuck in cycles of single-loop learning, unable to question their own assumptions and interrogate the values that guide their actions (Argyris, Reference Argyris2002). Action science provides powerful tools for considering how teachers’ cultural understandings influence their work-related values, and how their self-efficacy at work is influenced by their effectiveness at learning from what they do not know about students’ lived experiences outside the classroom.
Data Analysis
As discussed briefly in Chapter 8, my initial intent in asking for the demographic information collected was to make meaningful comparisons across instructors’ career stages or years of experience teaching at CUNY - but the number of participants across subgroups was unequal, and the sample size was below 100. I found that the most practical use of the data was to mine it for examples of what Model I and Model II values sound like in practice, and so transcripts were sorted using codebooks (Appendix B) based on the seven governing values Argyris’s research determined are associated with Model I and Model II learning orientations respectively (Argyris, Reference Argyris1982; Argyris and Schön, Reference Argyris and Schön1996; Argyris et al., Reference Argyris1985). The interview data were analyzed using a constant comparative analysis approach (Glaser, Reference Glaser1965). In the constant comparative analysis, I began by listening to understand how instructors would express their values – typically while explaining a course of action or why a choice was made from several possible courses of action. In the first round of etic coding, I observed commonalities in how Model I and Model II values were expressed in the data and how they were described in the action science literature, and found that none of the participants appeared to espouse a Model I or Model II learning orientation consistently across situations. This pattern was consistent with Argyris’s argument that these sets of values are not mutually exclusive and that an individual’s thinking can reflect both types of learning-oriented values simultaneously.
In a second round of coding, I referenced Argyris’s frameworks for Model I and Model II theories-in-use (Tables 1.1 and 1.2) to analyze the data for insights as to how instructors’ value expressions inform their action strategies, which in turn impact their capabilities to learn effectively from their mistakes. In third and subsequent rounds of coding, I coded instructor expressions of how they would respond to these situations by category of action strategies associated with the governing values linked to Model I and Model II theories-in-use respectively. These sorting and analytic processes yielded some generalizable insights toward the development of broader psychological principles about how college faculty experience and manage common yet intractable challenges associated with student–teacher cultural mismatches in diverse college classrooms.
How Model I Governing Variables Informed Instructor Responses to Student Challenges
This section describes how CUNY instructors’ Model I values were enacted through the action strategies they proposed they would use in response to the student challenges. Figure 9.1 summarizes themes in how each of the four Model I governing values was expressed through the instructors’ proposed action strategies (see Appendix C for the codebook in Table 9.1 used to identify evidence of each Model I value). Next, I review common themes in how instructors expressed each of the Model I governing values through their actions in more depth.
Figure 9.1 Model I theory-in-use: Governing values and action strategies for actor and toward environment in Argyris’s original framework, and Model I value expressions in the data
Achieve a Purpose as the Actor Perceives It
Instructors who expressed this value placed emphasis on asking students for proof or documentation of their challenges as a prerequisite for providing them with any form of support.
In the funeral situation, for example, several instructors mentioned that they would need some form of third-party verification that students were not fabricating the story of a family member passing away. Examples of acceptable documentation mentioned in their responses were plane tickets, death certificates, and funeral programs. When asked to clarify their rationale for making these asks of students as first steps in response to the family emergency, instructors justified their choices with examples from past experiences in which students has committed “fraud” in order to avoid fulfilling course requirements. They were also open about their willingness to go the extra mile in corroborating students’ requests through various methods, such as calling doctors’ offices to verify their notes when students requested sick days.
Some instructors justified their commitment to acting in ways that achieved their own will was by vocalizing an assumption that students simply did not want to put in the work required to achieve successful academic outcomes. In the “Ask for Grade Breakdown” situation, one instructor described this perspective in the process of explaining why they would not be open to discussing the grade with the student over email:
I’ll offer to have them meet me and then they’ll either respond saying they want to show and that they’ll show up at this time and they never show up, or I never hear back after offering that. I guess the way that I see it is that the student wants something, but they’re not willing to put in the actual work in order to achieve it. They want to see if they can get me to change their grade, but then they’re not gonna take the necessary steps that I would require for them to each reach a point where that would be a possibility.
