Using Theory and Case Studies
to Liven up RA Training
John D. Foubert, Ph.D.
Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs
Oklahoma State University
For copies of PowerPoint:
https://okstate.academia.edu/JohnFoubert/ACPA-2015
American College Personnel Association Conference
Tampa, Florida; March 2015
John.foubert@gmail.com
Overview
• Theory to use in RA Training
• The Underappreciated Backstory of Sanford
• Sanford’s Key Concepts
• A Developmental Framework
• A Case Study (Chapter from Lessons Learned, 2nd ed.)
• Broad Questions and Final Points
• Note: Permission is granted to use all of the material I
have created in this session. That is the point! If you find it
valuable, I hope you will use it.
Who Was Nevitt Sanford?
• University of Richmond, Columbia, Harvard
• Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley
(1940).
• 1943: $500 grant to study anti-Semitism.
• “an opportunity to join the scientific
attack on fascism.”
• Constructed an anti-Semitism scale.
The Authoritarian Personality
• Traced the links between children’s upbringing
and their prejudice in adulthood.
• Showed people who were prejudiced against one
ethnic, racial, or religious group tended to be
prejudiced against others.
• Wrote about how social conditions could
encourage people with dogmatic biases to
persecute groups they were prejudiced against.
The Fearless Five
• Five Professors fired from Berkeley, 1950.
• “I do not belong to or believe in any organization
that believes in the overthrow of the
government by force or violence.” – Berkeley
Statement
• “no political test should be used in deciding who
would be teaching at the university.” -- Sanford
• “If we could punish people with extremely
unpopular opinions then we could silence
people with less unpopular opinions.” -- Sanford
After Berkeley…
• Tavistock Institute for Human Relations in
London for a year.
• Then joined the faculty of Vassar College
• In 1955: Berkeley with back pay.
• 1960: Stanford.
• 1968 founded The Wright Institute.
Two Major Books
about College Students
• The American College
• Based on data gathered from women at
Vassar in 1962
• Where Colleges Fail in 1967
• Speeches from his book tour
How Development Occurs
“The essential point is that a person develops through
being challenged: for change to occur, there must be
internal or external stimuli which upset his existing
equilibrium, which cause instability that existing modes
of adaptation do not suffice to correct, and which thus
require the person to make new responses and so to
expand his personality.” (Sanford, 1967, p. 51).
• Put this in language an RA could easliy
understand. Turn to your neighbor. Share
language.
• Residence Life Staff need to refocus on
developmental challenge.
Sanfordian Concepts
•Readiness
•Challenge
•Support
•Optimal Mismatch/Optimal
Dissonance
Readiness
• “Certain kinds of responses cannot be made unless certain
states or conditions have been built up in the person.
Change in the personality is induced largely by stimuli arising
either from the person’s bodily functioning or from his social
and cultural environment, and that the order of events in
personality development depends on the order in which
these stimuli are brought to bear. The condition of readiness
is necessary to further development but it is not a sufficient
cause of such development. Further development will not
occur until stimuli arrive to upset the existing equilibrium
and require fresh adaptation.” (Sanford, p. 258, The
American College).
• Translation: Readiness happens when your body, your
mind, or something in the environment reaches a tipping
point.
Challenge
• Sanford defined a challenge as a stimuli
that upset the student’s equilibrium.
• Sanford viewed challenge as something
that requires the student to have a new
response to the world around them.
• Challenge pushes students to reach
beyond their status quo – pushes them
beyond comfort zone.
• If the challenge is too great, the individual
can reach a breaking point and retreat.
Challenges
What are some challenges that
residents experience?
What are some challenges that tend to
be non-developmental?
Support
• Support variables uphold or sustain while
new behaviors or attitudes are initiated.
• Support is the stabilizing force that helps
make challenge manageable.
• Note: it is not doing things for or coddling
students!
Support
• If the support system is too great and it
impedes challenge, stagnation will occur.
• If students “fail to find support in any
satisfactory peer group there is
considerable likelihood that they will find
the situation intolerable and leave college”
(Sanford, p. 269, 1961).
Examples of Supports
• What are some supports that we
provide to students within residence
hall communities?
• Can any of these be non-developmental
supports?
Optimal Mismatch
• An optimal mismatch between
challenge and support is necessary
for students’ development, growth,
and change.
• The amount of challenge a person
can handle is based on the support
present.
Optimal Mismatch
• To encourage development, determining
the range of optimal dissonance/ optimal
mismatch for the individual is important.
• The range of optimal dissonance/optimal
mismatch for any particular student varies
depending on the quality of the challenge
and support provided by the environment,
as well as a student’s characteristics.
Sanford’s Theory
First Year Students
Seniors
Developmental Framework
1. Do an initial read through the case study.
2. Re-read the case study, identifying areas where
there are opportunities to challenge or support the
resident(s).
3. Create a step by step action plan for each resident
involved that includes both challenges and
supports.
4. Most importantly, keep in mind that the end goal is
optimal dissonance for each resident.
• Point: Get staff to think about their roles as
developmental educators focusing on readiness,
challenge, support, and optimal dissonance.
Broad Questions
To Promote Development
1. Do residents have the readiness for the stimuli
they are experiencing?
2. In what ways does each resident need challenge?
3. In what ways does each resident need support?
4. In what ways does the challenge and support
relationship need to be in relationship to
promote optimal mismatch?
5. In what ways does each RA need challenge and
support to promote optimal mismatch?
Lessons Learned:
How to Avoid the Biggest Mistakes Made by
College Resident Assistants (2nd Ed.)
http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Learned-Mistakes-ResidentAssistants/dp/0415538041/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=142548787
4&sr=8-2&keywords=john+foubert