Cognitive Structural Theories

Cognitive Structural Theories

1. Women's Ways of Knowing Theory

   • Baxter Magolda's Model of Epistemological
     • 1992
     • Epistemological difference between gender
       • 1, Receiving knowledge: Minimal interaction with instructors, an emphasis on comfort in the learning environment, relationships with peers, and ample opportunities ti demonstrate knowledge
       • 2. Transitional Knowing: Involves an acceptance that some knowledge is uncertain
         • Interpersonal Knowing: is characterized by interaction with peers to gather and share idea, values of rapport with instructor to facilitate self-expression, a preference for evaluation geared to individual differences and resolving uncertainty by employing personal judgment
       • 3. Independent Knowing: Is viewed as mostly uncertain. The preferred role of the instructor shifts to providing the context for knowledge exploration
       • 4. Contextual Knowing: Reflects a convergence of previous gender related patterns
     • Baxter was interested in how similarities and difference emerged from Belenky work with genders and thought more needed to be looked at
     • The need to address gender in a study with cognitive development that would become a longitudinal study
   • 1986
   • Different ways of knowing as "perspectives" rather than stages
     • Silence: is characterized as mindless, voiceless and obedient. Women find themselves to the whims of external authority
     • Received Knowing: A lack of self-confidence is evident in the belief that one is capable of recieving and reproducing knowledge imparted by external authorities but not of creating one's own knowledge
     • Subjective Knowing: The pendulum swings, and truth is now seen as residing in the self
     • Procedural Knowing: involves learning and applying objective procedures for taking in and conveying knowledge
     • Constructed Knowing: invloves the integration of subjective and objective knowledge, with both feeling and thought of present
   • The researcher became interested in why women speak so frequently of problems and gaps in their learning and so often doubt they intellectual competence
   • Looked at 135 women to see what their problems were

2. King and Kitchener's Reflective Judgment Model

   • 1994
   • Reflective judgments are made to bring closure to situations that can be characterized as uncertain.Each of the seven stages represents a distinct set of assumptions about knowledge and the process of acquiring knowledge
     • Prereflective thinkers: Do not acknowledge or possible even realize that knowledge is uncertain.
     • Quasi-reflective thinkers: Realize that ill-structured problems exist and that knowledge claims about these problems include uncertainty
     • Reflective thinkers: Maintain that knowledge is actively constructed, and claims of knowledge must be viewed in relation to the context in which they were generated
   • Peoples assumptions about what and how something can be known provides a lens that shapes how individuals frame a problem and how they justify their beliefs
   • How can you become a reflective thinker when there is no clear answer to the problem

3. Kolb's Theory of Learning

   • 1984
   • Dicussion of learning styles and the relationship between learning and development, and implication of learning styles for higher education
     • Accommodator: Action oriented, at ease with people, trial and error problem solving
     • Diverger: People and feeling oriented
     • Converger: Prefers technical tasks over social/interpersonal settings
     • Assimilator: Emphasizes ideas rather than people
   • Student are entering university with divers backgrounds and working effectively with them in the classroom is important. Kolb was looking at ways to better understand who the student is
   • Enhances the educators ability to provide challenging and supportive environments in which help the student learn and devlopme

4. Integrative Theories (Ecological Approaches)

   • Human Ecology
     • 1955
     • Represents a way of looking at the "interaction and interdependence of humans with the environment.
       • Understanding a family or other social unit as an ecosystem
       • Located in a nested context of the human built environment
       • A natural physical-biological environment
     • It lays the foundation for understanding college students using ecological approaches which was taken from general ecology and was adapted
     • Used to understand growth and development with applied fields of family studies social work and health professionls
   • Developmental Ecology
     • 1979
     • Focuses attention on the individuals rather than the cultures in which they are embedded.
       • Process: Encompasses particular forms of interaction between organism and environment.
       • Person component in conjunction with process provides a greater understanding of how the PPCT model shines light on what is going on in the how and what of the person-environment interaction
       • Context: Focus of empirical and theoretical inquiry
       • Time: This element has been taken away from the ecological systems model but it is still clear today
       • Microsystem: Is a pattern of activites, roles, and interpersonal realtion that invite permit or inhibit engagement in sustained progressively more complex interaction the immediate environment.
         • Mesosystem: comprises linkages and process taking place between two or more settings containing the developing person
           • Exosystem: does not contain the devloping individual but exert an influence on his or her environment through interactions with the microsystem
             • Macrosystem: Consists of the overreaching pattern of the micro-meso-and excosystem characteristic of a given culture
     • Urie Bronfenbrenner
     • Considers interactions between individuals and their developmental context. It helps explain how outcomes occurs as an interactions of a persons environment
     • Assuming that development cannot be accounted for by individual attributes, but they are developed with connections between individuals outcomes and environmental context
   • Campus Ecology
     • 1974
     • The study of the relationship between the student and the campus environment
     • It helps understand the student when looking at the ecology of a students campus environment
     • Transactional relationship between students campus environment and them

5. Theory

   • Year
     • Purpose
       • Definition
         • Stages of Thory
           • Extra Information

6. Cass's Identity Development Model

   • 1979
   • It describes the disruptive influences of heterosexism on identity development of gays and lesbians and the eventual integration into a positive identity
     • 1. Identity Confusion: Socialized and playing a heterosexual role, but experiencing same-sex feelings and a sense of "Differentness."
     • 2. Identity Comparison: Compare his or her own heterosexual message/ portrays/ self-deception to increase realization of her or her gay/lesbian proclivities
     • 3. Identity Tolerance: To accept their gay/lesbian identity and progressively move away from the heterosexual world
     • 4. Identity Acceptance: Have a greater contact with the gay community, develops friendships with LGBTs and tolerance moves to acceptance.
     • 5. Identity Pride: experiences increasingly positive feelings with a strong sense of identification with the gay community and to attain a sense of heightened sociopolitical awareness
     • 6. Identity Synthesis: The "us" versus "them" mentality begins to disapear with the realization that many heterosexuals are understanding and valuable allies in the struggle for equality
   • Sexual-orientation identity development models descrive a process of movement from dealing with heterosexism to liberation