MIAMI UNIVERSITY
The Graduate School
Certificate for Approving the Dissertation
We hereby approve the Dissertation
of
Kristy Lynn Drobney
Candidate for the Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Director
Dr. Marcia B. Baxter Magolda
Reader
Dr. Elisa S. Abes
Reader
Dr. Peter M. Magolda
Graduate School Representative
Dr. Carolyn A. Haynes
ABSTRACT
DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES AND DEVELOPMENTAL CAPACITIES
OF HIGH-RISK COLLEGE STUDENTS
by Kristy Lynn Drobney
High-risk students, those susceptible to academic failure or early withdrawal from college, face
significant academic, economic, and personal challenges. They must make good, well-informed
decisions to navigate these challenges and persist toward their educational goals. Supporting
high-risk students in their decision making is an important means for educators to promote this
population’s educational persistence and degree attainment.
This study explored the relationship between high-risk students’ decision-making processes and
their developmental capacities to determine how students’ developmental capacities mediated
their abilities to make good, well-informed decisions. Making well-informed decisions entails:
gathering information from self and others, processing information by weighing expectations
against one’s own interests, and making decisions that are consistent with one’s interests.
This study’s data came from the Wabash National Study (WNS). I analyzed longitudinal annual
interviews from 2006-2009 with 22 high-risk participants from diverse US institutions. Of these,
18 participants identified as students of color, 17 held low high school GPAs, 16 were firstgeneration students, 15 had low ACT scores, and 13 were of low socioeconomic status. Data
analysis entailed: 1) coding decision-making units in the 88 transcripts; 2) constructing decisionmaking profiles for the 22 participants that crystallized how students made decisions across time;
3) assessing participants’ developmental meaning making using four major categories of the
WNS developmental continuum ranging from external to internal meaning making; and 4)
analyzing each participant’s decision-making and developmental profiles to identify intersections
between students’ decision-making processes and their developmental capacities.
Four decision-making patterns emerged from this analysis:
1. Reflective Ownership of Decision Making;
2. Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making;
3. Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making; and,
4. Non-Reflective Ownership of Decision Making.
Participants using patterns one and two were most adept at well-informed decision making and
reflected the most advanced developmental capacities over time. Their growing internal
meaning making contrasted with the more external meaning making of those using patterns three
and four who were less able to make well-informed decisions. Complex developmental
capacities appear to be a necessary but insufficient condition, along with dissonance, support,
and self-reflection capabilities, for well-informed decision making.
DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES AND DEVELOPMENTAL CAPACITIES
OF HIGH-RISK COLLEGE STUDENTS
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of
Miami University in partial
fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Educational Leadership
by
Kristy Lynn Drobney
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio
2012
Director: Dr. Marcia B. Baxter Magolda
© 2012
Kristy Lynn Drobney
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... iii
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii
DEDICATION ............................................................................................................................. viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1
High-Risk Students ..................................................................................................................... 3
Research Focus ........................................................................................................................... 7
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................... 9
Decision Making ......................................................................................................................... 9
Student Development Theory & Self-Authorship .................................................................... 11
Literature Linking Self-Authorship & Decision Making.......................................................... 19
Self-Authorship & High-Risk Students .................................................................................... 26
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY & METHODS ...................................................................... 29
Methodology ............................................................................................................................. 30
Dissertation Study Methodology .......................................................................................... 30
Wabash National Study Methodology & Conceptual Design .................................................. 31
Method ...................................................................................................................................... 34
WNS Method ........................................................................................................................ 34
Institutional type and participant selection. ...................................................................... 34
WNS data collection. ........................................................................................................ 34
Quantitative data collection. ......................................................................................... 35
Qualitative data collection. ........................................................................................... 35
WNS data analysis: Qualitative. ....................................................................................... 36
Dissertation Study Method ................................................................................................... 38
Sampling. .......................................................................................................................... 38
Dissertation data analysis. ................................................................................................. 41
iii
Process and steps........................................................................................................... 42
Subjectivities. ................................................................................................................ 49
Trustworthiness ..................................................................................................................... 50
Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 51
CHAPTER IV: DECISION MAKING & DEVELOPMENTAL CAPACITIES ........................ 53
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making............................................................................... 55
Irene ...................................................................................................................................... 57
Relationships. .................................................................................................................... 59
Nursing. ............................................................................................................................. 62
Synthesis ............................................................................................................................... 65
Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making ........................................................ 66
Dustin .................................................................................................................................... 68
Victoria ................................................................................................................................. 77
Synthesis ............................................................................................................................... 80
Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making .............. 81
Jacob ..................................................................................................................................... 82
Synthesis ............................................................................................................................... 88
Non-Reflective Ownership of Decision Making ...................................................................... 89
Vanessa ................................................................................................................................. 90
Maegan .................................................................................................................................. 93
Synthesis ............................................................................................................................... 98
Developmental Capacity Mediates Good Decision Making ..................................................... 98
CHAPTER V: DISSONANCE, SUPPORT & SELF-REFLECTION IN DECISION MAKING
..................................................................................................................................................... 101
Nuances in High-Risk Students’ Developmental Capacities .................................................. 101
Role of Dissonance, Support, and Self-Reflection in Good Decision Making ....................... 103
Dissonance .......................................................................................................................... 103
iv
Support ................................................................................................................................ 106
Self-Reflection .................................................................................................................... 109
Synthesis ............................................................................................................................. 112
Limited Dissonance, Support & Self-Reflection in Non-Reflective Ownership Pattern........ 113
Synthesis ................................................................................................................................. 120
Recommendations for Supportive Practice ............................................................................. 121
Reflective Conversations and the Learning Partnerships Model ........................................ 122
Reflective Conversations in Academic Advising ............................................................... 126
Learning Partnerships in Academic Support ...................................................................... 126
Bringing Self-Reflection into Financial Aid Counseling.................................................... 128
Helping Students Process Marginalization in Diversity Affairs ......................................... 129
Creating Reflective Campus Cultures ................................................................................. 134
Future Research ...................................................................................................................... 135
Closing Thoughts .................................................................................................................... 137
APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................. 139
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 142
v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1
Six-year College Graduation Rates of Students with
Different High-risk Characteristics
Table 2
Liberal Arts Outcomes, Wabash National Study of Liberal
Arts Education
32
Table 3
High-risk Characteristics of Dissertation Sample
40
Table 4
Year One and Year Four Developmental Capacities by
Decision Making Pattern
54
vi
6
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1
Conceptual Foundation of the Qualitative Component of the
Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education
vii
33
DEDICATION
To Sam & Molly Gloeckner
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have received exceptional support—intellectual, professional, and emotional—during my
graduate studies.
This dissertation study would not have been possible without the Wabash National Study of
Liberal Arts Education (WNS) that was funded through the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts
at Wabash College, the University of Michigan, and Miami University.
I am particularly thankful to the WNS principal investigators, Marcia Baxter Magolda and
Patricia King, for their vision to conceptualize, coordinate, and implement a study as
comprehensive as the WNS. Marcia and Pat generously invited me to join the WNS as an
interviewer and summarizer. I benefitted from this experience by receiving priceless training
from these scholars, refined understanding of student development and scholarship, inspiration to
pursue a doctoral degree, access to rich longitudinal interview data for my study, and continued
help in problem-solving throughout the dissertation process.
I deeply appreciate the collegial relationships I shared with the WNS team members. I thank
them for welcoming me into the group and sparking my intellectual curiosity. Reading the
interview transcripts and summaries for my dissertation study demonstrated what a talented
group of scholars they are. I am particularly thankful for the efforts of: Carin Barber, Jim
Barber, Jen Buckley, Rachel Gebely, Leah Reynolds Joos, Jennifer McLaughlin, Brianne
MacEachran, Rosie Perez, Woo-jeong Shim, Kari Taylor, Kerri Wakefield, and Kelly Walczak.
A special thanks to Jim, Rosie, and Woo-jeong from the University of Michigan for managing
the details and providing me information as needed.
Finally, I am thankful to the WNS participants. I appreciate their gracious sharing of life stories.
