Studying Development in a Time of Death - Response Piece

Alex C. Lange, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Higher education, School of Education at Colorado State University

 The night I began to outline the first chapter of my (original) dissertation[1] focused on transgender students’ self-authorship capacities, something nagged at my spirit. A cowlick that would not rest comfortably. A small splinter, not even a millimeter deep in my hand. As I stared at my poster board, trying to make sense of what bothered me, cold water splashed me in the face. I grabbed a sticky note and a metallic-colored marker and wrote down the phrase to make sure I would not run away from it:

 What does it mean to study student development in a time of death, division, and disease?

 When I wrote that note on March 25, 2020, I thought of the Black and Latina trans women and transfeminine people, who are exponentially subject to violence compared to their cisgender counterparts and their transmasculine and non-binary siblings. The trans community knows death so intimately that gatherings are held annually on November 20 across the globe. Coming together with trans kin and cisgender friends on Transgender Day of Remembrance reminds me of what it means to fall apart in public, to feel both deeply loved and easily disposable for hours at a time. How could I think of studying transgender students’ development? Development and learning felt like a privilege reserved for those who can make it into and endure all that awaits them on college campuses.

 As I read my friend Antonio’s excellent piece on distinguishing between experience, learning, and development, I came back to my researcher journal to think about this question further. As student development research spans three waves, I wondered to myself if studying development is still a worthy endeavor, a confrontation with my assumptions about the worth and necessity of student development theory amidst issues that plague higher education: the right-wing attacks on academic governance and freedom; the rising price of a college education; ideologies and incidents of anti-Blackness that dehumanize and harm others; and the persistent failure of postsecondary education administrators to help students attain their degrees. At times, these issues feel more pressing and necessary for scholarly examination than my particular research interests.

 I know student development research is essential and needed. Antonio shared great questions in his original post that begin to get us as scholars someplace different in our work. In many ways, scholars and practitioners need student development work that engages in the process of futurity—to dream and envision new possibilities and futures for minoritized populations on college campuses. For instance, what might it mean for educational institutions and their actors to not only accommodate transgender people but also actively invest in their lives and livelihoods? How might trans people, rather than cisgender people and a cisgender gaze, inform the kind of education trans people receive during their journeys in and beyond postsecondary education settings?

 And perhaps futurity is the way to frame the work necessary in the third wave, with greater attention to how social and institutional power shapes the developmental trajectories of college students. However, I think more is required of us as scholars doing third-wave student development research. Third-wave theorizing is not simply an incorporation of critical, power-attentive frameworks in our research designs. I have been wrestling with these (incomplete) questions as I consider my work moving forward:

 Is development research always about the individual?

 While many would argue that Chickering and Reisser’s work remains a bit dated and non-applicable for some groups, some of its original ideas may be worth re-examining in the third wave, particularly concepts of interdependence and relationships. The Ph.D. students in my advanced student development class have often brought up adrienne marie brown’s Emergent Strategy, particularly the principles of interdependence and nonlinear and iterative change. What might it mean to study these principles with critical frameworks for students who participate in mutual aid programs or live in housing cooperatives? These are two contexts where people are learning to create networks of resources in the face of oppressive structures and systems.

 What is the importance of college as a place compared to a thing one does?

 Many of our developmental theories do not theorize the role of college in promoting development. We, as scholars, better theorize institutions (and their machinations) in experience and learning research. In development research, we as researchers assume that college plays a role, yet I have wondered what elements of a college experience promote or hinder development. Especially when we expect practitioners to apply theories to the college environment without accounts of those contexts in our work. Ever since campuses shut down in 2020, I have wondered about the role of college as a place where development occurs. The “on-campus” language has largely left my everyday talk about postsecondary education. Those in online programs and on non-residential campuses may offer us new insight into the role of college in developmental journeys and if college does indeed make a difference.

 Does development stay wedded to the Allport-Sanford conception of “increasing complexity”?

I am not the first to ask this question, nor will I be the last. How we as scholars define development will lead us to certain methodological and epistemological choices. Elisa Abes, Antonio Duran, Susan Jones, and D-L Stewart have beautiful musings on this question in the last chapter of the Rethinking College Student Development Theory Using Critical Frameworks. What might it mean for development to be understood as participating in a community to which one belongs? To conceptualize what moves people from accepting to working against social relations that further marginalization? As a way of theorizing the mechanisms that enable students to practice freedom?

 As I continue to pursue learning and development as research endeavors, I keep these questions close. Us scholars must practice versatility, carrying out agenda that accounts for the ways people survive and thrive while in college. We must account for those oppressive forces that preclude possibilities for students’ development while investigating catalyzing components of institutions that propel communities forward. We must study how death and grief lurk in the very shadows for many of our students whilst imagining futures for communities that do not revolve around cycles of outrage and mourning. College students deserve developmental experiences that allow them to be human on their terms, to no longer retroactively fit on college campuses or into theories designed without them in mind.

  

About the Author

Alex edits this blog alongside Martha Sesteaga. Alex holds an impatient, enduring hope for a better version of postsecondary education. Dr. Lange is an assistant professor of higher education in the School of Education at Colorado State University. They study students minoritized by race, gender, sexuality, and ability, as well as the social forces that marginalize them during college. Some of Dr. Lange's recent projects and collaborations include how LGBTQ+ students thrive in college, considerations for critical approaches to college student development, and the in/visibility of race and racism in LGBTQ higher education scholarship. Alex is currently working on a national, longitudinal study on transgender college students' experiences in and after their undergraduate educations. Overall, Dr. Lange aims to help higher education professionals and researchers live up to their institutions' missions of quality, inclusiveness, and transformation for all members of campus communities.

[1] The COVID-19 pandemic forced me to write two dissertation proposals, one for a traditional book-chapter dissertation and another for a multi-article dissertation.