Los Angeles

My Challenge

by Michelle Riconscente

After my first month as an assistant professor of educational psychology at a top-tier university in the U.S., two judgments are clear. The first is that facing this challenge–to earn tenure, I should publish 20 articles, teach 4 graduate courses each year, and become known in my field, all by 2012–with freedom, initiative, and certainty is only possible in the awareness that Another has given me this task for my happiness and ensures its fulfillment. The second is that the most powerful tools I bring to my research on learning and motivation are the truths communicated to me by Giussani’s charism regarding the nature of the person and the method of knowledge.
The last place someone with a temperament like mine would choose to work is academia. In other words, this task was not my idea.
Rather, I got here by following myriad signs in reality, for 10 years, including my desire to truly grasp the meaning of things. These signs included the circumstances and friendships that led to this particular job.
Based on an understanding of the nature of the person, and of the Holy Trinity itself, as relationship, I have begun to apply what I call the “relationship principle” in understanding aspects of learning. Taking this principle as a starting point resolves several dichotomies in current educational thinking. For instance, in my field, cognition and affect are studied independently, as though one can reason about reality without being attached to it. Instead, reason comprises both rationality and affect–indeed, God Himself is both supreme rationality (Logos) and supreme love (eros and/ agape). This conception of reality as relationship also influences the way I go about conducting research, designing studies and observation instruments able to document the psychological expressions of this dynamic.
* Rossier School of Education,
USC (Los Angeles)