Linda Dale Bloomberg holds the positions of Associate Director of faculty support and development, and full professor of education in the Sanford College of Education, National University. Dr. Bloomberg received her doctorate in 2006 from Teachers College, Columbia University, where she completed the AEGIS Program in Adult and Organizational Learning. She is the author of Designing and Delivering Effective Online Instruction: How to Engage Adult Learners.
The significant educational disruptions over the past few years continue to reshape the education landscape and have continued to illuminate racial and socioeconomic inequities, deepening the digital divide and diminishing persistence rates. Institutions of higher education are increasingly more diverse—racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically—with present and future students having a range of intersectional needs and aspirations related to their cultural backgrounds, gendered experiences and identities, and abilities. A core mission is to provide students from all different backgrounds access to a high-quality, affordable education, and ultimately work to ensure that all graduates are prepared for a lifetime of learning. This means critically assessing institutional systemic barriers to success for marginalized and underrepresented populations rather than focusing on the “deficits” of those populations to explain the disproportionality.
Educational access and completion and economic success are inextricably intertwined. College completion has a direct impact on closing equity gaps in the larger society by helping students get better, higher-waged jobs providing a path to individual and family prosperity for the graduate and benefitting state and federal budgets through paying higher taxes and using fewer government services. Degree completion also drives civic engagement (AAC & U, Step Up and Lead for Equity). Equity involves not only increasing opportunities for individuals who receive an inequitable share of resources but taking specific steps to narrow the gaps between the most and least-privileged individuals and groups. To do this effectively and eradicate outcomes differences for marginalized identity groups, higher education leaders must become comfortable with talking about inclusion as a high-priority goal and adopting an equity mindset toward all institutional decisions. In that context, the work requires building learning environments that authentically and effectively facilitate equitable student success through advancing and nurturing engaged inclusivity.
Defining Student Success: The Critical First Step toward Promoting It
Student success is a term that appears frequently in higher education discourse, and encompasses the following questions: 1) What constitutes student success? (How should student success be defined or described?) 2) How do postsecondary institutions promote student success? (What specific types of educational processes contribute to, or increase the likelihood of student success within the context of a favorable outcome?) 3) How can student success be measured or assessed? (What constitutes evidence that student success has been realized and that certain experiences are responsible for its actualization?)
How success is defined impacts policies and practices, and ultimately affects student outcomes. Definitions of success will impact how researchers choose to measure the construct, which in turn will impact how data are interpreted and what recommendations are proposed (AAC &U, Making Excellence Inclusive). Weatherton and Schussler (2021) point to historically hegemonic conceptualizations of student success, calling on researchers to carefully consider their definitions of success and associated metrics with a clear focus on inclusion, to adopt a more holistic view of student success, and to more fully consider how their conceptions of success impact their research. Moreover, as these authors emphasize, it is critical to ensure that student advocacy is incorporated in all planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts.
Success can encompass a combination of institutional and student actions, and the following outcomes are frequently cited indicators of student success in higher education:
- Student retention (persistence): Entering college students remain, re-enroll, and continue their educational pursuits.
- Educational attainment: entering students persist to completion and attainment of their degree, program, or educational goal.
- Academic achievement: students achieve satisfactory or superior levels of academic performance as they progress through and complete their college experience.
- Intellectual development: developing skills for acquiring and communicating knowledge, learning how to learn, and how to think deeply.
- Emotional development: developing skills for understanding, controlling, and expressing emotions.
- Social development: enhancing the quality and depth of interpersonal relationships, leadership skills, and civic engagement.
- Ethical development: formulating a clear value system that guides life choices and demonstrates personal character.
- Student advancement: students proceed to and succeed at subsequent educational and occupational endeavors for which their college degree or program was designed to prepare them.
This holistic approach leads toward a deeper understanding of equitable student success and is consistent with many college mission statements and institutional goals, which include outcomes that are not solely academic or cognitive in nature. The implications of a holistic definition of student success for one very desirable student outcome—student retention—is underscored by research which repeatedly demonstrates that a vast majority of students who withdraw from college do so for reasons other than poor academic performance, and that most departing students are indeed in good academic standing at the time of their departure. If student success is indeed defined as a holistic phenomenon that embraces the multiple dimensions of personal development in tandem with the multiple goals of higher education, the next step would be to identify the central principles or critical features of learning experiences that are most likely to embrace and implement a comprehensive definition of equitable student success and work toward realizing its intended outcomes.
Centering the lens on equitable student success for enduring transformation
In much of my writing I focus on transformative learning, and the role of “transformative educators” as those who strive to achieve equitable student success by meeting the needs of all learners, offering them the ownership, agency and autonomy to actively engage in the learning experience, so that they are empowered to implement changes in their own personal and professional lives, and ultimately in the lives of others (Bloomberg, 2021,2022, 2023, 2024a, 2024b). Perspective transformation, a core element of transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991, 2000), involves (a) an empowered sense of self, (b) a more critical understanding of how assumptions and experiences shape and influence one’s beliefs and knowledge, and (c) more functional strategies and resources for moving forward. In sum, transformative learning is essentially about making meaning of our experiences and significantly transforming what we know or believe, which in turn influences the way we think and behave.