Across situations, instructors who expressed this value cited sincere beliefs that students who sign up for their courses should know that part of being “college ready” is prioritizing course requirements over all other outside responsibilities. They were reluctant to find workarounds for students that might require them to do extra work given their perceptions that students themselves were not doing well enough to deserve additional support. In response to the student who consistently arrived late and never handed in their final paper, for example, one instructor declared, “Look, they’re not here, they’re not doing the work. They knew what was on the syllabus and they didn’t do it, so the grade they get is the grade they get.” Similarly, In the situation in which a student is consistently disruptive and then blames the teacher for their academic failures, one instructor described how teachers may rationalize calling upon administrative supports to manage lackadaisical students:
I would probably consult my department chair on how to move forward with that, to see if she had any advice on how to go about navigating a situation like that. If the student is doing this in my class, she’s probably doing it in others and that’s just demeaning her educational experience altogether.
Participants also expressed this value in the data by describing action strategies they use for tradition’s sake, without thinking (out loud) about whether those strategies were actually effective at generating valued student outcomes. One participant shared their guess for how faculty vary in their willingness to be flexible in their actions: “A lot of older faculty are firm in their ways of how they do things and how they understand students. There’s pressure to act a certain way because you’ve got faculty above you who do things a certain way.” A more experienced participant offered a parallel perspective:
I think there are two kinds of teachers that we’ve been having. Older teachers like myself who have had this experience and teaching is extremely important to us. And then there are younger professors, who are very keen on taking the student’s side. They’re very sensitive to student needs, et cetera – and it’s not the same outcomes. One is from you know, a different kind of source.
Instructors who espoused this value were skeptical of students’ academic commitments when they required support for extracurricular responsibilities that took priority in their personal lives. They reasoned that students who were unable to manage their academic and personal commitments on their own simply were not ready for college, and holding fast to such rigid expectations for how students should present themselves enabled them to maintain supervisory control of their classrooms. This was the case even when instructors’ recommendations had potentially unfavorable outcomes for students – such as when instructors suggested bringing students’ situations to the attention of an administrator or other third party with the power to enact consequences as severe as requiring that the student withdraw from the course or the college altogether.
Maximize Winning and Minimize Losing
In this context, I considered “winning” from the instructor perspective to be the outcomes in which students maintain their academic progress despite any challenges they experience managing outside responsibilities alongside their studies. “Losing” outcomes were those in which instructors determined that nothing could be done to support the student given their circumstances. One way instructors enacted this value through their actions was by focusing on cutting their losses early, as soon as they determined (based on their own assessments and evaluations) that it would be difficult to impossible for the student to succeed given their circumstances. In discussing this value across the student challenges, instructor perspectives were inherently limited by their reluctance to directly engage with details about the extenuating circumstances in students' personal lives. This limitation meant that instructors were effectively sealing themselves off from valid information about their students’ personal circumstances such that they were unable to make holistic assessments of student needs much less develop strategies for responding to those needs directly. Some of the instructors who expressed this value justified their quick assessments and choices to maintain distance from their students’ personal lives by citing prior experiences in which students had expressed discomfort or even anger at them for probing into their personal business.
These instructors explained that they had learned from experience not to spend extra time on students who appeared to be struggling due to external factors outside the classroom beyond the instructor’s control – especially when those students were not forthcoming with information about their personal circumstances. In one instructor’s response to the situation in which the student consistently arrives late and never hands in the final paper, for example, they described that after making a single attempt to contact a student who had similarly gone missing in a past situation, they decided to withhold their grade and issue the student an incomplete. Their reasoning was that the student had demonstrated with their disappearing act that they had made a decision not to fulfill the course requirements. Another instructor described this orientation in more detail while responding to the same situation:
In my experience, when bad things happen … some students feel like they have to tell you these crazy personal things. Sometimes it feels like it’s kind of an invasion of their privacy. I know that a horrible thing is happening and there’s no way they can speak about it, right? So they just disappear. One of my bedrock rules is that you have to do all of [what’s required] whether it’s the exams or the papers or whatever. It’s not like I can just give you a D or whatever, or a C. I also would not turn in a grade to somebody who missed the final paper.
A third instructor discussing this situation explained that their decision on whether or not to grant the student an incomplete – effectively an option to complete the work with more time by a later date – would depend on “if they have a chance of passing or not,” and a fourth described the relief of absolving oneself of responsibility for the student in such a situation:
You [typically] have two or three across all the courses per semester who would do this. And they would always just tell me that, like that was their initial plan. Like they won’t be able to finish the class because something came up and that was it. They’re done, they’re not submitting anything – they’re not involved anymore. After hearing that often and really never getting any other explanation from students, at this point I leave it up to them if they want to reach out to me.
