Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Ad Borsboom
- Contents
- Maradjiri and Mamurrng: Ad Borsboom and Me
- Conversations with Mostapha: Learning about Islamic Law in a Bookshop in Rabat
- Education in Eighteenth Century Polynesia
- From Knowledge to Consciousness: Teachers, Teachings, and the Transmission of Healing
- When ‘Natives’ Use What Anthropologists Wrote: The Case of Dutch Rif Berbers
- The Experience of the Elders: Learning Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Netherlands
- On Hermeneutics, Ad’s Antennas and the Wholly Other
- Bontius in Batavia: Early Steps in Intercultural Communication
- Ceremonies of Learning and Status in Jordan
- Al Amien: A Modern Variant of an Age-Old Educational Institution
- Yolngu and Anthropological Learning Styles in Ritual Contexts
- Learning to Be White in Guadeloupe
- Learning from ‘the Other’, Writing about ‘the Other’
- Maori Styles of Teaching and Learning
- Tutorials as Integration into a Study Environment
- The Transmission of Kinship Knowledge
- Fieldwork in Manus, Papua New Guinea: On Change, Exchange and Anthropological Knowledge
- Bodily Learning: The Case of Pilgrimage by Foot to Santiago de Compostela
- Just Humming: The Consequence of the Decline of Learning Contexts among the Warlpiri
- A Note on Observation
- Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
- Getting Answers May Take Some Time… The Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay) Workshop on the Transfer of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit from Elders to Youths, June 20 - 27, 2004
- Conflict in the Classroom: Values and Educational Success
- The Teachings of Tokunupei
- Consulting the Old Lady
- A Chain of Transitional Rites: Teachings beyond Boundaries
- ‘That Tour Guide – Im Gotta Know Everything’: Tourism as a Stage for Teaching ‘Culture’ in Aboriginal Australia
- The Old Fashioned Funeral: Transmission of Cultural Knowledge
Tutorials as Integration into a Study Environment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Ad Borsboom
- Contents
- Maradjiri and Mamurrng: Ad Borsboom and Me
- Conversations with Mostapha: Learning about Islamic Law in a Bookshop in Rabat
- Education in Eighteenth Century Polynesia
- From Knowledge to Consciousness: Teachers, Teachings, and the Transmission of Healing
- When ‘Natives’ Use What Anthropologists Wrote: The Case of Dutch Rif Berbers
- The Experience of the Elders: Learning Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Netherlands
- On Hermeneutics, Ad’s Antennas and the Wholly Other
- Bontius in Batavia: Early Steps in Intercultural Communication
- Ceremonies of Learning and Status in Jordan
- Al Amien: A Modern Variant of an Age-Old Educational Institution
- Yolngu and Anthropological Learning Styles in Ritual Contexts
- Learning to Be White in Guadeloupe
- Learning from ‘the Other’, Writing about ‘the Other’
- Maori Styles of Teaching and Learning
- Tutorials as Integration into a Study Environment
- The Transmission of Kinship Knowledge
- Fieldwork in Manus, Papua New Guinea: On Change, Exchange and Anthropological Knowledge
- Bodily Learning: The Case of Pilgrimage by Foot to Santiago de Compostela
- Just Humming: The Consequence of the Decline of Learning Contexts among the Warlpiri
- A Note on Observation
- Fragments of Transmission of Kamoro Culture (South-West Coast, West Papua), Culled from Fieldnotes, 1952-1954
- Getting Answers May Take Some Time… The Kugaaruk (Pelly Bay) Workshop on the Transfer of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit from Elders to Youths, June 20 - 27, 2004
- Conflict in the Classroom: Values and Educational Success
- The Teachings of Tokunupei
- Consulting the Old Lady
- A Chain of Transitional Rites: Teachings beyond Boundaries
- ‘That Tour Guide – Im Gotta Know Everything’: Tourism as a Stage for Teaching ‘Culture’ in Aboriginal Australia
- The Old Fashioned Funeral: Transmission of Cultural Knowledge
Summary
In the course ‘Theory Construction: Anthropologists and Sociologists on Religion’, two lectures were dedicated to the work of Emile Durkheim. More specifically, the focus was on his work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, first published in French in 1912 as Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse: Le système totémique en Australie. Ad Borsboom devoted one lecture to the totemic principle; in the second lecture I focused on the sociological aspects of Durkheim's work. My lecture started with Durkheim's definition of religion as ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices […] which unite into one single moral community’, to ultimately arrive at the conclusion that the true purpose of religion is social. Religion serves as the carrier of social sentiments, and, most importantly, offers rituals that tie individuals to their community.
In the closing discussion, I habitually confronted the students with Durkheim's remark that in his day and age the old gods were growing old or had already dead, while others had not yet been born. I questioned my students about what new gods might have been born and what new religion might have emerged since Durkheim published his book. Furthermore, I quizzed them on what this new religion would consider sacred and which rituals would be part of this religion. Almost every single year, there was at least one student who answered that the new religion might be based on the sanctity of knowledge, with universities serving as places of worship and in which tutorials could be viewed as the most important rituals. In this contribution, I will proceed from the idea that rituals create bonds between individuals and their social group, and that during rituals the norms of the group are imprinted in the minds of the individuals. I will do this by examining the academic consequences of participation of students in ‘college-rituals’, the tutorial.
In Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, Vincent Tinto offers a theory that explains student attrition from institutions of higher education. Building on the work of Van Gennep and Durkheim, a central element of his theory is the concept of social integration. It emphasizes the experiences and processes of integration and their impact on student retention and college persistence. The so-called Amsterdam model of educational careers combines insights from Tinto's work with economic theories.
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- Cultural Styles of Knowledge TransmissionEssays in Honour of Ad Borsboom, pp. 91 - 96Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2009