ABSTRACT
Student affairs practitioners facilitate students’ learning and educational outcomes during postsecondary education. This chapter introduces the high-impact practices and why they should be critiqued from a critical theoretical lens. It focuses on the implications of the critical reformulations for student affairs practice, taking into consideration the theoretical constructs. The focus on cognition and written expression in the high-impact practices as noted previously reflects settler constructs that deprioritize a holistic approach to people and their relationship to each other, to nature, and to the land. Critical race theories, intersectionality, and critical feminist theories draw attention particularly to power between individuals and systems. Diversity and global learning, a high-impact practice, is often dependent on the use of dissonance in the name of furthering learning despite counter-narratives to the contrary from minoritized students, particularly Women of Color and others with multiple marginalities in our experience.
