Theory
Use of Theory
· Description
· Explains causes of behavior
· Prediction
· Control
Evaluating
· Comprehensive
· Clarity and explicitness
· Consistency (with logical framework)
· Parsimony (concise, simple, easy)
· Heurism (generate research ideas)
What is the population?
How was it developed?
Is it descriptive?
Is it explanatory?
Is it prescriptive?
Is it heuristic?
Is it useful in practice?
All theory reflects authors’ perspective
Student Engagement
Linked positively to desired student outcomes.
Theory of involvement
Most empirical studies show all students
Benefit in some way
Good practices
Faculty contact and cooperation
Active learning
Feedback
High expectations
Time on task
Respect for diverse learning
Measures
· AAC&U Wabash Study
· National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)
o Shows student engagement can be measured across institutions
· Beginning College Student Survey of Engagement
· College Student Expectations Questionnaire
· College Student Experiences Questionnaire
What makes a difference in college?
· Faculty
o Class assignment require integration
o What they thing and value
· Institutional policies and practices that promote engagement high impact activities
· Attending MSIs (minority servicing institutions)
o Student abroad
o Learning communities
o Distance learning
o Working on campus
Psychosocial Identity Development
Erikson’s Identity Development Theory
· Pioneer clinical psychologist (adolescence through adulthood)
· Based on Freud
· Identity development external as well as internal
· Eight stages of development set off by crisis
o Stage 1 = trust/mistrust
o Stage 2 = autonomy/shame and doubt
o Stage 3 = initiative/guilt
o Stage 4 = industry/inferiority
o Stage 5 = identity/identity diffusion
o Stage 6 = intimacy/isolation
o Stage 7 = generativity/stagnation (continue to grow)
o Stage 8 = integrity/despair
· Identity changes with crisis
· Highly descriptive but hard to study
Marcia’s Ego Identity Statuses
· Grounded in Erickson
· First empirical prototype
· Critical variables
o Exploration
o Commitment
o Sexual decisions
· Identified four identity statuses
o Foreclosure – (no crisis/commitment)
o Moratorium – (crisis/no commitment)
o Identity achievement – (crisis/commitment)
o Diffusion – (no crisis/no commitment)
Josselson’s Theory ( 1971)
· Identified development for women
· Studied 60 women, seniors 20-22 from 4 colleges over 30 years, follow up study of 30 in 1996 spanning 22 years
· Identified
o Foreclosures – Guardians
o Identify achievements – path makers
o Moratoriums – searchers
o Identity diffusions- drifters
Gender Differences
· Constantinople claimed men developed more psychosocial maturity
· Others found women scored higher
· Resolve processes of intimacy differently: men’s competence through career choice, women through relationships
Arthur Chickering
Built on Erickson’s identity and intimacy
Reisser joined in 1993
Saw identity established as core developmental issue of students
First Research 1959-1965
Proposed 7 vectors of development
Students move at different rates no linear or solo
Vectors:
· Developing competence
· Managing emotions
· Moving through autonomy toward interdependence
· Developing mature interpersonal relationships
· Establishing identity
· Developing purpose
· Developing integrity
Chickering and Specific Populations
· Women’s development different from men’s interpersonal relationships; later for men; autonomy later for women
· Women higher intimacy and more tolerant at start of college
· HBCUs: women higher than men on interpersonal relationships, autonomy and life purpose, however men higher in identity development of four years
Student Affairs Applications:
Programming
· Needs assessment
· Evaluation of program impact
Individual interactions
· Advising
Environmental interventions
· Residential learning
· Relationship to faculty
· Collaboration with other students
Chickering Critique
· Failure to address Asian and Native American students
· Lacks specificity and precision – too general
· Failure to address motivational levels
· Multicultural issues not covered adequately
· Overall significant impact, easy to understand and use
· Most well known
Intellectual and Ethical Development
William Perry (1968, 1981)
· Research on how students make meaning of teaching and learning (what was it about his sample?)
