Professionalism, power, and prestige: Ideology and practice in student affairs.

Abstract

This study seeks to capture the professional ideology of student affairs administration through an examination of national policy statements published between 1937 and 1987. Both professionalization and deconstruction analytical frameworks are employed to identify the assumptions that underlie that ideology and the powerful social structures those assumptions represent. To explore how the student affairs ideology has been reflected in public expression of professional practice, national conference programs of the American College Personnel Association and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators are examined. The conference texts from years immediately succeeding and, in one case, preceding publication of the policy statements serve as the foundation for investigating the linkages between professional ideology and professional practice in student affairs. By defining the professional ideology of student affairs administration and demonstrating how the assumptions that underlie that philosophy have been manifested in practice, I reveal how the profession has been shaped and constrained by serving and protecting certain powerful social interests.