Instructors also expressed this value in response to the student who requested a grade breakdown long after the semester’s end:
The part that would strike me is that the student sounds more concerned for the item that was left in the class than the actual performance in the class. Perhaps there’s more of a visceral reaction from me once the semester is over because usually at some point during the semester I tell them if you’re not doing well, figure out what you’re not doing well and talk to me about it. It’s too late during finals week, you know. So, if you’re not doing well by the halfway point hopefully you take some initiative to come meet with me to figure out what can be done.
A second instructor discussing this situation explained a similar logic whereby instructors may assume that students will display conventional help-seeking behaviors, and so may assume that when students do not they are either fine or able to help themselves:
There’s a kind of social contract when you have a student in a class. And while they are one of your students, it’s a back and forth. We have some spoken and unspoken relationships and agreements about how the class will go. If you don’t do your part or I don’t do my side, well, there’s a little bit of give and take, at that point it’s a little more fluid. Once the grades are in the relationship changes. Afterwards it’s kind of just transactional.
In other excerpts coded for this value, instructors explicitly expressed that they did not feel responsible for supporting students who do not ask them for help directly.
As alluded to in the previously quoted excerpt, this value was also expressed as a preference for establishing and maintaining a professional distance from the students, which resulted in student–instructor relationships characterized by more transactional norms. Instructors explained that this orientation is especially useful for managing larger classrooms efficiently. In the situation in which a student-employee is struggling to show up to class on time for example, instructors who espoused this value agreed that the student was doing the right thing by informing them of their external commitments even if their doing so did not change the instructor’s ability to make exceptions or special accommodations for them. Across other situations presented, the most common recommendation from this perspective was to encourage students to withdraw from the course and take it in a later semester, when they were better able to build their schedules with school as their first priority. As one instructor explained in response to the single-dad situation, “The student wants to do well, but there are other things going on in his life. Balancing family and a full-time job usually does not bode well for students who attempt that. They usually do not excel.”
Minimize Eliciting Negative Feelings
Expressions of this value in the data revealed themes I organized by the types of negative emotion instructors expressed across situations, such as frustration, anxiety, skepticism, and confusion. Negative feelings informed instructor responses both as they experienced the emotions themselves, and to the extent that instructors expressed their beliefs that students who challenged or resisted their authority were doing so as an extension of their own negative emotional and psychological experiences outside the classroom. These assessments were offered without mention of any plans to get a firsthand account of the students’ emotional and psychological states. Negative feelings were expressed when instructors described what information in each situation caught their attention and why; they frequently described their approaches to the students’ challenges in terms of their frustrations with how students were managing various aspects of the situation. When asked what information mattered most in the situation with a student who consistently arrives late to class and never hands in the final paper, for example, Model I–oriented instructors were frustrated that the student seemed generally disorganized, was technically performing well enough to pass the course prior to not showing up by the semester’s end, and had chosen not to communicate their reasons for being late or disappearing to the instructor.
A second instructor in that situation explained how their frustration was impacting their perceptions of the student’s challenge: “I just wish that they would talk to me so maybe we could’ve worked something out before it got to this point where they’re now at risk of failing.” A third instructor also expressed their frustration in the process of determining how much responsibility to take for the student’s outcomes: “The frustration for me is, I can never tell if it is my issues or the student’s not trying hard enough or I have not communicated my expectations for them well enough.” Similarly, in the single-dad situation an instructor explained their approach with reference to past students who had disengaged from the course and yet were surprised to not pass a course by its end: “If I’ve reached out multiple times, and asked them to please come in and speak to me, told them ‘You’re not on the right track,’ and they just haven’t responded – if they come to me at the eleventh hour, there’s very little I can do.” Another instructor discussing the single dad situation corroborated the perspective that instructors learn these limits over time, through repeated failed attempts to support students before they get to a point beyond return:
It frustrates me when I try and I know the student is trying. Sometimes it’s not the circumstances, unfortunately – sometimes they just don’t have the ability for my particular class. I feel like there’s a balance to wanting to help but also maintaining the integrity of what I’m teaching and my grading system.