Without their generosity of time and spirit WNS would not have been possible.
Linda Dixon, my supervisor at the Rinella Learning Center, has been a mainstay in my
professional and educational development. She encouraged my participation in WNS and
approved my time away from the office in order to conduct interviews. She was understanding
and supportive as I balanced being a part-time doctoral student and a full-time staff member.
And most significantly she advocated for my semester-long leave of absence from the office so I
could concentrate solely on my dissertation, despite the strain it placed on her and my
colleagues. I am so thankful for the opportunity she provided me to immerse myself in my work.
Because of her generosity and support I was able to enjoy and learn from the dissertation process
from start to finish.
I am thankful to my Rinella colleagues who picked up my responsibilities while I was on leave.
I appreciate their willingness to adjust their work lives in support of my education.
I am particularly thankful to Christina Carrubba-Whetstine who genuinely supported my leave
and coordinated a smooth transition before and during it to ensure that nothing fell through the
cracks. I am thankful for the steadiness and peace of mind that she provided Linda, our
colleagues, and me during this time.
ix
I was fortunate to receive a dissertation scholarship from the faculty of the Department of
Educational Leadership. This award allowed me to focus completely on my dissertation study
during the spring 2012 semester.
The members of my comprehensive exam and dissertation committees have gone above and
beyond in mentoring and supporting me. I am truly fortunate to have had teachers and scholars
as talented as Elisa Abes, Kathy Goodman, Carolyn Haynes, Peter Magolda, and Marcia Baxter
Magolda to shepherd me through the dissertation process. I thank them for their generosity of
time, efforts, and intellect. They invited me into an intellectual partnership based on respect,
support, rigor, and intellectual curiosity. I appreciate their thoughtful and insightful questions
and suggestions that prompted me to continually improve my project.
I owe special thanks to my Student Affairs in Higher Education (SAHE) colleagues Christina
Carrubba-Whetstine and Heather Shook Christman. Christina generously enhanced my learning
by sharing her incredible intellect and insightful perspectives with me throughout my doctoral
studies. In addition to being a valued classmate, Heather provided developmental assessments
for this study. She often prioritized my work over her own and always offered thoughtful
explanations to her assessments.
I am thankful to my SAHE colleagues who were my partners in learning over the past three
years. Because of their dedication and commitment to genuine learning they pushed me to grow
intellectually, professionally, and personally. I am especially thankful to Christina CarrubbaWhetstine, Heather Shook Christman, Pete Haverkos, Lei Song, Buffy Stoll, and Chris Taylor
for their contributions to our learning community and my learning.
My family—Lori, Don, Sam, and Molly Gloeckner—have long been my safe haven and source
of unconditional love and support. I needed them more than ever over the last few years and
they consistently stepped up to the plate. I thank them for their care and genuine interest in my
work. I appreciated their questions and discussions about my classes and study almost as much
as the home cooked meals and comic relief. I am so lucky to have them and so fortunate that
they are willing to have me.
My parents—Bob and Rose Drobney—provided me with a lifetime of love, support, and value of
education. I cannot imagine any high-risk student (i.e., first-generation, working-class
background, and poor academic performance) enjoying his college experience more than my
Dad. His eternal devotion to and pride in my sister and me, while often unjustified, gave me the
confidence to begin this endeavor and served as motivation throughout.
Special thanks to my exercise partners––Laura Anderson, Sara Speh, Kari Taylor, and Chase
Wartenbe—who provided me support, stress relief, friendship, and encouragement after
particularly challenging days of writing. They helped me get over the speed bumps when my
brain stopped working and kept me from turning into a recluse when I was on a roll.
I also have a cadre of friends who supported and took care of me as I wrote my dissertation.
Thank you for encouraging me and cheering me on throughout the process: Laura Anderson,
Elise Brauckmann & Attilio Marconi, Christina & Maria Carrubba-Whetstine, Lori Gloeckner,
Lori Guyll, Molly Hall, Ginna Haravon, Kathryn Jarvis & the entire Jarvis clan, Cindy Lewis,
x
and Emily & Matt Lykins. I am also thankful for my constant feline companions, Farley and
Lilly.
I am especially grateful for Chase Wartenbe’s unwavering confidence in me. When I was at the
end of my rope he assured me that I could do it. Despite bearing the brunt of a loved-one
pursuing a doctorate degree (e.g., general unpleasantness and prioritizing school work over
everything else) Chase was consistently supportive, encouraging, patient, and loving. At the
start he did not necessarily understand my work but that never stopped him from being invested
in it. I am thankful for his support during this journey.
Above all, I thank Marcia Baxter Magolda for serving as my dissertation director and mentor.
Marcia generously shared her expertise in WNS, longitudinal research, student development, and
scholarship with me through a true learning partnership. She gave me the reigns to the
dissertation study but also provided enough structure so that I did not unproductively flounder.
Marcia was exceptionally generous with her insights and time; she provided regular feedback
during every stage of the process and was always available to talk through my thoughts or
brainstorm ways to conceptualize the faintest glimmer of an idea despite having her own work to
do. I am especially thankful for Marcia’s commitment to quality; she expected and pushed me to
produce the best work that I could.
Marcia’s enthusiasm for students, learning, and research is contagious. She showed me just how
exciting and intellectually invigorating research can be. I was beyond fortunate to have such an
exceptional scholar genuinely interested in me and my work. I can say with absolute certainty
that I could not have done this project without Marcia. I cannot thank you enough Marcia. I
cherish our collaboration and learned so much from you through it. Thank you for being my
mentor and the champion of my educational and professional careers.
xi
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
College is a critical time for students as they make transitions from adolescence to
adulthood. One of the most significant indicators of this transition is that students typically
begin making consequential decisions that have significant implications for their lives in both the
short and long term (Albert & Steinberg, 2011; Galotti, Kozberg & Gustafson, 2009; Pizzolato,
2005). These decisions influence students’ educational, professional, and personal lives (Galotti,
Kozberg & Gustafson, 2009). Moreover, students’ decisions influence the lives and futures of
those in their immediate environments (e.g., roommates, peers) as well as in the broader society
(e.g., home and school communities). During this transitional period, collegians are learning to
take over their own decision making from parents, and educators provide guidance in doing so.
Educators (e.g., student affairs staff, faculty) have the responsibility of understanding students’
decision-making1 processes in order to create conditions that support students in making good,
well-informed decisions.
The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) and the
American College Personnel Association (ACPA) identified informed decision making as an
essential educational goal for college students in the 2004 publication, Learning Reconsidered: A
Campus-Wide Focus on the Student Experience. The student learning outcomes advocated in
Learning Reconsidered directly relate to students’ abilities to make informed decisions and
include: 1) cognitive complexity (e.g., critical thinking, reflective thinking, effective reasoning,
intellectual flexibility, emotion/cognition integration, and identity/cognition integration); 2)
knowledge acquisition, integration, and application (e.g., connecting knowledge to other
knowledge, ideas, and experiences; relating knowledge to daily life; and deciding on a career); 3)
humanitarianism (e.g., understanding and appreciation of human differences, cultural
competency, and social responsibility); 4) civic engagement (e.g., sense of civic responsibility
and effective leadership); 5) interpersonal and intrapersonal competence (e.g., realistic self
appraisal and self understanding, personal attributes such as self-esteem and confidence, and the
ability to set goals); 6) practical competence (e.g., capacity to manage one’s personal affairs,
economic self-sufficiency, and living a purposeful and satisfying life); and, 7) persistence and
1
Per APA guidelines, decision making is hyphenated when used as a compound modifier
preceding a noun (e.g., decision-making processes).
1
academic achievement (e.g., ability to manage the college experience to achieve academic and
personal success and degree attainment) (Keeling, 2004).
