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Understanding and Applying Cognitive Development Theory: New Directions for Student Services
Creating learning environments and learning experiences for students is one of the primary purposes of student services. Student services professionals need to have a solid understanding of the cognitive development of college students in order to design activities that will enhance that development. This issue of New Directions for Student Services reviews five theories of the cognitive development of college students and explores the applications of those theories for student affairs practice. The theories shed light on gender-related patterns of knowing and reasoning; interpersonal, cultural, and emotional influences on cognitive development; and people's methods of approaching complex issues and defending what they believe. This is the 88th issue of the quarterly journals New Directions for Student Services.
107 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 1999
3 people want to read
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May 8, 2018
I chose to read this book because it was listed as a textbook for a potential graduate school for Student Affairs in Higher Education. I felt that this was a perfect way for me to get some insight into what I would be studying later on, or what I should be learning more about. The book also provides various other resources for the reader to dive into particular theories of interest. Ultimately, these cognitive theories are important to read because humans, including students, change over time and this is why higher education professionals should know these theories.
There is a socio-historic context to William Perry’s intellectual schemes as he began his research during WW2, when college campuses experiences an extreme shift in student population, however it is still relevant to cognitive thought processes today. His cognitive theory is made up of Nine Positions of Cognitive Development. He calls them positions, rather than stages, because ‘stage’ carries the notion that the process and transitions are linear and stable. The underlying ways of thinking which he highlights are strict dualism, multiplicity, relativism (contextual and commitment) The two I want to highlight are position two, Multiplicity Prelegitimate (within struct dualism) and position 5, contextual Relativism. Within contextual relativism, one accommodates new information into existing information, utilizes critical thinking and even examines one’s own way of thinking.
Women’s Way of Knowing
A group of women utilized Perry’s theory to study women specifically. They used a diverse group of women of all backgrounds to find their results, which is the Five Epistemological Perspectives: silence, received knowledge, subjective knowledge, procedural knowledge, and constructed knowledge. Silence is regarding the culture’s way of overwhelmingly silencing women and the experience of silenced women. Interestingly, they found that women who felt more silenced were younger, had less education and were economically disadvantaged. Received knowledge refers to Perry’s dualism, and that women would assume authorities as correct, without question and any ambiguity was impossible to understand. In subjective knowledge, women formed their own sense of “views” and “self” and could formulate their own opinions. Half of the women were at this stage. In procedural knowledge, the women who were at this stage were privileged, intelligent, white and were young adults. They were also educated.
King and Kitchener’s Reflective Judgement Model
The Reflective Judgement model describes how reflective thinking changes in students throughout time (time being late childhood to adulthood in this case). Reflective thinking is different from critical thinking, to the theorists, in that reflective thinking focuses distinctively on complex, controversial issues in which one can not know the solution with absolute certainty. There are seven stages to the reflective model, however they have been grouped into three general levels: Pre-reflective, quasi-reflective and reflective.
Interpersonal, Cultural, and Emotional Influences on Cognitive Development
This section of the book focuses on the social processes and how they relate to cognitive development. An example of this can be seen in the silence stage of Women’s Way of Knowing; in this stage, women were socially quieted and silenced, which affects their cognitive development as they were likely to assume that the answers from authorities are absolute rather than form their own answers. It also heavily addressed social cognition, and how learning “occurs in a social context” as it is used to communicate with others. Social contexts were heavy influences in the transition between stages, positions and levels in the other theories as well because of the significance of authorities and experiences with others.
There is a socio-historic context to William Perry’s intellectual schemes as he began his research during WW2, when college campuses experiences an extreme shift in student population, however it is still relevant to cognitive thought processes today. His cognitive theory is made up of Nine Positions of Cognitive Development. He calls them positions, rather than stages, because ‘stage’ carries the notion that the process and transitions are linear and stable. The underlying ways of thinking which he highlights are strict dualism, multiplicity, relativism (contextual and commitment) The two I want to highlight are position two, Multiplicity Prelegitimate (within struct dualism) and position 5, contextual Relativism. Within contextual relativism, one accommodates new information into existing information, utilizes critical thinking and even examines one’s own way of thinking.
Women’s Way of Knowing
A group of women utilized Perry’s theory to study women specifically. They used a diverse group of women of all backgrounds to find their results, which is the Five Epistemological Perspectives: silence, received knowledge, subjective knowledge, procedural knowledge, and constructed knowledge. Silence is regarding the culture’s way of overwhelmingly silencing women and the experience of silenced women. Interestingly, they found that women who felt more silenced were younger, had less education and were economically disadvantaged. Received knowledge refers to Perry’s dualism, and that women would assume authorities as correct, without question and any ambiguity was impossible to understand. In subjective knowledge, women formed their own sense of “views” and “self” and could formulate their own opinions. Half of the women were at this stage. In procedural knowledge, the women who were at this stage were privileged, intelligent, white and were young adults. They were also educated.
King and Kitchener’s Reflective Judgement Model
The Reflective Judgement model describes how reflective thinking changes in students throughout time (time being late childhood to adulthood in this case). Reflective thinking is different from critical thinking, to the theorists, in that reflective thinking focuses distinctively on complex, controversial issues in which one can not know the solution with absolute certainty. There are seven stages to the reflective model, however they have been grouped into three general levels: Pre-reflective, quasi-reflective and reflective.
Interpersonal, Cultural, and Emotional Influences on Cognitive Development
This section of the book focuses on the social processes and how they relate to cognitive development. An example of this can be seen in the silence stage of Women’s Way of Knowing; in this stage, women were socially quieted and silenced, which affects their cognitive development as they were likely to assume that the answers from authorities are absolute rather than form their own answers. It also heavily addressed social cognition, and how learning “occurs in a social context” as it is used to communicate with others. Social contexts were heavy influences in the transition between stages, positions and levels in the other theories as well because of the significance of authorities and experiences with others.
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