As alluded to earlier, this value also emboldened instructors to speculate that students’ challenging behaviors were really projected feelings students had about themselves and their personal circumstances. In the situation in which a consistently disruptive student later blames the instructor for not doing as well as they expected, for example, Model I–oriented responses featured more dispositional assessments that consideration of contextual or situational factors impacting the student. One instructor explained, “I think what’s causing the situation is the student is very frustrated and being very hard on themselves, and projecting it onto someone else. They’re giving themselves a hard time because they feel bad about living up to their own expectations for themselves.” Similarly, another explained in more depth:
It seems to me that the cause of this is the student’s insecurities surrounding their experience of frustration and newness – the novelty of the demands being placed on her in this context. I would try not to take that personally, and I would assume that they are having personal struggles. The danger in taking things personally is that animosity can arise between the instructor and the student, which is detrimental to the student meeting their learning objectives. And to the instructor and other students frankly, that makes it harder to learn in that classroom generally.
A third instructor responding to this situation stated their perception that faculty colleagues shared a common frustration with a “lack of student responsibility,” or the tendency to attribute their challenges to teaching issues rather than what they were not doing to uphold their end of the informal student–teacher contract earlier described.
Perceived breaches of the informal student–teacher contract induced anxiety in participants who expressed this value. In the funeral situation, for example, when asked what information they thought was most important in the situation, one participant responded, “I think what caught my attention is missing four classes is over the number of classes that I typically allow students to miss, right? So, this would make me nervous and the student would know it would make me nervous. Because it would mean literally they couldn’t miss anything else.” Similarly, in the situation in which a student consistently arrives late, and never hands in the final paper, some who expressed this value speculated that it was likely the student themselves was experiencing anxiety or feeling overwhelmed with the final paper looming as such a large portion of their final grade. One instructor observed, “Sometimes people just get into situations that are so hard that they can’t talk about them, that’s been my experience. You just don’t know why somebody’s disappeared.” Others struggled with feeling helpless to compel students to communicate with them:
I feel a little helpless when students stop coming to class. I don’t feel like it’s my responsibility. I mean it’s sort of my responsibility to reach out again, but it’s not my full range. I would need to stop after a while if she chose not to talk to me.
There were one or two cases where students would be regularly attending and then just disappear. I tried to reach out through email and calling but a lot of times students wouldn’t respond. Especially when the students are engaged and they fall off right at the very end, that’s what concerns me the most because they’ve been working so hard and they’re been so strong and then all of a sudden, they fall off. I think as a teacher you feel very helpless and it makes it really difficult to find ways of engaging them and helping them in their college experience.
Across situations, I found that the negative feelings expressed amounted to a general skepticism of the intentions driving the students’ behaviors. In the funeral situation, instructors expressed this value by explaining their sentiments with reference to similar situations in the past:
I’ve had ongoing issues with fraud. It’s not always a funeral, sometimes it’s “Oh, I had to go to the doctor.” Or something like that when it’s really not true – so it’s not surprising. The religious things, I’ll usually check on – you know, there’s only so many religions, so it’s fairly easy to know what’s going on. So, I’ve waffled on that through the years, but I’m generally not inclined to give that exception unless there’s some really dramatic reason.
A guy once gave me a doctor’s note and I think it was his cousin or something, and I tried calling the guy a few times he just wouldn’t answer me, he didn’t answer the phone. It was obviously some kind of fraudulent thing. In other times I’ve had doctor’s notes that had been xeroxed so many times you could barely read them.
In a place like [our] college, part of what you’re looking for is that we do have a lot of diversity, and with that comes cultural rituals that some students have to do that we’re unaware of – global cultural rituals. So, it can be challenging to know if this actually true, or if the student is making this up. That’s why there’s a policy of having them provide documentation beforehand for sensitive aspects like this in the syllabus.
By participants’ own admission, this skepticism compromised the level of trust shared with students such that instructors generally believed students were unable to determine their own best interests in terms of planning for long-term academic success. Though Model I–oriented instructors may not have felt comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings to students directly, they did describe how students’ situations made them feel concerned, conflicted, cynical, disturbed, and jaded.
Be Rational and Minimize Emotionality
The primary way instructors expressed this value was to either suggest or state outright that there are typically too many students in their classrooms to care about them all personally. They also encouraged students to withdraw from the course to minimize the impact of challenging circumstances on their academic performance in the long run. It was also suggested that the ability to emphasize rationality no matter the student’s circumstance is a skill learned and refined over time the longer one has been teaching at CUNY; these instructors reasoned that they were limited in their abilities to provide personalized supports to students because it is more important to focus on supporting the entire class. As one instructor explained in response to the funeral situation, “It’s very difficult to accommodate student requests if they require a commitment of time. Whatever [alternative arrangement for completing work] I’ve done for one student, that’s a whole hour I have allotted for that class going solely to that student.” In response to the situation in which the student-employee remained absent from the course after promising to be punctual, another instructor similarly reasoned that if the student were unable to change their work schedule, they simply would not be able to take the course that semester.
