Integrative Developmental Model
For Contextual Learning
Messiah Student with His Mayan Host Family in Belize
This model serves as a vehicle for articulating to constituents the comprehensive nature of our work with students, and our commitment toward their holistic growth and development.
The developmental model for conceptual learning:
- Assumes that students move through a series of steps or stages in the course of their personal academic maturity
- Is cyclical not linear in its conception
- May or may not correspond with students' chronological age or class status
- Has parallel applications to individual External Programs, despite their unique attributes and foci
- Is enhanced through strategic placement of experiential learning opportunities over the course of a student's college career, along with their corollary provisions for reflection and integration
The proposed developmental model for contextual learning will serve to:
- Enhance student learning by identifying External Program goals for each phase of a student's academic career
- Create contextual settings that serve as catalysts for student reflection on personal commitment and core values
- Provide early and continuous support as students seek to clarify personal giftedness and vocational calling
- Move beyond simulations to authentic, reality-based experiences that immerse students in the real world of work
- Partner with alumni in providing more frequent and varied off-campus opportunities in which students can test their vocational call
- Strengthen the triadic relationship between the College, our students, and community partners and/or employers
- Assist External Programs in articulating to faculty colleagues the nature of our work with students
- Enhance efforts to more closely synchronize student learning goals in External Programs with those of academic departments
- Provide a more explicit educational theory or philosophy upon which to build an assessment plan for External Programs
