Patterns In Epistemological Reflection

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Baxter Magolda's model is grounded in both Perry's scheme and Women's Ways of Knowing. She defined her work on this model not as an attempt to validate or refine either model, but to understand students' development by being open to whatever stories she heard from the college students she interviewed. In light of the findings from Belenky et al.'s study of the ways of knowing used by women as both similar to and different from those found based on Perry's predominantly male sample, she was interested in questions related to gender in Omega Replica Watches ways of knowing, and her sample of 101 students who entered Miami University in 1986 was balanced by gender. She was also interested in further exploring the role of self in cognitive development. She has provided a refreshingly candid and detailed account of her own experiences and perspectives leading to the decision to conduct this study, her own journey toward social constructivism, and her own commitment to improving educational practice in college and university settings as a guiding motivation ...
... for her scholarship.

The product of this 4-year longitudinal study was the careful articulation of four ways of knowing (absolute knowing, transitional knowing, independent knowing, and contextual knowing) in five domains (role of learner, role of peers, role of instructor, evaluation, and nature of knowledge); the resulting matrix provided the outline of a more refined model of knowing that she "called the epistemological reflection model because it is based on students' perceptions of the nature of knowledge" (Baxter Magolda, 1992, p. xii). She described the four ways of knowing for each domain in a way that shows the coherence within developmental level and how this is Breitling Replica Watches manifested in observations about experiences in each of the domains. Because of the distinctive contribution of gender-related patterns, descriptions of those are included below.

Two gender-related patterns were observed within absolute knowing: receiving and mastering knowledge. Students who used the receiving pattern (used by more women than men) took a passive and more private approach to learning; this approach is characterized by "minimal interaction with instructors, an emphasis on comfort in the learning environment, relationships with peers, and ample opportunities to demonstrate knowledge" (Baxter Magolda, 1992, p. 82). By contrast, absolute knower's who used a mastery approach (used by more men than women) relied on interactions with others to test and demonstrate their understanding, value autonomy, and through their emphasis on achievement, may be seen as competitive.