· Perry’s “scheme” simplistic to complex
· Nine positions
o Dualism – black or white
o Multiplicity – honoring diverse views
o Relativism – opinions not equal
o Commitment – initiates ethical development
· There may be stops, regressions, “timeouts”
· First Assessment of themes qualitative – time
· Knefelkamp and Widick created Measure of Intellectual Development, Baxter Magolda and Porterfield Measure of Epistemological Reflection
· All measure first five
· Used widely in literature as outcomes measure
Applications of Perry
· Informal assessment
· The developmental instruction model (DI)
· Classroom – (difference in undergraduate and graduate)
· Student Affairs – residence halls, career planning, advising
Critique of students
· Date of study
· Narrow/wide range of students
· Including both intellectual and ethical development
· Influenced Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule work on women, Baxter-Magolda’s work on women and men, King & Kitcherner reflective judgment: Parks faith development
· Labels
Moral Development
Kohlberg, Rest and Gilligan
· Transformation in form or structure of thought
· Dominant for over 40 years
· Based on psychology and moral philosophy
· Focuses on process, not content
· Stages on moral reasoning (6 stages, 3 levels)
o Pre-conventional – no understanding of rules
o Conventional-identify with rules
o Post-conventional or principled – separate, self-choice
· Based on Piaget and Rawls
Rest (1979)
· Objective measure of moral development (DIT) defining issues test
· Adapted Kohlberg
· Examined two elements of thinking; how expectations are known and shared; how interests are balanced
· View more broad than Kohlberg, more complex (percentages within “stages”)
· Developed schemas; personal interest, maintain norms, post-conventional
Application of Kohlberg
· moral education, “just communities”
· cognitive conflict to develop higher-level thinking
· research supportive college friends connects with growth in moral judgment; others show very little gain in Greek organizations with one exception
Gilligan and Women’s Moral development (1982/1993)
· significant departure from Freud (women as deviant, men standard, Kohlberg using results from men-women later, but still found “underdeveloped”
· In a Different Voice (30 years, girls and relationships)
· Themes of care and justice
· Three levels and two transitions
o Orientation to individual survival, transition; selfishness to responsibility
o Goodness as self sacrifice; transition goodness to truth
o Morality of non-violence
· SA Applications for Gilligan
o Ethic of care
o Examining underlying assumptions in policies and structures
o Staff development to recognize balance necessary
o Justice: power, domination, assertiveness, strength, control of emotions, independent leadership
o Care: involvement, interdependence, concern for relationships, sharing information, inclusion
Five perspectives for women
· Silence
· Received knowledge
· Subjective knowledge
· Procedural knowledge
· Constructed knowledge
Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, Tarule
· Influenced by Gilligan and Perry
· Ways of knowing are perspectives, not stages
· “voice” used to describe intellectual and ethical development
· Student affairs can emphasize connection rather than separation
· Theory has relevance in classroom and student affairs-connected thinking
Model of epistemological Reflection
· Cognitive development measure that included both men and women
· Longitudinal study
· Contains four stages
o Absolute knowing – knowledge certain
o Transitional knowing – acceptance that knowledge not certain
o Independent knowing – mostly uncertain
o Contextual knowing- convergence of gender-related patterns
· More similarities than differences between men and women
· Absolute, first year; transitional, sophomore, junior and senior; independent, graduate
· Not based on diverse populations
· Social construction evident
· Applications are four major findings
o Validating students as knowers
o Situating learning with experience
o Jointly constructed meaning
o Relational aspect of these three crucial
· Work combines men and women, emphasizes practice
King and Kitchener (1994)
Reflective Judgment Model
· ten-year longitudinal study, 80 participants, interviews
o How do people decide what they believe about problems?
o Seven stages
§ Pre-reflective thinkers-do not recognize uncertainty
§ Quasi-reflective thinkers – difficulty with reasoned conclusions
§ Reflective thinkers – active construction of knowledge
Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning (1984)
· Kolb describes as adult development
· Roots in Dewey, Lewin and Piaget, Jung
· Explores the role of experience in the learning process
· Defines learning as: “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience.”
