Ignatian Pedagogy As a Model for
Advising Student Leaders
JASPA
St. Louis University
July 2010
Jennifer M. Mussi, Ph. D.
Fordham University
Greetings from the Bronx:
Home of Fordham University and the 27-Time
World Champion New York Yankees
Learning Outcomes
• With so many options, why did you pick this
session?
Learning Outcomes
During this session, participants will learn about the Ignatian
Pedagogical model of teaching that fosters an environment of
experience, reflection and action.
Session participants will come away from today’s program with:
• A greater understanding of the Ignatian Pedagogical Model
• An understanding of how the model can be used by Student
Affairs administrators in mentoring and advising student
leaders, resident assistants
• Resources for building opportunities to use the IPP in Student
Affairs
• Resources for continued learning about the IPP
What is Ignatian Pedagogy?
• Understood in the light of the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius, the IPP is the
continual interplay of experience, reflection
and action in the teaching-learning process
• An ideal portrayal of the dynamic
interrelationship of teacher and learner in
the student’s journey of growth in
knowledge and freedom
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
History Lesson: Putting the IPP
into Context
The Classic Texts of the Society of Jesus:
• The Spiritual Exercises
• The Ratio Studiorum of 1599
The Contemporary Texts of the Society of Jesus:
• The Characteristics of Jesuit Education
• Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach
The Spiritual Exercises
Through the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius designed an
experience where a spiritual director leads a retreatant on a
journey towards God.
 The relationship between the Spiritual Director and the
Retreatant is central to the Exercises.

Teaching and learning through the
lens of Ignatian Spirituality
Using the Spiritual Exercises as a model, Ignatian pedagogy
uses the teacher to lead a learner on a journey towards the Truth.
 The teacher creates the conditions, lays the foundations and
provides the opportunities for the continual interplay of the
student’s experience, reflection and action to occur.

Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Ratio Studiorum of 1599
A “rule book” of sorts used to codify major
elements of Jesuit education at a time of great
expansion of Jesuit education.
 Written at a time when members of the Society
of Jesus were running the schools themselves.
 Less of an emphasis on “mission” and “vision”
of Jesuit education, but how to run a school,
discipline a student, the progression of a student’s
immersion in the curriculum.
 Much of the curriculum in the first Jesuit
schools compose our modern core curriculum.
 Today it would be impossible to have a
universal curriculum, but the IPP can help us
ensure the spirit of Jesuit education lives on.

The Characteristics of Jesuit
Education
The Spiritual Characteristics of Jesuit Education as presented in the 1986 document by ICAJE
1. Jesuit Education is world-affirming.
2. Jesuit Education assists in the total formation of each individual within the human community.
3. Jesuit Education includes a religious dimension that permeates the entire
education.
4. Jesuit Education is an apostolic instrument.
5. Jesuit Education promotes dialogue between faith and culture.
6. Jesuit Education insists on individual care and concern for each person.
7. Jesuit Education emphasizes activity on the part of the student in the learning
process.
8. Jesuit Education encourages life-long openness to growth.
9. Jesuit Education is value-oriented.
10. Jesuit Education encourages a realistic knowledge, love, and acceptance of self.
11. Jesuit Education provides a realistic knowledge of the world in which we live.
12. Jesuit Education proposes Christ as the model of human life.
13. Jesuit Education provides adequate pastoral care.
14. Jesuit Education celebrates faith in personal and community prayer, worship, and
service.
The Characteristics of Jesuit
Education
15. Jesuit Education is preparation for active life and commitment.
16. Jesuit Education serves the faith that does justice.
17. Jesuit education seeks to form men and women for others.
18. Jesuit education manifests a particular concern for the poor.
19. Jesuit Education is an apostolic instrument, in service of the church as it serves
human society.
20. Jesuit education prepares students for active participation in the church and the local community,
for the service of others.
21. Jesuit education pursues excellence in its work of formation.
22. Jesuit education witnesses to excellence.
23. Jesuit Education stresses lay-Jesuit collaboration.
24. Jesuit Education relies on a spirit of community among: teaching staff and
administrators; people chosen to join the educational community; the Jesuit
community; governing boards; parents; students; former students and benefactors.
25. Jesuit Education takes place within a structure that promotes community.
26. Jesuit Education adapts means and methods in order to achieve its purpose most
effectively.