In order to make good, well-informed decisions students must possess decision-making
skills. The learning outcomes advocated in Learning Reconsidered include many of the skills
necessary for sound decision making (Keeling, 2004). In order to make good decisions, students
must be able to think critically (learning outcome 1), evaluate evidence (learning outcome 2),
and consider multiple perspectives (learning outcomes 3 and 4) (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001,
2004, 2008). In addition, good decision making requires the ability to develop self-identified
beliefs and values (learning outcome 5), balance competing expectations (learning outcome 6),
and identify and make progress towards plans for success and goals (learning outcome 7)
(Pizzolato, 2005; Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007).
Similarly, the 2007 Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) project of the
Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) identified intellectual and
practical skills as essential learning outcomes. These outcomes directly relate to students’
decision-making capabilities as it includes: inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking,
written and oral communication, and teamwork and problem solving (AAC&U, 2007).
The aforementioned outcomes require students to possess a combination of practical
skills and developmental capacities (i.e., how students make meaning of the world around them).
As students become more developmentally complex they move from being externally defined to
internally defined. Uninformed decision making has been linked to early developmental
capacities such as uncritical acceptance of external guidance, inability to consider multiple
perspectives, and prioritizing important others’ expectations over one’s own (Baxter Magolda,
1992, 2001, 2004, 2008; Creamer & Laughlin, 2005; Laughlin & Creamer, 2007; Pizzolato,
2005; Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007). Good, well-informed decision making has been linked to
complex developmental capacities such as critical evaluation of evidence, establishing one’s own
beliefs and values, and the ability to consider others’ perspectives without being consumed by
them (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2008; Creamer & Laughlin, 2005; Laughlin &
Creamer, 2007; Pizzolato, 2005; Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007). Without these underlying
developmental capacities students struggle to meet the learning outcomes advocated by national
educational associations. Thus it is crucial for educators to understand the role of developmental
2
capacities in students’ decision making, a topic I return to later in this dissertation, to assist
students in meeting desired learning outcomes.
High-Risk Students
While Learning Reconsidered (2004) and LEAP (2007) highlight the importance of
understanding and promoting the decision-making capabilities of all students, it is particularly
important to understand the decision-making processes of high-risk students. These students
often have fewer resources or support systems than their peers and are susceptible to academic
failure or early withdrawal from college (Kuh, Cruce, Shoup, Kinzie, & Gonyea, 2008;
Pizzolato, 2003). Characteristics of high-risk students include: 1) insufficient academic
background (academic preparation); 2) poor prior academic performance (low high school or
first-semester college GPA); or, 3) personal characteristics that place students in a “population
without a long or necessarily successful history in higher education” (Pizzolato, 2003, p. 799).
Such student populations include first-generation students, students of color, and students from
low socioeconomic backgrounds (Kuh et al., 2008; Pizzolato, 2003). Pizzolato (2003) provides a
helpful clarification regarding the term high-risk, writing, “high-risk suggests risk for
withdrawal is a gradient scale, rather than a quality the student unequivocally has or does not
have; thus, a student may be considered high-risk for withdrawal, but still be a high achiever” (p.
798).
Identifying students with particular characteristics as high-risk is a complicated task,
often dictated by institutional context. For example, at the institution where I currently work,
transfer students and students transitioning from the regional campuses to the main campus have
been identified as being at high-risk for academic failure or early withdrawal. This
categorization may not be true at other institutions. I worked in the academic support
departments for student-athletes for five years at two Division I institutions in highly competitive
athletic conferences—the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and Southeastern Conference (SEC).
Many of the student-athletes I worked with were first-generation students of color from low
socioeconomic backgrounds. These students typically struggled academically, whether they had
high academic ability or not, because they faced other barriers to academic success (i.e., they
were first-generation students of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds). In addition, I
have ten years of experience working in the field of learning assistance: two years as a graduate
3
assistant at a regional campus (with a non-traditional student population) and eight years as a
learning specialist on a main campus (with a predominantly traditional age student population).
Many of the students I work with possess one or more of the high-risk characteristics identified
by Kuh et al. (2008). Even those students with these characteristics who have a history of
academic success in high school frequently struggle during college. This is because, often times,
they attended schools in low socioeconomic districts and are not academically prepared for
college, or they face marginalization on our predominantly white, middle-to-upper-class campus.
In light of these complexities and nuances, I needed a way to identify high-risk students for my
study. Not wanting to base my definition solely on my own experience, I explored the literature
on how students are characterized as high-risk. Kuh et al. (2008) synthesized the literature on
high-risk students and identified characteristics that typically serve as barriers to college student
success. I adopted the criteria outlined by Kuh et al. (2008) and used by Pizzolato (2003, 2004)
because they are based in the broad literature and resonate with my experience as a learning
specialist. The statistics provided in the following section attest to Kuh et al.’s (2008)
conceptualization of high-risk and my experience working with high-risk students.
Improving the persistence and graduation rates of all college students is a significant
concern and priority in American higher education; however, there is considerable evidence that
the educational attainment of high-risk students is particularly tenuous (Aud & Hannes, 2011;
Carey, 2004; Engle & Tinto, 2008). Racial and socioeconomic gaps in immediate college
enrollment rates after high school have persisted over time. In every year between 1975 and
2009 the immediate college enrollment rates of high school graduates from low-income families
were lower than those of graduates from high-income families. In 2009 the overall college
enrollment rate was 70% for high school completers with an enrollment rate of 55% for students
from low-income families and an enrollment rate of 84% for students from high-income families
(Aud & Hannes, 2011). Enrollment gaps based on race indicate that in 2009 the immediate
enrollment rate of White high school completers was 71% while the rates of African-American
completers was 63% and Hispanic completers was 62% (Aud & Hannes, 2011).
The total 6-year college graduation rate is 63% with rates of 54% for low-income
students compared with 77% for high-income students (Carey, 2004). Graduation rates
organized by race suggest that White students graduate at a rate of 60% while the AfricanAmerican student graduation rate is 40% and the Latino student graduation rate is 49% (Aud &
4
Hannes, 2011). In terms of bachelor’s degrees awarded, in 2008 White students earned 72% of
all degrees awarded (vs. 76% in 1998), African-American students earned 10% (vs. 8% in 1998),
and Latino students earned 8% (vs. 6% in 1998) (Snyder & Dillow, 2010). Furthermore, 7% of
low-income students earn a bachelor’s degree by age 26 compared to 60% of upper-income
students (Carey, 2004).
In addition, the level of parental education directly influences students’ degree
attainment. Twenty-three percent of students whose parents hold high school diplomas or lower
leave college before their second year while just 10% of non-first-generation students leave
college during the same timeframe (Choy, 2002). Choy (2002) indicates that family income and
parents’ education influence students’ ability to enroll in post-secondary education within two
years of finishing high school. For example, 93% of students with parents who are college
graduates enrolled in post-secondary institutions within two years of finishing high school versus
59% of students with parents who have a high school degree or less education (Choy, 2002).
In examining the status of low-income, first-generation college students in higher
education Engle and Tinto (2008) found that these students were nearly four times more likely
(26% compared to 7%) to leave college after the first year than students who had neither of these
risk factors. After six years, “nearly half (43%) of low-income, first-generation students had left
college without earning their degrees” (Engle & Tinto, 2008, p. 2). Furthermore, after six years,
“only 11% of low-income, first-generation students had earned bachelor’s degrees compared to
55% of their more advantaged peers” (Engle & Tinto, 2008, p. 2). This gap persists across
institutional type. For example, in four-year public institutions, the six-year graduation rate of
low-income, first-generation students is 34% compared to 66% for their peers. “In private, notfor-profit four-year institutions, there was an even larger gap between low-income, firstgeneration students and their peers, 43% vs. 80% respectively” (Engle & Tinto, 2008, p. 2).
Students from low-income families increased their degree attainment from 6% in 1970 to 12% in
2005. However, during that same timeframe, the degree attainment rate for students from highincome families increased from 40% to 73%. “This means that high-income youth are six times
more likely to earn a four-year degree than are low-income students, and the gap between them
has nearly doubled in the last 35 years” (Engle & Tinto, 2008, p. 5). See Table 1 for a summary
of these data.
