Students in Washington State University’s (WSU) Development of Social Theory (SOC-310) course experience a high-risk scenario riding on two short 1–2-page papers comprising 40% of their grades in addition to quizzes (40%) and peer discussion (20%). Grades are factors into acceptance to graduate school, where some schools weight grades received in junior and senior years more heavily (Harvard Department of Psychology, 2020). Many course structures, and faculty at WSU invest time and effort to assist students by breaking high-risk assignments into a progressive series of steps such that professors provide frequent feedback enroute to assignments comprising a large portion of a course’s grade. More frequent opportunities to adjust practices prior to finals is like workplace experiences collaborating with teams and customers prior to product delivery. SOC-310 is markedly different in experience, offering little room for advisement, where one slip can drop a student’s grade tremendously, and in turn, their GPA. Low engagement yet high-risk courses (LEHRCs) may offer a counterintuitive social advantage.

Turning toward solutions to LEHRC situations, it is well known that learning is associated with flow, which is comprised of high feedback experiences contributing to increasing skill along a narrow band of challenge, where challenge is not to exceed 3% of current skill (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Anxiety is associated with too much challenge. Boredom is associated with too little challenge. Flow’s learning concepts reached convergent validity with theories of a zone of proximal development and its scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978; Wood et al., 1976; Yarbrough, 2018) supported by optimal arousal (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Without optimal opportunities for course correction, reinforcement is disconnected from behavior. A lack of engagement may exhibit anxious “excessive anticipatory responding under conditions of threat uncertainty” (Grupe & Nitschke, 2014, p. 488). Essentially, increased optimal experience in frequency of advisement may lead to positive outcomes for students and increase ties between students and their professors.

Gellner’s (1987) network theory of social order concerning trust, cohesion, and social order, drawn from Ibn Khaldunian’s (1377/1958) early writings, is a framework to consider the social problem of students in LEHRCs. The remainder of this paper shall consider the functions of Gellner’s and Khaldun’s theories. For Gellner, dependency on a context of easily transportable wealth (e.g., pastoralism) is correlated to difficulty in forming strong central governance due to easy escape from said governance (e.g., sheepherder escape, taxes are difficult to collect) amidst threat of wealth’s capture by others (e.g., other tribes might steal one’s sheep). However, this context is correlated with an increased need for cohesion in maintaining norms of behavior, but ultimately this need is in defense from theft through large numbers of in-group peers where tight solidarity with said peers supports defense. 

Against a context of transportable wealth and lack of strong central governance are norms wherein in-group members commit “treason” to join what was once an out-group for reasons that may evidence intellectual-rational social action (see Weber, 1922/2009) or biological bases of behavior (i.e., natural selection). Normalization of treason may be evidenced in cultures such as the Naibu, where members of in-group tribes must marry into out-group tribes (Gluckman, 1955). Gellner (1987) asserts that frequent treason results in weak social ties between groups, thus enhancing social order without a strong central governance. This is made possible by maintenance of relations with historically in-group members turned to out-group members. Therefore, individuals within a group receive negative and positive sanctions by both in-group and out-group members, thus establishing order between groups. Further asserted is that changing affiliation between groups requires clear definition, visibility, and ritual.

Turning toward application of Gellner’s and Khaldunian’s theoretical construct, the absence of a strong central authority of a field (e.g., professor) providing frequent sanctions positive and negative may be a reality of LEHRCs. A lack of a central authority may be related to the easy portability of student membership in a field where the wealth of an individual in academic settings is increasingly devoid of time and resource. Wealth of a student in academia is mainly in the realm of knowledge and attention comprised of varying forms of intelligence. Students may freely switch affiliations in courses and majors across their educational experience. This reality is as those living in an arid environment where treason may be associated with high competition for resources miniscule (e.g., grad program acceptance, research funding, tenure).

Following Gellner’s constructs, is it possible that students in such an environment of LEHRCs may flip affiliations (e.g., change majors/minors) and reach out to other faculty members in other courses (e.g., leaning on mentors), and possibly even administrators? This seems likely, especially for those with sufficient cultural capital and awareness to do so. Concerning public declarations of changing affiliations, and the rituals entailed, this very paper serves as testimony. Gellner (1987) asserts, “it is precisely anarchy which engenders trust or… social cohesion” (p. 143). Students standing between two fields may flip in-group affiliations, and declare so publicly, but due to weak social ties with former in-groups, they may restrain demands for greater sanctions related to a feud with offending members deemed unsupportive. For example, a student may become so incensed by what is deemed neglect, they may raise up a concern to chairs or other members of a field, yet not want to risk burning bridges with an entire “tribe” of sociology.

In these ways social order is maintained across fields of science through loose affiliations made across public changing of one’s majors and minors enroute through experience of negative and positive sanctions, or lack of their frequency (i.e., lack of governance of one’s academic growth). In terms of pros and cons of a desire to increase feedback and gain more clarity, in the short term, gains could be made in improving student outcomes if more frequent touches are made, however there might be long-term costs to these efforts. The loose affiliations with other faculty members as a student seeks to resolve strains and stresses related to LEHRCs may not occur in the future for an interdisciplinary lover of knowledge. 

This is especially relevant regarding sociology concerned with social order, as affiliation with a field at large could be at risk if a stronger central governance prevents students from exploring or “jumping ship” to other fields in pursuit of social support. In this way, the absence of authority may serve as vehicle to pollinate other fields with sociology as professors pull back engagement. In essence, anarchy in faculty-student mandated coordination of a central governance (i.e., a university’s norms of student support) may create a greater social order across large distances of space and time as students reach out for support to other faculty, chairs, department heads, and provosts etc. This seems counter-intuitive, as the common assertion is that social support is better for student outcomes, but in this case, the field of sociology, and all sciences may yet benefit from weak ties formed amidst a weak central authority.

In conclusion, the lack of engagement, though risking short term grades and possibly admittance into highly competitive graduate programs may end up increasing weak links between in- and out-groups of fields, by exposing students to more members of fields, all while switching majors and minors as a form of treason to this or that field (or professor). However, the jury is out, as more scientifically sound studies are called for to investigate these matters along with tests for outcomes of degrees of engagement of faculty in the administration, or lack thereof, while students navigate carefully scaffolded challenges to meet their existing skills, all while facilitating social order across scientific disciplines. For the arid interdisciplinarian lacking funding, social support, and urban experience, they may just yet, through these experiences be invited into the citadel as specialist and set about the same sequence of events for another next generation—all is possibly, exactly as it ought to be.

References

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