Application of Clinical Judgment Models to the Development of Academic Advisors

Abstract

The critical thinking process of professional reasoning underlies academic advising practice. Although an essential component to effective advising, professional reasoning is rarely explicitly taught. Tenets of clinical judgment models routinely applied to the development of reasoning in health professionals, specifically clinical competence and clinical judgment, align with the development of professional reasoning in academic advisors and can be applied to advisor training and development. Clinical judgment models can inform those tasked with training advisors to articulate the expectations for professional reasoning, in part, because they can help account for differences between advisors in the various stages of reasoning development.