27. Jesuit Education is a .system. of schools with a common vision and common goals.
28. Jesuit Education assists in providing the professional training and ongoing formation
that is needed, especially for teachers.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
What is Ignatian Pedagogy?
• An Ignatian paradigm of experience, reflection and action
suggests a host of ways in which teachers might accompany
their students in order to facilitate learning and growth
through encounters with truth and explorations of human
meaning.
• It is a paradigm that can provide an effective response to
critical educational issues facing us today, applying theory to
the practice of helping students learn.
• The model is a fresh yet familiar Ignatian paradigm of Jesuit
education, a way of proceeding which all of us can confidently
follow in our efforts to help students truly grow as persons of
competence, conscience and compassion.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
How can Ignatian pedagogy help us
as advisors?
• Pedagogy is the way in which teachers accompany
learners in their growth and development.
• Pedagogy, the art and science of teaching, cannot
simply be reduced to methodology. It must include a
world view and a vision of the ideal human person to
be educated.
• Ignatian Pedagogy assumes the Jesuit worldview and
moves one step beyond suggesting more explicit ways
in which Ignatian values can be incarnated in the
teaching-learning process.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
Sounds good, but …
• How does this apply to my work as a
Student Affairs administrator?
What does “advisor” mean to you?
•For you:
•For me: an advisor is an educator. Let me tell
you a story …
•According to Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary, an advisor is a person who gives advice or
makes a recommendation as to a decision or course of
action.
Your Experience: What are the
blessings of being an advisor?
Your Experience: What are the
challenges of being an advisor?
Remember your early interactions
with an advisor/mentor
• What made that relationship special?
• How can you apply that to your role as an
advisor and how do you need to advise
differently for today’s students?
• When have you been that person for one
of your student advisees?
Advising within the big picture of
student affairs administration
Today’s student affairs administrator is
expected to: educate, lead and manage
Leader
Manager
Educator
“The Professional Student Affairs Administrator,” Winston, Creamer, Miller and associates
Behavioral characteristics of
educators, leaders and managers
Educators:
• Lecturing
• Demonstrating
• Advising
• Coaching
• Modeling
• Facilitating
• Learning
• Researching
• Evaluating
• Collaborating
• Structuring
Leaders:
•Supervising
•Planning and organization
•Decision making
•Monitoring indicators
•Controlling
•Representing
•Coordinating
•Consulting
•Administering
Managers:
•Planning and organizing
•Problem solving
•Clarifying roles and
objectives
•Informing
•Monitoring
•Motivating and inspiring
•Consulting
•Delegating
•Supporting
•Developing and
mentoring
•Managing conflict and team
building
•Networking
•Recognizing
•Rewarding
“The Professional Student Affairs Administrator,” Winston, Creamer, Miller and associates
With all that …
• Who has time for advising?
• Advising is complicated.
• Advising is incredibly important and at the
core of what we do.
Getting Ignatian about advising
• What can St. Ignatius teach us about
advising?
Ignatian Pedagogy: 5 elements
• Context
• Experience
• Reflection
• Action
• Evaluation
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Context of Learning:
Before Ignatius would begin to direct a person in the Spiritual Exercises,
he always wanted to know about their predispositions to prayer, to
God. He realized how important it was for a person to be open to
the movements of the Spirit. In the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius
makes the point that the experiences of the retreatant should
always give context to the exercises that are being used.
Educators should take account of:
1.
The real context of a student’s life
2.
The socio-economic, political and cultural context
3.
The institutional environment of the school or learning center
4.
What previously acquired concepts students bring with them to
the start of the learning process
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Experience:
Experience for Ignatius meant “to
taste something internally.”
•
•
•
We can use “experience” to describe any activity in
which in addition to a cognitive grasp of the matter
being considered, some sensation of an affective
nature is registered by the student.
Human experience can be either direct or vicarious
(reading, listening or lecture).
What is this? How do I react to it?
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Reflection
Throughout his life, Ignatius knew himself
to be constantly subjected to different
stirrings, invitations, alternatives which
were often contradictory. His greatest
effort was to try to discover what
moved him in each situation.