Discussing the single-dad situation, another participant provided the following insight as to why instructors who espouse this value take a hard-lined approach: “I think some instructors tend to see students’ lives outside of class as their responsibility. [They might say that] things like bringing a child to class are not things that the instructors should be responsible for.” Rational approaches from this perspective were those in which the instructors were able to minimize their emotionality; for example, when a student experienced challenges or failures across these situations, it might seem more rational from this perspective to reason that the student was an isolated case than to develop individualized action plans for ensuring their success. Instructors also expressed this value by insisting that all students should be treated the same no matter their personal circumstances. For example, in the single-dad situation, participants who espoused this value expressed their sympathies that the student lacked a social support system and was doing his best to manage being his parental responsibilities alongside going to school, but they were firm in their stance that they could only offer the student whatever supports had been made available to the entire class. One instructor described their limitations in providing options to this student as follows:
I think that the student may have taken on too many responsibilities, and that does happen from time to time – even for students [whose only responsibility is] coursework and perhaps they take six courses at a time. Even given his circumstances, it doesn’t necessarily excuse his poor performance in the course, so if he came to me asking for my advice, I would probably say to consult an academic advisor about the options of credit, no credit, or pass, fail, and taking incompletes … whatever would work best for their circumstance.
Similarly, in the student-employee situation, instructors who espoused this value reasoned that it was the student’s responsibility to show up on time regardless of the financial challenges they were facing or their work schedules. When asked what they would do in response to this situation, one instructor responded:, “I would talk to the student and see if they were going to get on a more stable work schedule that would allow them to attend class. [I would encourage them] to actually be realistic in their answer to me and if they did not think that they could, then they would have to drop the class.” Another instructor took a similarly straightforward approach to this students’ challenge, stating, “I tell them in advance that I count attendance and [that] if they can’t come to every class then do not take the class. So, I’m not sure I would forgive that.” Even as instructors continued to acknowledge that students’ circumstances were likely challenging their academic commitments in ways beyond their control, they were resolute that the student’s circumstances would inevitably yield negative outcomes for the students such that their best option would typically be to withdraw from the course or receive no credit for taking it. In general, instructor support for students’ best interests outside the classroom mostly came in the form of recommendations that students in crisis even go so far as to withdraw from college entirely rather than split time between school and tending to their personal responsibilities. There also appeared to be a shared assumption that struggling students who had outside responsibilities were not taking school “seriously enough” compared to those who were high-performing in the course despite presumably having their own difficult circumstances to navigate. Instructor responses driven by this value sought solutions that diminished the students’ risk of failing the course and the instructors’ risk of being held accountable for those failures.
How Model II Governing Variables Informed Instructors’ Proposed Action Strategies
This section describes how instructors’ Model II values were enacted through action strategies they proposed in response to the student challenges. Figure 9.2 summarizes themes in how each of the three Model II governing values was expressed in the data (see Appendix C for the codebook in Table 9.2 used to identify evidence of each Model II value). Next, I review common themes in how instructors expressed each of the Model II governing values through their actions in more depth.
Figure 9.2 Model II theory-in-use: Governing values, action strategies for actor and toward environment in Argyris’s original framework, and Model II value expressions in the data
Valid Information
Instructors who espoused this value were more inclined to believe that students could be trusted to discern valid reasoning for requesting additional academic supports. They were also drawing from similar situations in their past experiences to contextualize students’ requests, but were generally more hopeful that students were self-responsible enough to manage their academic progress on their own terms – even when it meant doing things differently than the instructor was used to or had planned. In response to the funeral situation, one instructor explained:
Every semester I have at least two or three students who have different things come up like that. There’ll be a funeral overseas or some other kind of essential overseas travel that they have to do and it’s usually family based or religious based. You know we have a lot of our Jewish students who need to take many days, many days off actually for a lot of the Jewish holidays. I usually just ask students to email me directly so that I don’t forget, or mix up absences with another student or something like that. If it’s something like the death of a close family member, then I’ll obviously be a lot more lenient and you know, won’t make them make it up if they can’t.