· Learning as four-stage cycle-series of steps
o Concrete experience – CE (feeling)
o Reflective observation – RO (watching)
o Abstract conceptualization – AC (thinking)
o Active experimentation- AE (doing)
· Form a habitual way of responding to the learning environment
o Different preferences for polar opposites
· Four learning styles emerge
o Convergers (AC and AE – good problem solvers who tend to be technically oriented)
o Divergers (CE and RO- imaginative, meaning and values oriented)
o Assimmilators (AC and RO – inductive reasoners, create theories by integrating disparate ideas)
o Accommodators (CE and AE – doers, implementers, risk takers)
· Believed learning style set the course for personal development along stages:
o Acquisition
o Specialization
o Integration
· Learning Style Inventory (LSI)
o 12 items related to learning
o Concerns raised by two-dimensional structure
o Revised in 1993
o Informal assessment done by asking participants to relate to styles
· Applications
o Counseling
o Career planning
o Staff development
o Orientation
o Classroom/workshop situations
Integrative Theories
Ecological
Kurt Lewin (1936)
· Behavior = Person’s Interaction with the Environment
· Basis of Ecological Models
o Human ecology- Interrelationship of humans with environment
§ Lays foundation
§ Ecology defined as adaptation to environment
§ Understanding ecosystems
§ Greenhouse analogy
o Developmental ecology –(Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1989, 1993) psychological approach environment and its influence on development of person
§ Comes from psychological perspective
§ Adapted Lewin – development is a function of the interaction of a person and environment
§ Focus on individual interaction – environment is the context
o Campus ecology – reciprocal relationship between student and campus environment
§ Introduced by Banning & Kaiser
§ Study of relationship between student and campus environment
§ Different components-theories
· Behavior setting – Barker (1968) People behave in similar ways in specific environments
· Subculture approach – Walsh (1978) – describes environment by attitudes, values, roles of members
· Personality types – Holland (1966) shifted weight to person
· College culture (1970) culture is formed by accumulation of behaviors across individuals
o Theories
§ Social ecological approach (Moos, 1973,1979) measured physical and architectural
§ Transaction approach (Pervin, 1967, 1968) –behavior can be understood by transactions between individual and environment
§ All approach integrated by Strange and Banning (2001) for campus design
Self-Authorship
Constructive – Developmental Theories
Keagan (1982-1994)
· Theory of self-evolution, evolution of consciousness
· Based on Piaget, but added developmental portions
· Development is effort to resolve tension between desire to be different and desire to be immersed in the environment
· Levels of Consciousness
o Order 0 – infants
o Order 1 – Childhood
o Order 2 – instrumental mind – thinking more logical
o Order 3 – socialized mind- relating across categories- dualistic
o Order 4 – Self-Authoring Mind ( college aged student, reasonable expectation)
o Order 5 – Self-Transforming mind
§ Modern life required fourth order consciousness – self-authoring – the ability to generalize across abstractions deciding on your own-taking ownership
Baxter Magolda (1999 – 2008)
· Self-authorship
· Definitely longitudinal
· Identified phases
o Following formula
o Crossroads
o Becoming the Author of One’s Life – Kegan similar
o Internal foundation- spirituality may play role – voice
· Outcomes
o Learning partnerships model used in student affairs
Faith and Spirituality
· Fowler (1978)
o Influenced by Kohlberg and Piaget
o Stages
§ Primal
§ Intuitive-projective
§ Mythic-literal
§ Synthetic-conventional – still seeks external
§ individuative-reflective- self authored – young adulthood
§ conjunctive – midlife and beyond
§ universalizing –rare
· Parks (1986a)
o Considers role of higher education
o Forms of knowing (2000)
§ Authority-bound (dualistic)
§ Unqualified relativism (relativism)
§ Probing commitment
§ Tested commitment – advanced adulthood
§ Conventional commitment – midlife
Schlossberg Transition Theory (1984)
· Theory of adult development
o Four categories
§ Contextual perspective
§ Developmental
§ Life span
§ Transitional perspective
· Transition defined as: “any event, or non-event, that results in changed relationships, routines, assumptions and roles”
· Additional part of the process is coping
· Application shown in Cormier and Hackney counseling model (1993) assisting individuals in transition
Cormier and Hackney counseling model
· Five stages: relationship building, assessment, goal setting, interventions, termination and follow up
· Egan (1994) model: exploration, understanding and coping
· Many areas for application in college students
Holland’s Theory of Vocational Personalities and Environments (1985/1992)
· Both typology and person –environment
· Six basic personality types
· Six corresponding environments
· Success depends on proper “fit”
· Popular in career development
· Work as vocational counselor
· Six personality types
o Realistic (manual, mechanical, technical)
o Investigative (science and mathematics)
o Artistic (language, art music, drama, writing)
o Social (educate, inform, enlighten)
o Enterprising (leadership, persuasion)
o Conventional (clerical, computational)
· Vocational Preference Inventory (1985)
o Includes 160 occupational titles
o First instrument developed for personality type
· Self Directed Search (1994)
o Self-administrated, self scored instrument
· Seems to fit vocational choice
· Gender, race and culture differences shown-most regarding distribution
· Applications
o Career development
o Counseling
o Orientation and advising
o Residence life
o Student activities
Myers-Briggs Adaptation of Jung’s Theory Personality Type (1923/1971)
· Indentifies individual differences in how people take in and process information
· Carl Jung, psychoanalyst
o Myers and briggs studied more than 20 years
o Developed myers-briggs type indicator
o Keirsey and Bates (1984) expanded MBTI
· Most extensively used for assessing personality type
· Each item related to one of four preferences
o Extraversion-introversion
o Sensing-intuition
o Thinking-feeling
o Judging-perception
Keirsey Temperament Sorter (1984)
· Derived from MBTI
· Instrument shorter and more readily available
· Cautions remain for validity
Critiques
· Few studies on racial differences
· Consistently found that African American students more sensing and thinking that white students