5
Table 1
Six-year College Graduation Rates of Students with Different High-risk Characteristics
Student Characteristic
Graduation Rate
All Students
63%
Low-Income
54%
High-Income
77%
White
60%
African-American
40%
Latino
49%
Low-Income & First-Generation
11%
Above Low-Income & Not First-Generation
55%
(Aud & Hannes, 2011; Carey, 2004; Engle & Tinto, 2008)
Studying high-risk students’ decision making is warranted given the fact that a
disproportionate number of students from this population leave college without earning a degree.
Considerable research exists on the characteristics, experiences, persistence, preparation, and
integration of these students (Aud & Hannes, 2011; Avery & Daly, 2010; Carey, 2004; Choy,
2002; Engle & Tinto, 2008; Lareau, 2003; McDonough, 1997; Martinez, Sher, Krull, & Wood,
2009; Snyder & Dillow, 2010; Tinto, 1993; Walpole, 2003). These research studies indicate that
these students typically face more significant academic, economic, social, and personal
challenges in their lives than do other students. These complexities suggest that high-risk
students may have more difficult and complicated decisions when compared to their peers.
Furthermore, the consequences and stakes that accompany the decisions of high-risk students
may be more significant since they often do not have the resources or safety nets that other
students enjoy (e.g., economic resources, family connections, cultural capital). Thus, it is
important for educators to understand this group’s decision-making processes in order to support
them in making good, well-informed decisions in all aspects of their lives.
6
My experiences working with high-risk students throughout my professional career
reiterate the need for this study. Students in the high-risk population are frequently talked about
and at, but are rarely listened to. In well-intentioned attempts to help these students achieve
academic success educators often give high-risk students directives on what they should and
should not be doing. Such an approach is problematic because it: positions the students in a
subordinate role, assumes that the students do not have the knowledge or ability to direct their
educational lives, reiterates negative messages that the students have received throughout their
schooling, and promotes disengagement in their academic careers. A more productive approach
to supporting high-risk students is to treat them as the capable and intelligent students they are by
listening to and collaborating with them as they negotiate the challenges of earning a degree.
This study provides an opportunity to learn about high-risk students’ experiences and decision
making from their perspectives and in their own words. It gives voice to a frequently
marginalized group and provides educators with a deeper understanding of this student
population and insights on ways to better support their decision making and academic success.
Research Focus
A primary objective of this research study was to explore the relationship between highrisk students’ developmental capacities and their decision-making processes. Specifically, I
wanted to determine whether and how students’ developmental capacities mediated their abilities
to make good, well-informed decisions. As a member of the Wabash National Study (WNS)
research team I had access to the four-year longitudinal interview data used in this dissertation.
Within that data set 22 students completed four years of interviews and held three or more highrisk characteristics. Of these, 18 participants identified as students of color, 17 held low high
school GPAs, 16 were first-generation students, 15 had low ACT scores, and 13 were of low
socioeconomic status. This work improves practice by identifying how educators can support
high-risk students in their decision making and design conditions that facilitate good, wellinformed decisions. Additionally, this study extends student development theory by offering an
interpretation of the relationship between decision making and development in high-risk
students. Studying the decision making and development of the students in this study over four
years enabled me to pursue this relationship. The following literature review introduces
7
decision-making and student development theory, explores studies that examine decision making
from a developmental perspective, and offers a rationale for augmenting that research.
8
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter I introduce the relevant literature related to decision making from the
fields of psychology and student development. Both disciplines evolved from considering
decision making as a purely cognitive function to conceptualizing it more holistically by
including additional developmental domains (e.g., psychosocial considerations in psychology;
interpersonal and intrapersonal dimensions in student development). I also provide an overview
of the study of student development and an in-depth discussion of self-authorship theory. In the
final section I synthesize studies that explore the relationship between self-authorship and
decision making, as well as developmental literature on high-risk students.
Decision Making
Literature from the field of psychology related to adolescent decision making has
primarily conceptualized decision making as a sequence of steps and procedures. Byrnes (2002)
provides a four-step model of decision making: 1) setting a goal; 2) compiling options for
producing that goal; 3) rank-ordering the options; and 4) selecting the highest ranked option.
Despite clarifying that “in everyday situations, of course, decision making is generally more
dynamic and recursive than step-like,” such a conceptualization characterizes decision making as
a purely cognitive process (Byrnes, 2002, p. 209). Cauffman and Steinberg (1996, 2000) argue
that this overemphasis of cognitive functioning (e.g., capacity for thinking, reasoning, and
understanding) fails to take into account the psychosocial factors (e.g., aspects of development
and behavior that involve personality traits, interpersonal relations, and affective experience)
involved in the decision-making process.
Cauffman and Steinberg (2000) use the term “maturity of judgment” rather than decision
making to signify their more broadly conceived notion of decision making that includes a range
of cognitive, emotional, and social factors. They posit that the vast majority of psychosocial
variables related to decision making found in the adolescent psychological literature fall into one
of three categories: 1) responsibility—healthy autonomy, self-reliance, and clarity of identity; 2)
temperance—the ability to limit impulsivity, avoid extremes in decision making, and evaluate a
situation thoroughly before acting, including seeking the advice of others when appropriate; and,
3) perspective—the ability to consider situations from different viewpoints and placing them in
broader contexts (Steinberg & Cauffman, 1996). “Although systematic data on the
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developmental course of each of these phenomena, their interrelations, and their joint and
cumulative impact on decision making are lacking…there is reason to suspect that developments
in these areas may potentially affect individuals’ decision making” (Cauffman & Steinberg,
2000, p. 745).
Higher education research related to decision making has evolved in a manner similar to
that of the psychology research—from examining decision making from a solely cognitive
perspective to conceptualizing decision making as a more holistic process. King and Kitchener
(1996) created a model of cognitive development that describes how people justify their beliefs
when they are faced with complex or vexing problems. Their Reflective Judgment Model (RJM)
describes a “developmental progression that occurs between childhood and adulthood in the
ways that people understand the process of knowing and in the corresponding ways they justify
their beliefs about ill-structured problems” (King & Kitchener, 1996, p. 13). Ill-structured
problems cannot be described with a high degree of completeness or solved with a high degree of
certainty. Dilemmas related to overpopulation, hunger, pollution, and inflation are examples of
ill-structured problems used in King and Kitchener’s research. “As individuals develop, they
become better able to evaluate knowledge claims and to explain and defend their points of view
on controversial issues. The ability to make reflective judgments is the ultimate outcome of this
progression” (King & Kitchener, 1996, p. 13). Making reflective judgments requires the same
kind of reasoning that is necessary for good decision making (e.g., critical thinking, evaluating
evidence, and considering multiple perspectives; Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2008).
The RJM includes seven stages (King & Kitchener, 1996). Individuals’ whose reasoning
is characteristic of the early stages assume that knowledge is gained through personal
observation or through an authority figure. Their absolute assumptions about knowledge
correspond with pre-reflective reasoning. Reasoning typical of the middle stages of the RJM
“recognizes that knowledge claims about ill-structured problems contain elements of
uncertainty” (King & Kitchener, 1996, p. 16). Individuals in these stages typically struggle to
solve ill-structured problems because they cannot negotiate the ambiguity of such problems.
This type of reasoning is quasi-reflective. The later stages of the RJM reflect the epistemic
assumption that “one’s understanding of the world is not ‘given’ but must be actively constructed
and that knowledge must be understood in relationship to the context in which it was generated”
(King & Kitchener, 1996, p. 17). Another epistemic assumption at this stage is that some
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knowledge claims may be more plausible than others based on criteria such as conceptual
soundness, coherence, and usefulness. This type of reasoning is considered truly reflective
thinking.
King and Kitchener (1996) focused their work specifically on how people reason about
intellectual issues and on the epistemological aspects of a given problem. More recent literature
has started to expand the study of decision making to other developmental dimensions (i.e.,
interpersonal and intrapersonal development) for a more holistic conceptualization grounded in
the notion of self-authorship. Before introducing the decision-making research rooted in a selfauthorship perspective it is important to first understand student development theory in general
and the specific theory of self-authorship.