Other instructors shared their perceptions that their colleagues had likely learned through the early stages of organizational socialization that students of all backgrounds regularly request accommodations for external obligations when needed:
That’s something that I really learned from working [here], that students often have religious or cultural requirements that states they have to do things in a particular way. I learned that through my students. I’ve got a lot of – a lot of my students are from different religions, a lot of Muslim and Jewish students who have had to do that kind of thing before. I’ve worked with students who have had almost that exact issue.
I’ve been teaching since 1969 at the college and we have a diversity of students and foreign students – all different kinds of students. It’s quite common. Over the years – at least once or twice a year – I have something like that whether it’s for a wedding or some other reason.
In contrast to participant expressions of Model I values, Model II–oriented responses considered the students’ cultural responsibilities as valid reasoning for their needing academic accommodations. They considered students’ expectations that they be able to tend to those responsibilities and maintain their academic progress as reasonable and justified. These responses demonstrated that instructors were generally willing to accommodate students’ requests so long as they had the information they needed to feel as if doing so was a well-informed decision; some even expressed feeling obligated to accommodate the student as a critical form of support for student success. As one instructor elaborated in response to the funeral situation:
It kind of puts the student in a dilemma because they have to assess that in the scope of wanting to do well in their class. But you know, they’re prioritizing the family funeral which I agree is important. I have heard of scenarios where teachers don’t take that into consideration. But many of the colleagues I’ve interacted with are very empathetic when there are scenarios like this, where someone has experienced a loss and needs to take some time away to participate in these rituals.
Another described some factors they might consider in determining how to support the student to the best of their abilities when asked what information caught their attention the most:
This sounds like airfare around the world, the funeral rites to go on for it sounded like two weeks maybe or more, and that’s not a particularly Anglo or European rite. So I’m guessing that the student is probably coming from a culture that I’m not necessarily familiar with, and it would be wrong just to expect that this funeral is going to last for two hours. And everybody goes to a reception. This sounds like a deeply meaningful, maybe religious experience for a community. So, I would expect that the student wants to participate, just as much as marriage can be a big deal for Southeast Asian cultures, I would expect the student is paying their respects as they are expected to.
In the situation in which the student-employee continued to miss class to accommodate their work schedule, instructors who espoused this value recognized the student’s financial hardship as a common challenge CUNY students face, and seemed open to letting the student decide how to manage their own academic progress while continuing to work. These instructors explained:
This is something that I think is unique among students who have many other responsibilities to being a college student. It’s trying to balance two very difficult things, having a full-time job, managing financial difficulties, in addition to being a college student.
If I take the student at their word, the finances are not good. Maybe they come already from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background, and maybe they’re the one who’s paying tuition. I don’t know what their family life is like or what kinds of access they have. But clearly this is really stressful and they’re working really, really hard to be here. They’re enthusiastic, they’re trying to be transparent … maybe their hours keep changing and they have to take on more hours. If the student is really only missing class because of finances then I owe her more time and attention so that we can try to bridge that gap as much as possible.
For instructors who espoused this value, being overcommitted did not automatically disqualify the single father or prevent the student-employee from maintaining their course registration. One explained why the single dad should be able to maintain his student status despite his personal challenges:
Being a single dad, working to support your child and all the minutiae of childrearing … maybe they’re dealing with, you know, who knows whatever it has been – social service offices or to divorce court. There’s just an untold array of legal and social forces that might be hounding them for things. So, they may want the education and want to up their skillset or change their lives, it just may not be the right time given so much happening. But obviously as their professor, you know, it’s my responsibility to give them as many chances as possible to make that transformation happen.
Other instructors responding to this situation cited a number of prior experiences successfully working with students in similar circumstances as justification for their willingness to accommodate students who show up differently in the classroom. They sought to afford students the benefit of the doubt by focusing on what they were doing right when they were in class when assessing the student’s course contributions, behavior, and performance.
Rather than unilaterally decide student outcomes using heuristics based on past experiences with students in similar situations, these instructors promoted students’ autonomy and self-efficacy across situations by trusting them to guide their own decision-making processes in these challenges. For example, instructors discussing the funeral situation from this perspective made clear that each student had the right to set their own priorities both in and outside the classroom:
I don’t understand whatever their cultural practices are, but that is not necessarily for me – that’s not up to debate for me. It’s not a matter of me needing to figure out whether the student is making something up or not. I think just the fact that they’re talking to me about it says enough of what I need to hear and know that it’s a legitimate concern that I need to be accommodating of.