In my book, Designing and Delivering Effective Online Instruction: How to Engage Adult Learners, I discuss that the importance of striving to achieve the kind of “deep learning” that arises from dialogue and critical reflection. What sets apart the transformative learning approach—and what indeed makes it unique—is the strong focus on critical self-reflection as integral to developing your own and your students’ transformative learning. Critical self-reflection is precisely the skill students must develop to overcome limiting beliefs and mindsets that compromise their effectiveness as citizens, family members, and employees. Critical self-reflection is also the key to helping develop your own and your students’ meta-cognitive ability (i.e., the ability to self-assess their own learning). Critical self-reflection is foundational for students’ development as more self-aware individuals who possess the skills and desire to contribute to the social good, including their families, and their local and global communities (Brookfield, 1998, 2015; Dewey, 1933).
Critical thinking occurs through reflection and dialogue, commonly referred to as discourse, and so the implication is to provide opportunities for learners to fully participate in dialogue and reflection by engaging in inclusive classroom communities. Tinto (1997) wrote that engaging in community, and learning collaboratively with instructors and peers contribute to feelings of belongingness, connectedness, and inclusivity, which in turn support learning. Finding ways for learners to collaborate with each other and integrate feedback deepens their learning and helps move them toward mastery. Encouraging students to share their experiences with each other validates these experiences and creates valuable collaborative learning opportunities. The concept of active learning, where learners actively participate in and contribute to discussion, and engage in critical thinking, essentially places the learner at the center of the learning experience and has significant applicability to engagement, empowerment, and transformation.
Leveraging Organizational Capacity to Meet Transformational Goals
Preparing to engage in equity work is an adaptive challenge and one that requires a transformed organization mindset. In the final analysis, to reach their true potential as “engines of equity”, institutions of higher education need to be clear upfront about the major challenges facing us at this moment relative to equitable student success. We also need to be clear about the short-term and/or long-term strategies and responses that our institutions are pursuing to address these equitable student success challenges, and whether and to what extent these strategies are working to facilitate transformation. Capacities that can help achieve collective transformative impact, include the following:
- Assist faculty and staff better understand the diverse student populations’ changing needs
- Make faculty aware of all available resources, practices, and evidence-based processes to support student success, with a focus on inclusivity and culturally relevant pedagogy
- Gain a better understanding of the barriers facing your students, and identify strategies for identifying and addressing barriers and challenges
- Ensure that the institution is truly ready to embrace and address the need for equitable student success at all levels
- Articulate equitable student success interventions that allow for a clear focus on solutions, measures, and actionable outcomes
- Identify ways of measuring, assessing, and reporting data, and be intentional in using available data to implement real changes
Identifying the central principles or critical features of learning experiences that are most likely to embrace and implement a comprehensive definition of equitable student success can move higher education closer to realizing its intended outcomes. As educators and educational leaders we can always do more to connect with our students within inclusive contexts; ensuring all students feel seen and heard, inspiring us to keep reimagining new ways to honor a diversity of voices and experiences, thereby paving the way to witness the triumph of all of our learners. What will YOU do to make a transformative difference in walking the equity walk?
 | Designing and Delivering Effective Online InstructionHow to Engage Adult LearnersLinda Dale Bloomberg  |
Resources
AAC&U (Association of American Colleges and Universities). n.d. “Making Excellence Inclusive.” https://www.aacu.org/making-excellence-inclusive (accessed July 2, 2023).
AAC & U (Association of American Colleges and Universities). n.d. “Step Up and Lead for Equity: What Higher Education Can Do to Reverse Deepening Divides”. https://rpgroup.org/Portals/0/Documents/Events/SummerInstitute/SI2018/2018_Past_Resources/Pre-InstituteReadings/StepUpandLeadforEquity.pdf?ver=2020-02-22-082355-253 (accessed July 10, 2024)
Bloomberg, L. D. (2021). Designing and delivering effective online instruction: How to engage adult learners. Teachers College Press, Columbia University. https://www.tcpress.com/designing-and-delivering-effective-online-instruction-9780807765289
Bloomberg, L. D. (August, 2022). Celebrating First-Generation College Students: Trailblazers and Future Role-Models! https://www.tcpress.com/blog/celebrating-first-generation-college-students-trailblazers-future-role-models/
Bloomberg, L. D. (2023). Unlocking Student Potential Through Transformative Learning. Qedex Global Community for Transformative Learning Practitioners
Bloomberg, L. D. (2024a). Supporting first-generation college students: Ensuring equitable student success, International Journal Online Graduate Education,7,1, 2-14. https://ijoge.org/index.php/IJOGE/article/view/73/34
Bloomberg, L. D. (2024b). Building capacity for equitable student success in higher education: Transforming the organizational mindset. American Educational Research Association (2024 Annual Meeting). “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities: A Call to Action”
Brookfield, S. D. (1998). Critically Reflective Practice. The Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 18,197–205.
Brookfield, S. D. (2015) The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom (3rd Ed). Jossey Bass.
Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (Revised ed.). Heath and Co.
Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass.
Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult. Core concepts of transformation theory. In J. Mezirow & Associates (Eds.), Learning as Transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress (pp. 3–33).
Tinto, V. (1997). Classrooms as Communities: Exploring the Educational Character of Student Persistence. Journal of Higher Education, 68, 599-623. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2959965
Weatherton, M. & Schussler, E. E. (2021). Success for All? A Call to Re-examine How Student Success Is Defined in Higher Education. CBE Life Sci Educ. 2021 Spring; 20(1),3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8108506/
Featured photo by Brett Jordan