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Episode 16: The Art of Being Confused


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We discuss the value of learning to live in a place of cognitive dissonance, and how doc students experience the development of this skill. 

Links and Notes:

"Not by Chance Alone with the Legendary Social Psychologist Elliot Aronson" by Scott Barry Kaufman

"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong." By M. L. Mencken in "The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917) 

Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory. (2006). In J. E. Roeckelein (Ed.), Elsevier's dictionary of psychological theories. Elsevier Science & Technology. Credo Reference: 

Posselt, J., 2018. "Normalizing struggle: Dimensions of faculty support for doctoral students and implications for persistence and well-being. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(6), 988–1013. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1449080  ABSTRACT Faculty mentoring is a durable structure of doctoral education that facilitates intellectual growth, professional socialization, and progressive independence. We must more deeply understand, however, professors’ role in supporting doctoral students’ persistence and well-being, especially for students from groups who have been historically excluded and marginalized in their fields. This study strived for such understanding by evaluating findings of a phenomenology of faculty support in 4 high-diversity science, technology, engineering, and mathematics PhD programs at 2 research universities. I found that holistic faculty support has academic, psychosocial, and sociocultural dimensions, which faculty enact through specific behaviors. Students reported meaningful experiences with faculty that normalized struggle and failure by promoting a growth mind-set, validating student competence and potential, and opening discussion about racialized and gendered dynamics in academia. Collectively, these activities may prevent students from misconstruing the difficulty of graduate school with their ability to succeed. The article discusses how the findings may advance future higher education research and faculty professional development.

Contact Us:

Email: Dr. J. Scott Self

Email: Dr. Linnea Rademaker

Email: Dr. Peter Williams

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