If the student really did experience a death in the family – and they may have been close to the person – I have no right to impinge on their grief or their, or how their family handles it. If they have a procedure that they go through either religiously or traditionally, I’m not going to question that. That is their right.
A second instructor explained the single father’s right to continue his education by voicing their frustration that the college was not doing more to support the unique needs of student-parents in responding to this situation:
I had one student who would bring a child to class. But I think the college seems to have resources set up for a more “quote unquote” average student. And the fact of the matter is that the college is not a place with that, again in quotes, average college student. I don’t think the college knows how to support students who are single parents or who aren’t necessarily single parents but their partner also works full time. You typically can’t do any sort of online or at home learning at the college. I think it’s a huge disservice to students who are parents – single or otherwise – for students who work full time, or for students who are primary caretakers for their parents or grandparents.
Those who espoused this valued not only acknowledged the validity of students’ perspectives, but also supported students’ self-agency in identifying their own priorities to prioritize across their academic, personal, and professional lives.
Free and Informed Choice
This value was primarily expressed in two ways: (1) a shared intentionality about making students aware of their options, to support the development of their self-agency and autonomy, and (2) instructors’ own discretionary decision-making with regards to being flexible in enforcing formal rules, policies, practices, and procedures. In the student-employee situation, instructors expressed support for students making their own free and informed choices about how to proceed in the course:
I’d leave it to the student, if the student wants to try to come back to class, work towards being a full participant in the class is fine with me. I just want to make sure the student knows her options and is making a real choice – “Yes, I do want to be in this class” – not kind of just let it go. A deliberate choice and intention.
Just from my own experience and from talking to other colleagues it rarely works out well for the student to take an incomplete. It gives them this momentary sense of relief, they’re thinking “Oh good, I don’t have to think about this right now.” But I would much rather work with the student at the time to meet the course’s objectives as closely as possible in a way that is actually doable for the student. Keeping in mind her life, keeping in mind she’s got other classes, presumably mine’s not the only one.
It sounded similar in response to the single dad and student asking for a grade from the previous semester managing their choices as well:
My general policy is that if they are eager to learn and we’ve been working together throughout the semester, we have an honest conversation about what their options are. We look at their options for fulfilling major requirements and determine together what they’re after and just the situation itself. So, to have this holistic perspective of whether their current strategy makes sense. I like to empower students by giving them options and then they can think things through and let me know.
I have students every semester who don’t pass. It’s always really important to me that that isn’t surprising information to them. I really try to reach out to them via email. If they’re in class I try to keep them after class to let them know, like, hey you’re on the track for not passing this. You’re going to have to retake this if you don’t pass. What can we do? You’re missing late assignments, et cetera.
I believe I have a responsibility of reaching out to those who are either not doing the work, they’re absent, or they seem to be struggling in some way. It could be something very simple like, “Well, you know, you’ve missed three quizzes in a row, and here’s where you stand, and you don’t want to miss any more.” And most of the time when I do that, the response is good – usually they thank me for checking in with them which is gratifying.
I make all the people who get bad grades come and meet with me, so I think we would’ve hopefully devised some sort of plan. That would include assessing how many of their classes are writing and reading intensive and trying to figure out are there places to cut or … I think sometimes students need community to help them balance things out.
When instructors enacted this value by choosing to be flexible in their application of the rules, they were attentive to the ways in which following the rules exactly might actually be counterproductive for meeting students’ needs and supporting student progress in practice. When discussing situations in which students were struggling with consistent attendance and punctuality, for example, these instructors saw less utility in being strict than in giving students credit for showing up at all despite their circumstances:
My response is just to focus on my own teaching. I can’t make students come to class. I don’t want to punish them for not showing up. It’s set in the syllabus, what attendance measures there are – but I don’t really grade them on that. So that’s my response is just to create more engaging discussions and questions and readings and so forth.
I’ll let them know that they’re responsible for the work that they miss but they’re adults, and I would be flexible with somebody who has something so important to them – something that’s more important than whatever’s being covered in class that week.
It’s none of my business if some kid is going to Yemen for two weeks to attend a close family funeral. I don’t necessarily want them to be even thinking or worrying about keeping up with this or that reading. I figure nothing that we’re doing is so crucial that we can’t figure it out when they get back. I want them to be able to be fully present with their family.
