Journey to the Advisor Within: Exploring Challenge, Transformation and Evolution in Advisor Stories

Abstract

In the Reflective Practice column of the third issue of the Relay Journal, Yamamoto (2019) remarked on the importance of creating a platform for advisors to voice their views, feelings, and experiences, and suggested a need for more reflective narratives to be posted from different social, historical, and cultural contexts in order to provide an intimate view inside advising sessions, thereby offering a better understanding of said advising practices. The aim was to create a forum where advisors could learn from each other, and ultimately, everyone could mutually benefit from the experiences shared. To further this innovative research into Advising in Language Learning (ALL), the initial experiment by language advsiors at Kanda has been replicated in a different setting with four learning advisors from Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey. The design used by the advisors at Kanda, a narrative style adopted while telling the stories, has been expanded to include a visual message board to which 20 learning advisors have contributed with their short reflective captions on their advisor selves. Additionally, the theme used by the advisors at Kanda, “the most memorable advising experience of this academic year” has been altered in our case to avoid repetition and to allow reflection on different aspects of the advising experiences. Thus, our narratives and the visual message board will examine two different themes: (1) How has advising affected you? (2) How do you define yourself as an advisor? Four narratives have elaborated on the first theme of the influence of advising knowledge and practice on the individual advisors, and the visual message board includes 20 images with reflective captions on the second theme of defining advisor identities.