Student Development Theory & Self-Authorship
Student development theory examines how students evolve from being externally to
internally defined in three dimensions: epistemological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal (Baxter
Magolda, 2004, 2009a; Kegan, 1994; Pizzolato, 2003). The epistemological dimension is how
students come to know and their beliefs about knowledge; the intrapersonal dimension is how
students view themselves and construct their identities; and the interpersonal dimension is how
students view themselves in relation to others (Baxter Magolda, 2001). These developmental
dimensions are related to decision making because they influence how students experience the
events of their lives, make sense of those events, interpret the significance of the events in
relation to themselves and others, and ultimately, how they make judgments on what to believe
and the courses of action to take. Thus, the underlying developmental capacities that facilitate
decision making embody the learning outcomes, particularly, cognitive complexity and
knowledge acquisition, integration, and application, outlined in Learning Reconsidered (2004)
and the LEAP project (2007).
Self-authorship is grounded in the Piagetian tradition and examines the evolution of how
people make meaning of their experiences. Baxter Magolda (2009b) explains that the structures
and assumptions people use to make meaning become more complex and sophisticated as people
develop and they “guide how people think rather than what they think” (p. 622). At the center of
Piaget’s (1950) work are the concepts of dissonance, assimilation, and accommodation. People
11
make sense of their experiences based on their particular meaning-making2 structures. Certain
experiences create dissonance for individuals by challenging their current ways of knowing (i.e.,
assumptions that form their meaning-making structures). Assimilation occurs when people
incorporate those new experiences into their current forms of meaning making. In such instances
individuals are not changing how they make meaning so there is no developmental growth.
When dissonance is strong enough, individuals are no longer able to assimilate the experiences;
instead, their meaning making becomes more complex through accommodation. In such cases
individuals change their assumptions, or how they make meaning to incorporate the dissonance;
this process is what facilitates development (Baxter Magolda, 2009b). Piaget’s work is the
foundation of the constructive-developmental tradition, which asserts that, “humans actively
construct their perspectives by interpreting their experiences (i.e., constructivism) and that these
constructions form meaning-making structures that evolve over time (i.e., developmentalism)”
(Baxter Magolda & King, 2007, p. 495).
Kegan’s (1994) work, grounded in the constructive-developmental tradition,
conceptualizes development and the accompanying meaning making as the subject-object
relationship. According to Kegan our meaning-making structures include elements that are
object to us, those things over which we have control, and elements that we are subject to, those
things that have control over us. He explains that “We have object; we are subject” (Kegan,
1994, p. 32). In this framework developmental growth entails “liberating ourselves from that in
which we were embedded, making what was subject into object so that we can ‘have it’ rather
than ‘be had’ by it” (Kegan, 1994, p. 34). The development of more complex meaning-making
structures (i.e., holding more elements as object) occurs when individuals face demands that their
current meaning-making structures cannot handle. In such situations individuals’ meaningmaking structures evolve in order to be able to meet the demands being placed on them. This
reflects Piaget’s notion of dissonance facilitating accommodation.
As students progress developmentally they rely less on others to determine what to think,
who they are, and how they act in relationships (i.e., their meaning making changes). More
developmentally complex students mediate external sources of information through an internally
2
Per APA guidelines, meaning making is hyphenated when used as a compound modifier
preceding a noun (e.g., meaning-making structures).
12
defined belief system, identity, and way of relating to others. This internal coordination of the
three dimensions is known as self-authorship (Baxter Magolda, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2009a; Kegan,
1994). Baxter Magolda (2001, 2009a), based on her 25-year longitudinal study of the
development of college students and young adults, identified the first phase of the journey to
self-authorship as following external formulas. Individuals at this developmental location trust
external others (i.e., people they consider authorities, such as parents and teachers, or peers
whose affirmation they seek) to decide what to believe, how to view themselves, and how to
construct relationships with others. They make decisions based on others’ expectations rather
than internal criteria and act in relationships in order to receive approval from others. In this
phase external voices, those of others, are in the foreground and drown out students’ internal
voices (Baxter Magolda, 2009a).
Work from the Wabash National Study (WNS) led to the identification of three
“positions” within external formulas (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). The key characteristics
of early external meaning making (Trusting External Authority) are a focus on “acquiring
absolute knowledge from authorities, defining identity through external expectations, and
pleasing others in relationships” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Students at this position
rely on uncritical acceptance of external authority. Encountering uncertainty led WNS students
to middle external meaning making (Tensions with Trusting External Authority) where students
“recognize the dilemmas inherent in viewing knowledge as certain and relying on others to
define their identity and relationships” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Individuals at this
position did not know how to resolve the conflicts created by multiple perspectives, thus they
“struggled to figure out what to believe, how to define themselves, and how to manage pleasing
others” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). The resulting tensions led to late external meaning
making (Recognizing Shortcomings of Trusting External Authority) where there is “an
increasing acceptance of uncertainty and the emerging recognition of the need to hold one’s own
opinions, be oneself, and not be driven by living up to others’ expectations” (Baxter Magolda &
King, in press). At this point students began recognizing the shortcomings of following external
sources for knowledge, self-definition, and ways of relating to others.
The next phase of development on the way to self-authorship is the crossroads; this is
when individuals are torn between following others’ visions and expectations rather than their
own (Baxter Magolda, 2001, 2009a). The crossroads is often a place of pain and discontent as
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individuals feel a need to work toward self-definition after experiencing disappointment or
dissatisfaction from following external formulas and they recognize they must find some way to
construct their own beliefs and values internally (Baxter Magolda, 2009a). “Part of the
discomfort of the crossroads stems from the knowledge that one needs to construct one’s own
beliefs and values yet at the same time one has not formed internal criteria to use to do so”
(Baxter Magolda, 2009b, p. 630).
WNS identified two elements of the crossroads with each element consisting of two
developmental positions. Entering the Crossroads contains the positions of Questioning External
Authority and Constructing the Internal Voice and marks the emergence of an internal meaning
making structure. Students in the Questioning External Authority position continued to rely on
external formulas despite the awareness of the need for an internal voice (Baxter Magolda &
King, in press). A student using this meaning-making structure “begins to question authorities’
plans, realizes the dilemma of external definition, and sees the need to craft one’s own vision,
develop one’s internal identity, and bring one’s identity to relationships” (Baxter Magolda &
King, in press). These students begin exploring similarities and differences “between how others
think and act and how they want to think and act” but are unsure how to proceed (Baxter
Magolda & King, in press). Students in the Constructing the Internal Voice position begin to
“actively work on constructing a new way of making meaning” rather than just being aware of
the need for an internal voice (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). They are beginning to
construct their own beliefs, identities, and relationships but continue to rely on external formulas
more than their newly developing internal voice (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). “The
person is ‘controlled’ by the external but fighting to get the internal to take over” (Baxter
Magolda & King, in press).
The second element of the crossroads identified by the WNS, Leaving the Crossroads,
corresponds with positions in the crossroads previously identified by Baxter Magolda (2001,
2009a). The first position in Leaving the Crossroads is Listening to the Internal Voice where
individuals begin to develop their internal voices through the process of identifying what makes
them happy, examining their own beliefs, and establishing distinctions between their feelings and
external expectations (Baxter Magolda, 2009a). Students in this position are able to
“simultaneously look inward and use their internal voice to make decisions as well as recognize
how they are processing and being influenced by others’ points of views” (Baxter Magolda &
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King, in press). Working to hear their own voices “over the noise and clutter” of the external
environment prompts individuals to enter the second position of Leaving the Crossroads,
Cultivating the Internal Voice (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). For Baxter Magolda’s
(2009a) participants this involved “developing parts of themselves they valued, establishing
priorities, sifting out beliefs and values that no longer worked, and putting pieces of the puzzle of
who they were together” (p. 7). In this phase individuals work to reduce reliance on external
authorities and bring their internal voices to the foreground. For these students the “ability to
distinguish one’s own point of view from that of others remains tenuous” thus they must
“consciously work to not slip back into their former tendency of allowing others’ points of view
to subsume their own point of view” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). The majority of Baxter
Magolda’s (2009a) participants, who were all traditional-age college students, did not experience
Leaving the Crossroads until after they graduated from college.