DISCERNMENT – clarification of
internal motivation
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Reflection
•
A thoughtful reconsideration of some subject matter, experience, idea,
purpose or spontaneous reaction, in order to grasp its significance
more fully
•
Reflection is the process by which meaning surfaces in human
experience:
–
–
–
–
–
By understanding the truth being studied more clearly
By understanding the sources of the sensations or reactions I
experience
By deepening my understanding of the implications of what I have
grasped for myself and for others
By achieving personal insights into events, ideas, truth or the
distortion of truth
By coming to understanding of who I am (what moves me and
why) and who I might be in relation to others
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Action
For Ignatius, the acid test of life is what
one does, not what one says. “Love is
shown in deeds, not words.”
The thrust of the Spiritual Exercises was precisely to enable the
retreatant to know the will of God and to do it freely.
Ignatius and the first Jesuits were most concerned with the
formation of students’ attitudes, values, and ideals
according to which they would make decisions in a wide
variety of situations about what actions were to be done.
Ignatius wanted Jesuit schools to form young people who could
(and would) contribute intelligently and effectively to the
welfare of society.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Action
•
•
•
•
Reflection in IP would be a truncated process if it
ended with understanding and affective reactions.
Ignatian reflection, just as it begins with the reality
of experience, necessarily ends with that same
reality in order to effect it.
Reflection only develops and matures when it
fosters decision and commitment.
Ignatius strives to encourage decision and
commitment for the MAGIS, the better service of
God and our sisters and brothers.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Action
The term “action” refers to internal human
growth based upon experiences that
has been reflected upon as well as its
manifestation internally. It involves
two steps:
•
•
Interiorized choices – the will is moved
Choices externally manifested – calls the
student to action: to do something
consistent with this new conviction
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
The Dynamics of the Paradigm
Evaluation
•
•
•
Not just evaluation in the typical sense.
IP aims at formation which includes, but goes
beyond academic mastery. It is concerned with
students’ well-rounded growth as persons for
others.
Periodic evaluation of the students’ growth in
attitudes, priorities and actions consistent with
being a person for others is essential to IPP.
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
IPP in Practice: The continual interplay
of experience, reflection and action
ACTION
REFLECTION
EXPERIENCE
Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach, Duminuco, S.J.
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• In a time of strategic planning and program
assessment, have we examined our existing
programs and services through the lens of
IPP?
• A Call For Action
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Provide your students with context,
experience, reflection, action and
evaluation in everything that you do.
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Use IPP to strengthen Student Affairs
instructional techniques.
– Many of us are not classroom teachers, but the
IPP can help us strengthen our delivery
methods and provide a template for creating
our out-of-the classroom learning.
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Use the IPP in the design of your leadership development
model both in broad stroke and in individual learning
opportunities.
– Consider the four-year experience your students will have
with your program/department and carve our experiences
based on the five-steps of the IPP.
– Use the IPP to creating a rubric for how you will approach
your leadership development initiatives – requiring that
each workshop or activity consider the framework of the
IPP within its learning outcomes.
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Utilize the five-steps in your ongoing advising
meetings with student organization leaders,
RAs, Orientation Leaders, etc.
• The Examen
• Ongoing journaling (both student and advisor)
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• The IPP reminds us that as educators we
accompany our students on their journey.
• Utilize the IPP in our own professional
development.
• Utilize the IPP in supervision.
IPP In Action:
• Fordham University First Year Formation
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Your ideas and ways of using the IPP:
Ways the IPP can be used in
student leadership advising:
• Challenges to implementation:
Functional Area Break-Outs:
• Student Activities Advisors: How can you utilize
the IPP in your ongoing advising of student
government leaders?
• Orientation Advisors: How can you utilize the IPP
in the first-year experience?
• Residential Life Advisors: How can you use the
IPP in building an RA training program and
ongoing supervision of RAs?
• General Student Affairs: How can the IPP be
used in supervising Student Affairs staff? (parttime/full-time)
IPP Resources for Advisors:
• The Jesuit Secondary Education Association
website
• The full text of The Characteristics of Jesuit Education
and Ignatian Pedagogy: A Practical Approach
(widely available online and in The Jesuit Ratio
Studiorum 400th Anniversary Perspectives edited by
Rev. Vincent J. Duminuco, S.J.
• Fordham University Dissertation by Joseph
DeFeo of Fairfield University
Thank you!
Contact Information:
Jennifer Mussi, Ph. D.
Assistant to the Vice President for
University Mission and Ministry
Fordham University
mussi@fordham.edu
718.817.3012