Patterns Across Models Of Cognitive Development

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Hofer and Pintrich coined the term personal epistemology to refer to "how the individual develops conceptions of knowledge and knowing and utilizes them in developing understanding of the world", acknowledging that this field of study is also known by the terms "epistemic cognition", epistemological beliefs, and ways of knowing. This term has provided a conceptual umbrella under which Breitling Replica Watches many diverse approaches, samples, and contexts have now found a common footing, which improves the potential for further refinements and application of this construct to inform educational practice.

Love and Guthrie provided a different kind of synthesis across theories in their well-written sourcebook on cognitive development and its implications for practice in student affairs. They integrated several models of cognitive development, the four discussed here plus Kegan's theory of self-evolution. In this synthesis, they noted similarities by clusters of developmental perspectives. The first such cluster they call Unequivocal Knowing, which includes Perry's ...
... dualism, King and Kitchener's perfective thinking, Belenky et al.'s received knowing, Baxter Magolda's transitional knowing, and Kegan's Order 2. They noted that each model includes an early way of knowing "in which knower's view the world as having a single, universal truth a truth that is known to authorities who have the ability to pass the knowledge on to others. Truth and knowledge are external to the knower".

Their second cluster is Radical Subjectivism. This cluster captures the perspectives in the models where the prior unequivocal approach breaks down and "where uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity creep into and disturb the sense-making process" and includes Perry's multiplicity, King and Kitchener's perfective and Rolex Watches quasi-reflective thinking, Belenky et al.'s subjective and procedural knower's, Baxter Magolda's transitional and independent knower's, and Kegan's Order 3. A defining characteristic of this category is that although an individual has abandoned absolute perspectives, he or she lacks a way to mediate or evaluate alternative explanations, and treats all views as equally valid and all opinions as sources of truth. Following Radical Subjectivism is the Great Accommodation, which is not a cluster of perspectives, but rather a major developmental insight that carries very significant implications and that enables more complex and integrative ways of knowing. This insight occurs "when the individual comes to realize that uncertainty is neither anomalous nor restricted to certain knowledge domains that it is evident everywhere. As the place of knowledge, truth, and authority disintegrates, the individual's own role as knower and authority emerges".