More developmentally complex students mediate external sources of information through
an internally defined belief system, identity, and way of relating to others. This internal
coordination of the three dimensions is known as self-authorship (Baxter Magolda, 2001, 2004,
2008, 2009a; Kegan, 1994). At this developmental phase individuals’ internal voices are in the
foreground and external voices are in the background. Pizzolato, Nguyen, Johnston, & Wang
(2009) describe self-authorship as “a particular level of sophistication in meaning making
whereby individuals coordinate their understanding of the socially constructed nature of
knowledge with an internally defined sense of who they are, and a mutually beneficial and
supportive notion of relationships” (p. 3). Baxter Magolda (2008, 2009a) identified three
elements of self-authorship: trusting the internal voice, building an internal foundation, and
securing internal commitments. Participants in her study were in their late 20s and early 30s
when they began entering these phases of self-authorship.
When Baxter Magolda’s (2009a) participants began trusting their internal voice they
were able to distinguish between reality and their reactions to reality. “They realized that reality,
or what happened around and to them, was often beyond their control. At the same time, they
realized that their reactions to reality were within their control” (Baxter Magolda, 2009a, p. 8).
This realization helps individuals who begin trusting the internal voice to take responsibility for
choosing “how to interpret reality, how to feel about their interpretation, and how to react”
(Baxter Magolda, 2009b, p. 631). Baxter Magolda (2009a) found that trusting the internal voice
15
is not a straightforward, steady journey. Instead, her participants frequently cycled through
periods of questioning and refining their internal voices during this phase of self-authorship.
When Baxter Magolda’s (2009a) participants trusted their internal voices enough to guide
their lives, they moved to the building an internal foundation phase of self-authorship.
Individuals in this phase use their internal voices to make internal commitments and build those
commitments into a foundation or philosophy of life to guide their actions. Crafting a foundation
or philosophy resulted in a centeredness that many of Baxter Magolda’s participants called
“being at home with oneself” (Baxter Magolda, 2009b, p. 632).
Individuals reach the final element of self-authorship—securing internal commitments—
when they live those commitments in their everyday lives. Baxter Magolda’s (2009a)
participants described the shift between building an internal foundation and securing internal
commitments as moving from having the commitments in their heads to having them in their
hearts. In this phase the commitments became second nature for the participants and they did not
think consciously about them. Furthermore, security in their commitments also gave participants
a greater sense of freedom. “Trusting that they could use their foundations to make the best of
what happened to them, they were more open to taking risks and to reevaluating their internal
foundations” (Baxter Magolda, 2009b, p. 632). Baxter Magolda’s (2009a) participants typically
did not enter the self-authorship phase until they were in their mid-30s.
Baxter Magolda (2004) highlights the developmental foundations of self-authorship as:
[1] epistemological foundation—view knowledge as contextual, develop an internal
belief system via constructing, evaluating, and interpreting judgments in light of available
frames of reference; [2] intrapersonal foundation—choose own values and identity in
crafting an internally generated sense of self that regulates interpretation of experience
and choices; and, [3] interpersonal foundation—capacity to engage in authentic,
interdependent relationships with diverse others in which self is not overshadowed by a
need for others’ approval, mutually negotiating needs, and genuinely taking others’
perspectives into account without being consumed by them. (p. 8)
Achieving self-authorship—or the capacities outlined in these three foundations—
supports good, well-informed decision making. Self-authoring developmental capacities in the
epistemological dimension include the ability to view knowledge as contextual and recognize the
16
validity of multiple perspectives. These capacities are particularly important in decision making
because they enable individuals to “participate in constructing, evaluating, and interpreting
judgments in light of available evidence and frames of reference” (Baxter Magolda, 2004, p. 9).
Students who have these epistemological capacities solve problems and execute mature decision
making (Baxter Magolda, 2004). Self-authoring capacities in the intrapersonal dimension
include the ability to self-reflect, choose values and beliefs, and internally construct an identity
based on those values rather than on external approval. These intrapersonal developmental
capacities are necessary in decision making because “constructing an internal belief system and
using it in decision making (i.e., cognitive maturity) requires an internal identity that is not
overly dependent on the views of others” (Baxter Magolda, 2004, p. 9). Mature relationships in
the interpersonal dimension are characterized by “respect for both one’s own and others’
particular identities and cultures as well as by productive collaboration to negotiate and integrate
multiple perspectives and needs” (Baxter Magolda, 2004, pp. 9-10). Interdependence is the
developmental capacity students need in order to achieve these relationships. Interdependence
requires “openness to other perspectives without being consumed by them” and “prioritizing
self-approval as a criterion with which to judge others’ perspectives” (Baxter Magolda, 2004, p.
10). Individuals with these capacities make decisions consistent with their own needs and values
rather than making decisions to please others.
This developmental journey towards self-authorship, while described on the basis of
primarily white, traditional age students, has been witnessed with diverse student populations as
well. Torres (Torres & Hernandez, 2007) interviewed 29 Latino/a college students from four
different urban schools around the United States over the course of their college careers to gather
information about the processes they used to make decisions about their college lives. While the
findings indicated many similarities with the journey towards self-authorship described by
Baxter Magolda (2001), they also revealed additional developmental tasks experienced by the
Latino/a students that centered on the issue of racism. The role of recognizing and making
meaning of racism was a significant developmental task for these students.
Cognitively, students began recognizing their cultural realities and the racism that they
faced. Reflecting on how their cultural history affected them in the form of racism was an
important developmental task for the Latino/a students. As students developed they began
making decisions that blended their internal voices with those realities of racism, and eventually,
17
worked towards changing those realities of racism (Torres & Hernandez, 2007). In a later study
using the same interview data as the 2007 study, Torres (2009) indicated that the cognitive
dimension served as the “entry experience” for Latino/a students that “allowed them to have a
different interpretation of the racist ideas, which then created a critical developmental tool for
challenging these negative beliefs (racism)” (p. 518). Intrapersonally, students began developing
“an informed Latino/a identity” by understanding and managing the positive and negative
societal images of Latinos/as (Torres & Hernandez, 2007, p. 565). As students moved towards
self-authorship they made deliberate choices about how these stereotypes would influence how
they saw themselves as Latinos/as (Torres & Hernandez, 2007). Interpersonally, the Latino/a
students began renegotiating their relationships with others to ensure those relationships were
consistent with an informed Latino/a identity. This ability helped students manage family
influences and expectations rather than be driven by them (Torres & Hernandez, 2007). It also
enabled students to make choices about who they turned to for support and relationships (Torres
& Hernandez, 2007). Torres and Hernandez (2007) suggested that the need to mediate the
dissonance of racism may have prompted some of their participants to shift to self-authorship at
a younger age than has been reflected in studies with white students (Baxter Magolda, 2001).
Abes found similar links between resisting societal marginalization and development
towards self-authorship in her work with lesbian college students (Abes & Jones, 2004). This
study found that the dissonance of heterosexism influenced the students’ self-perceptions of
sexual orientation identity and its relationship with other identity dimensions. Abes interviewed
ten college students between the ages of 18 and 23 to understand how the students thought about
their lesbian identities and how their meaning-making capacities influenced their perceptions.
She found that the participants’ meaning-making structures acted as filters between contextual
influences and their understanding of their identity:
As meaning-making grew more complex, the participants grew more capable of filtering
contextual influences, and thus were increasingly able to decide for themselves how
context shaped their identity. Whether identity was constructed from a formulaic or
foundational meaning-making structure, or whether participants were at crossroads
between the two, contributed to: the influence of context on the multiple meanings of
sexual orientation identity; the ease with which sexual orientation was integrated or
peacefully coexisted with other identity dimensions; and the extent to which participants’
18
perceptions of their identity were consistent with the sense of self to which they aspired.
