Development and Assessment of Self-Authorship: Exploring the Concept Across Cultures

by Peggy S. Meszaros, Elizabeth G. Creamer

Overview

This book brings together new scholarship that expands and refines the concept of self-authorship across cultures. It adopts a constructive-developmental approach to self-evolution that emphasizes the interaction of personal characteristics and contextual influences on individuals' construction of knowledge, identities, and relationships.

Observing how particular individuals make meaning in their personal and social contexts from this point of view enables further study of the intersections of epistemological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions and how they combine to help adults self-author their lives.

Individual chapters cover subjects from populations as varied as Dutch students, male and female Bedouin and Jewish adolescents, African American male and female adolescents in economically depressed areas of the United States, Latino/a college students grappling with ethnic identity and dissonance, Australian college females preparing to be childcare workers, and finally a comparative study of Japanese and U.S. college students' epistemic beliefs.

The three chapters that constitute the first part of this book articulate the foundational assumptions of constructive-developmental theory, subject-object relations, and holistic development as a basis for understanding the evolution of self-authorship.

The chapters in Part Two challenge our thinking about the developmental trajectory of self-authorship across cultures of age, gender, and geography, and pose important questions about the need for more cross-cultural collaboration to understand self-authorship development in different cultures and the need to address better measurement and interpretation of results in multiple cultures.

Part Three presents various viewpoints about the role of culture and context in the development of self-authorship and revisits the utility of the subject-object framework in understanding major theoretical questions about development. This section also addresses questions about the challenges and opportunities involved in developing a valid measure of self-authorship that is less time- and expertise-intensive than the in-depth one-on-one interview employed until now. It concludes with an outline of future theoretical and methodological research needed to further our understanding of self-evolution in general and self-authorship in particular.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781579223687
Publisher:	Stylus Publishing
Publication date:	03/09/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Marcia B. Baxter Magolda is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Miami University of Ohio and a nationally recognized author and speaker on student development and learning. She received the American College Personnel Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, and the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Research Achievement Award in 2007, for her outstanding contribution to advancing student learning.




Her scholarship addresses the evolution of learning and development in college and subsequent adult life, and educational practice to promote self-authorship. Her seventh and eighth books respectively are Authoring Your Life and Development and Assessment of Self-Authorship.

Peggy S. Meszaros

Elizabeth G. Creamer

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables ix

Acknowledgments xi

Part 1 Theoretical Foundations of Self-Authorship

1 Foundational Assumptions and Constructive-Developmental Theory

Self-Authorship Narratives Lisa M. Boes Marcia B. Baxter Magolda Jennifer A. Buckley 3

2 The Interweaving of Epistemological, Intrapersonal, and Interpersonal Development in the Evolution of Self-Authorship Marcia B. Baxter Magolda 25

3 Linking Learning Conceptions to Self-Authorship and Beyond Rebecca Hamer Erik Jan Van Rossum 45

Part 2 Multicultural Perspectives on Self-Authorship

4 Investigating Latino Ethnic Identity Within the Self-Authorship Framework Vasti Torres 69

5 An Exploratory Study of the Relationship Between Adolescent Risk and Resilience and the Early Development of Self-Authorship Peggy S. Meszaros Crystal Duncan Lane 85

6 Toward Self-Authorship in Child Care Students

Implications for Working With Children and their Families Joanne Brownlee Donna Berthelsen Gillian Boulton-Lewis 101

7 Epistemological Development of Bedouins and Jews in Israel

Implications for Self-Authorship Michael Weinstock 117

8 Personal Epistemology, Learning, and Cultural Context

Japan and the United States Barbara K. Hofer 133

Part 3 Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Understanding and Assessing Self-Authorship

9 Beyond Self-Authorship

Fifth Order and the Capacity for Social Consciousness Kelli Zaytoun 151

10 The Role of the Cognitive Dimension of Self-Authorship

An Equal Partner or the Strong Partner? Patricia M. King 167

11 What Is Self-Authorship?

A Theoretical Exploration of the Construct Jane Elizabeth Pizzolato 187

12 Demonstrating the Link Between Reasoning and Action in the Early Stages of Self-Authorship Elizabeth G. Creamer 207

13 Getting to the Complexities of Identity

The Contributions of an Autoethnographic and Intersectional Approach Susan R. Jones 223

14 Using the Subject-Object Interview to Promote and Assess Self-Authorship Jennifer Garvey Berger 245

Part 4 Future Directions

15 Future Directions

Pursuing Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Evolution of Self-Authorship Marcia B. Baxter Magolda 267

Appendix A 285

Contributors 287

Index 293