Free and informed choice enabled instructors to think from the student’s perspective, by opening both lines of inquiry and communication that facilitated a deeper understanding of how to meet their students’ needs. By empowering their students to make more autonomous choices, instructors themselves were able to make better-informed choices about how to support students – because they had more information available to them from the student’s perspective. Instructors who expressed this value did more than simply learn about students’ perspectives on each matter, they trusted that students were both competent and responsible enough to self-determine their own educational trajectories, even when outside responsibilities presented academic challenges.
Internal Commitment to Choices and Constant Monitoring of Their Implementation
This value was expressed when instructors stood by their choices to prioritize students’ perspectives in guiding their own academic decision-making processes, but still chose to scaffold student progress by monitoring the implications of those choices carefully over time. With the disruptive student who blamed the teacher for their plagiarism, for example, instructors discussed that they would be reluctant to immediately report the student and potentially subject them to harsh punishment for what could be a misunderstanding:
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about it because on the one hand I want the students to be responsible for themselves and to not think they can just cheat their way through college but on the other hand, I don’t want to make things harder for students that are struggling. So, I try to convince the students that it’s not worth cheating and I give them a lot of opportunities to get a better grade with doing extra credit.
The way that the administration deals with plagiarism is really – I mean it becomes the sort of thing that can kind of change the path of your life, and in a first-year English class – I just think that’s too much. Especially when a lot of my students really come to college without the basics of writing an argumentative paper. I want them to have a chance to gain these skills without consequences.
I wouldn’t want to go all in and kind of hit them with the full force of whatever plagiarism rules, because I feel that they are likely acting out of a defensive position – they’re not acting out of hate and spite. They are struggling and they’re uncomfortable with that fact. Maybe they’re embarrassed about it and aren’t comfortable or empowered to seek help or reach out, and rely instead on the disrespectful attitude. I don’t want to go all in trying to punish them. I think ultimately a kind and forgiving learning environment that’s focused on the student’s own needs is going to be more successful than a kind of rule-focused, strict environment.
From this perspective, instructor references to rules and policies were not made to explain why students could not continue despite their challenging situations – they were discussed as instructors sought workarounds to those policies so that students would not have to deprioritize their outside responsibilities in order to stay in school.
Internal commitment to supporting students’ academic progress alongside their external responsibilities was also demonstrated through instructors’ close monitoring of student situations in ways that kept them from incurring negative consequences for showing up as nontraditional students in the classroom. One instructor explained their perception that the willingness to do so is driven by the discernment to distinguish between students who choose not to show up due to disinterest and those who are struggling to show up due to factors beyond their control: “I take a very lax, holistic, individualized approach to grading, because I know that students are not afforded the same opportunities outside the classroom. I just think that’s reason enough for me to be fluid in how I assess them.” Another corroborated this desire to maintain control over student outcomes by applying rules discretionarily when necessary: “I actually want to make sure that I can handle the scenario myself, because once it gets to the administrative level, I have less control over how it works.”
A second way instructors expressed this value was by emphasizing the importance of exercising patience with students who do not “take” to instructions given or support offered the first time around. In response to the disruptive student who later blames the instructor for their plagiarism, for example, there was a shared emphasis on giving students the benefit of the doubt in that they might not understand the gravity of the ramifications associated with their mistakes:
I think just offering the student an opportunity to do it again might be a good first move – to put the ball in their court. But if as I see it, if the student isn’t learning and gaining something, then it is on me as the professor to change what I’m doing. If they don’t take me up on that, then it’s up to us both to work in a participatory way to make sure they get what they want out of the class. I would make my intentions known that I don’t care what grade she gets, I care what she gets out of the class.
It was actually interesting the way you presented the information, because it was sort of set up to call this student disruptive. But as you explained, this student is going through a major transition and may not be aware of the opportunities for in class – this can look like disrespect to the instructor. Whereas it’s a student telling you that they need help in a different way.
This value reinforces instructor commitment to supporting their students’ abilities to develop self-agency and control, as well as over the decision-making processes used to manage their external responsibilities alongside their academic responsibilities.
In Chapter 10 I discuss how data presented in this chapter inform consequences for instructor learning and effectiveness with regards to managing students’ culturally specific challenges across these situations. Linking governing values expressed in the data to their consequences for individual learning and effectiveness pairs the data with central principles from the action science literature toward the development of generalizable insights about how college faculty experience increased or decreased effectiveness at learning from and managing cultural differences between themselves and their students.