(Abes & Jones, 2004, p. 619)
Specifically, various participants in Abes’ study (Abes & Jones, 2004) struggled to resolve the
tensions between their internal voices and external discriminatory messages that undermined
their sense of self. Navigating this dissonance prompted the students to develop more complex
meaning-making capacities. As the students’ internal voices developed they resisted external
definitions to their identities and integrated their many social identities based on how they
viewed themselves.
Given the cognitive complexity of some of Abes’s participants at a relatively young age,
the authors suggested that the dissonance created by identifying as lesbian in a heterosexist
society may facilitate the early development of self-authorship (Abes & Jones, 2004). This
possibility adds to the growing evidence that students who have experienced marginalization or
oppression in their lives appear to develop the capacity for self-authorship earlier than privileged
individuals (Pizzolato, 2003; Torres & Hernandez, 2007). This early development of selfauthorship may occur because these students must work to accommodate dissonance related to
their beliefs, identities, and relationships.
Literature Linking Self-Authorship & Decision Making
A growing number of researchers have begun exploring the connection between selfauthorship and decision making. In fact, Creamer & Laughlin (2005) argue that the link between
self-authorship and decision making was established by Baxter Magolda (1992, 2001, 2004,
2008). While her work did not explicitly study decision making she found that students at the
early stages of self-authorship rely on external others in their decision making. They look to
authorities such as parents or instructors to tell them what to do. In addition these students make
decisions based on earning the approval of important others (e.g., authorities and friends).
Students further along in their self-authorship make internally defined decisions. This means
they rely on their own values and beliefs to determine what to do and consider their own
perspectives to be as valuable as others’ perspectives. Furthermore, more complex development
has been associated with more complex decisions because such students possess intercultural
maturity, the ability to resist peer pressure, and internal criteria for personal and career decisions
19
(King & Baxter Magolda, 2005). Recent studies build on Baxter Magolda’s work by
intentionally exploring the relationship between decision making and self-authorship.
In their study of young women and their interests in careers in science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM) Creamer and Laughlin (2005) argue that self-authorship is
central to adult decision making and point out that Baxter Magolda (1998) makes the link
between self-authorship and decision making explicit in her definition of self-authorship;
according to Baxter Magolda self-authorship is “the ability to collect, interpret, and analyze
information and reflect on one’s own beliefs in order to form judgments” (Baxter Magolda,
1998, p. 143 cited in Creamer & Laughlin, 2005, p. 14). The authors explain that self-authorship
plays a role in career decision making because it “influences how students make meaning of the
advice they receive from others; how susceptible they are to negative feedback, including from
peers; and the extent to which the reasoning they employ to make a decision reflects an internally
grounded sense of self” (Creamer & Laughlin, 2005, p. 14). They clarify that self-authorship
differs from agency and self-efficacy, two common constructs used in the study of career
decision making. The authors emphasize that self-authorship focuses on meaning making, how
students make decisions, rather than on behaviors or student characteristics related to selfconfidence (Creamer & Laughlin, 2005).
Creamer and Laughlin (2005) interviewed women STEM majors to examine the three
dimensions of development in the context of participants’ career interests, the integration of the
three dimensions, and how that integration affects behavior. They found that in the interpersonal
dimension “students in the earliest stages of self-authorship are dependent on relationships with
similar others as a source of affirmation and identity” (Creamer & Laughlin, 2005, p. 19).
Students in later phases engaged with different perspectives. In the epistemological dimension
students at the beginning of their developmental journeys trusted in authorities and needed
approval from others. The students trusted and respected the views of authorities (e.g., parents)
in their lives because the students believed those authorities kept their best interests in mind.
Those in later phases of their developmental journeys saw the viability of multiple career options
and that their choice required a careful personal inventory. These students moved away from
external sources and articulated an interdependence that suggests they would be able to maintain
relationships with others while making decisions consistent with their personal interests and
values. In the intrapersonal dimension students in early phases were unreceptive to multiple
20
viewpoints. They did not listen to or authentically consider conflicting advice. In fact, some
students resented having to make decisions and avoided doing so. These students had no
experience with dealing with different viewpoints and found it upsetting. Students further along
the path toward self-authorship valued multiple perspectives related to career opportunities.
They weighed competing claims while considering their own values. These students were able
to make independent decisions and found it empowering (Creamer & Laughlin, 2005).
Continuing the exploration of self-authorship in women’s career decision making
Laughlin and Creamer (2007) provide a conceptualization of decision making that encompasses
the notion of self-authorship:
Our consideration of decision making breaks the process into three phases that
individuals move through in an iterative process: (1) gathering information from various
sources, including self and others; (2) considering how to manage information to reach a
decision; and (3) reflecting on the outcome of the decision and changing or reaffirming
future decision making processes through learning or development. (p. 44)
The authors note that the first two phases incorporate Baxter Magolda’s (1998) definition of selfauthorship and the third phase reflects constructive developmental theories (i.e., self-authorship)
that focus on the meaning making behind decision making. This definition of decision making
requires students to possess the underlying developmental capacities of self-authorship in order
to navigate the decision-making process. Specifically, students must be able to evaluate multiple
perspectives, understand and consider their own values and beliefs, and consider others’
perspectives without being consumed by them.
Laughlin and Creamer (2007) found that women early in the self-authorship process
valued and listened to advice based on their personal relationships with people rather than
whether those people had knowledge or expertise in the STEM fields. For example, while
students reported talking about their career interests with advisors, they only seriously
considered the advice of people who cared for them and had their best interests in mind (e.g.,
their parents). Laughlin and Creamer (2007) argue that this indicates that students used no
criteria to evaluate the credibility of the people giving the advice. Additionally, the authors
found that students’ confidence in the ability to make choices did not reflect the capacity to
consider multiple perspectives. While students in early development were reluctant to consider
21
input from diverse others they expressed high levels of confidence in the decisions they made.
Confidence was related to making or committing to a decision rather than the degree to which
students evaluated or considered multiple perspectives. Thus, students frequently had high levels
of confidence in their decisions but lacked the capacity to consider advice from multiple views
by judging the quality of the advice (Laughlin and Creamer, 2007).
Pizzolato (2005) examined students’ narratives related to decision making to identify
student and situational characteristics associated with the provocative moment that facilitates
students’ development. She describes students’ provocative moments as “experiences indicative
of high levels of disequilibrium propelling them to reconsider their goals and/or conception of
self with the intention of possibly acting on their reflection” (Pizzolato, 2005, p. 629). Pizzolato
was particularly interested in how students moved beyond the Crossroads, the phase of selfauthorship where dissatisfaction with following external formulas prompts students to recognize
the need for internal definition (Baxter Magolda, 2001). However, students in this phase lack the
developmental capacities to be internally defined and must begin the process of establishing
internally defined values, goals, and identities.
Pizzolato (2005) establishes the relationship between self-authorship and decision
making by noting that self-authorship requires the ability to consider multiple perspectives,
balance competing expectations, honor one’s own goals, beliefs, and values, and take action that
is grounded in these considerations. Likewise, decision making entails considering options and
taking action in the form of making a decision (Pizzolato, 2005). She argues that students who
evidence self-authorship through their decision making should “consider multiple perspectives,
reflect on their goals, and work from these internally defined goals and perspectives” (Pizzolato,
2005, p. 627).
Students experienced provocative moments that facilitated their emergence from the
crossroads when they had the ability to see themselves as in control of their sense of identity
(Pizzolato, 2005). For example, one student in the study made the decision to attend college
rather than work in the family business (which his parents expected of him) because he saw
himself as independent of his family’s business. The second student characteristic that Pizzolato
found to be indicative of provocative moments was high volitional efficacy, “a belief in one’s
ability to persist in goal-directed behavior in the face of challenges” (Pizzolato, 2005, p. 630).
Students with high volitional efficacy determined what was best for themselves and acted
22
accordingly (i.e., in self-authoring ways). The situational characteristics that prompted students
to experience provocative moments included students independently determining that decisions
needed to be made. In other words, the decision to make a decision had to be internally driven
and not required by others or social factors (e.g., choosing a major can be prompted by an
advisor).
