Nancy Melucci wrote:
> On Friday I attended an inservice at Santa Monica College
> where a colleague presented some interesting material on stages of adult
> cognitive development.
>
>
> It was an attempt to define the development of "reflective
> judgment" in adults in stages that continue through and past "Piaget Stage
> 4," the highest stages being characterized by an ability to recognize that
> certain problems may have more than one workable solution, that experts
may be
> limited by their own biases or information etc. I believe that this was
> based upon the stages devised by a psychologist named Fisher. On the face
> of it the scheme "rang true" and made a lot of "intuitive sense" to me.
I believe that would be "Kitchener", as in
Kitchener K. S., & King, P. M. (1981). Reflective judgment: Concepts of
justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of
Applied Developmental Psychology, 2, 89-116.
King, P. M., & Kitchener, K. S. (1994). Developing Reflective Judgment :
Understanding and Promoting Intellectual Growth and Critical Thinking in
Adolescents and Adults. Jossey-Bass.
Incidentally, I'm fairly certain that there is a lot of research on our
students' progress along these stages in the newest Alverno publication
("Learning That Lasts", by our own Marcia Mentkowski, Jossey-Bass). I just
got my copy a couple of days ago, so I'm not yet sure what content made it
to publication, but Marcia has always been a strong proponent of the
Kitchener & King stages.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