Pizzolato and Ozaki (2007) examined the developmental changes of students
participating in a retention-focused academic advising program that taught students academic
success strategies and helped them develop skills for assessing situations and making thoughtful
decisions. The program was modeled after Baxter Magolda’s (2004) Learning Partnerships
Model (LPM). The LPM is a framework for promoting self-authorship that is based on the
notion that students need both challenge and support in order to develop. In the LPM students
are challenged by three assumptions about learning: 1) knowledge is portrayed as complex and
socially constructed, 2) self is central to knowledge construction, and 3) authority and expertise
are shared in the mutual construction of knowledge. The second portion of the LPM includes
three principles of practice that provide support for students: 1) validate students as knowers, 2)
situate learning in students’ experiences, and 3) define learning as mutually constructing
meaning (Baxter Magolda, 2004). Learning partnerships engage students in active learning and
encourage them to take greater responsibility for their learning and knowledge construction
(Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007). The authors found that participants of the academic advising
program made specific developmental changes that are likely precursors to self-authorship
(Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007).
The participants of the LPM-based program were in academic difficulty (i.e., had
semester or cumulative grade point averages below 2.0) and received academic skill support over
the course of one semester from an advisor who had been trained in the LPM. The advisor
“purposefully worked on helping students develop skills for how they made sense of situations,
made planful decisions, understood themselves, and balanced competing expectations of them
from important others (e.g., parents, peers)” (Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007, p. 199).
Supporting students in making thoughtful, internally driven decisions was a significant
aspect of the program. The advisor did not provide students formulas for success; instead she
invited students to construct their own plans for success (i.e., validated students as knowers).
She situated learning in the students’ experiences by helping students identify “who they were,
23
who they wanted to be, and how to make plans based on these goals” (Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007,
p. 200). Finally, the advisor defined learning as mutually constructing meaning by encouraging
students to think about the motivations behind their behaviors, evaluate situations from multiple
perspectives, include their own perspectives in the evaluation, and reflect on their progress
toward their goals (Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007).
At the start of the program students wanted the advisor to provide solutions to their
problems. They were not accustomed to considering their own interests as they made decisions
about majors and careers. Many times students experienced interpersonal conflicts when
important others or authorities (e.g., parents) questioned their goals or plans. In such cases the
dissonance from those interpersonal conflicts prompted intrapersonal challenges to students’
identities or perspectives that students had difficulty navigating. They struggled to balance their
beliefs and aspirations with the competing expectations of important others (Pizzolato & Ozaki,
2007). At such times the students looked to their advisor to tell them how to solve their
dilemmas. In response the advisor “engaged the students in active problem solving, involving
them in activities to encourage them to see themselves as capable of making decisions that
require balancing conflicting positions” (Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007, p. 203). With the support of
their advisor the students gradually began prioritizing their goals and values over important
others’ expectations. They did this in ways that honored their perspectives while being
considerate of important others. The authors concluded that this cognitive interdependence
represented students’ progress towards developing their internal voices (Pizzolato & Ozaki,
2007). They suggest the cognitive development that students experienced as a result of the
LPM-based advising program prompted movement towards self-authorship and helped students
relieve the interpersonal dissonance they experienced from competing expectations.
Collectively, the studies that examine decision making from a self-authorship perspective
provide a useful outline of the characteristics of good, well-informed decision making and the
developmental capacities individuals need to make such decisions. Based on this literature,
sound decision making entails three criteria. The first, focused on gathering information,
involves considering multiple perspectives, that is listening to and authentically considering
conflicting advice, evaluating the credibility of sources, and reflecting on one’s own goals,
values, and beliefs. The second, focused on processing information to reach a decision, involves
balancing conflicting positions and weighing competing expectations and claims against one’s
24
own values, goals, and interests. The final criterion, focused on taking action that is grounded in
the first two criteria, involves honoring one’s goals, beliefs, and values by making decisions
consistent with one’s own personal interests and values and using one’s internal belief system to
mediate external influence in decision making.
In order to make good, well-informed decisions students must have the developmental
capacities that support the criteria for decision making. For example, in order to listen to and
authentically consider conflicting advice, students need the cognitive capacity to consider and
evaluate multiple perspectives. Intrapersonally, students must have the capacity to identify their
own beliefs and values, and construct an identity based on those beliefs and values rather than on
external approval. In the interpersonal dimension, students must have the capacity to balance
competing expectations, honor one’s own goals, beliefs, and values, consider others’
perspectives without being consumed by them, and prioritize self-approval as a criterion with
which to judge others’ perspectives. Students with these developmental capabilities are able to
make good, well-informed decisions. Therefore, the studies described above illustrate the
importance of students making self-authored decisions as they transition between adolescence
and adulthood. Without self-authoring capabilities students are not equipped to make internally
defined decisions related to their education, careers, relationships, and behaviors. These
decisions have significant implications for students’ lives in both the short and long term.
It is important to understand the relationship between decision making and selfauthorship in order for educators to create conditions and programs that support students’
development so that they can make informed decisions. Current research suggests that while
high-risk students may have self-authoring capacities when they begin college, they have a hard
time sustaining them, and, many students do not have those capacities when they enter or leave
college (Baxter Magolda, 2001; Pizzolato, 2003). The studies in this literature review, though
limited in quantity and scope, provide a strong foundation and argument for future research on
decision making and self-authorship.
Specifically, research linking self-authorship and decision making would benefit from
studies with broader contexts and participants. The work of Creamer and Laughlin (2005; 2007)
is limited to women in STEM fields who were attending high school or college in Virginia.
Similarly, the participants in Pizzolato’s 2005 study were predominantly White women who
attended one Midwestern university. Studies with students from a variety of institutional types
25
and demographic backgrounds would provide an opportunity to explore the decision-making
processes of diverse students and how those processes relate to self-authorship. Additionally, the
studies described above were based on data collected from just one narrative (Pizzolato, 2005) or
within a one-year timeframe (Creamer & Laughlin, 2005; Laughlin & Creamer, 2007; Pizzolato
& Ozaki, 2007). A longitudinal study would allow for richer data and the study of how students’
decision making evolved over time.
Self-Authorship & High-Risk Students
The majority of existing research on high-risk college students does not use a
developmental lens. These primarily quantitative studies explore graduation rates, risk factors,
characteristics, and conditions related to persistence, and indicate that these students typically
face more significant academic, economic, social, and personal challenges in their lives than do
other students (Aud & Hannes, 2011; Avery & Daly, 2010; Carey, 2004; Choy, 2002; Engle &
Tinto, 2008; Lareau, 2003; McDonough, 1997; Martinez, Sher, Krull, & Wood, 2009; Snyder &
Dillow, 2010; Tinto, 1993; Walpole, 2003). Despite volumes of published studies about this
topic, there is limited research on this population’s development. Pizzolato (2003) addressed this
gap when she interviewed 35 students to determine: 1) the degree to which high-risk college
students possess self-authoring ways of knowing; and 2) the types of experiences that are
associated with the development of self-authoring ways of knowing in high-risk students. Her
work suggests that high-risk students may develop self-authorship before college because they
often face ridicule related to college aspirations. She posits that these students need to be
internally defined in order focus on their goals and protect themselves when they do not fit the
expectations of their family, friends, and communities (Pizzolato, 2003). Pizzolato (2003)
asserts that because many high-risk students must follow their own formulas for admittance and
paying for college, the college decision-making process may facilitate early self-authorship
development.
Pizzolato (2003) found that the degree to which students possessed self-authoring ways
of knowing prior to college depended on the degree to which they experienced disequilibrium
(i.e., dissonance) and the level of privilege experienced by the student. Students began moving
toward self-authorship when they had provocative experiences that “challenged their ways of
knowing and conceptions of self” (i.e., they experienced a sense of disequilibrium) (p. 803).
26
Students who experienced lower levels of disequilibrium revised their goals and conceptions of
self by considering making changes. Students who experienced higher levels of disequilibrium
mediated this dissonance by committing to new, internally-defined goals and values. This latter
group of students was propelled “toward action and commitment to internally defined goals”
(Pizzolato, 2003, p. 803).
Pizzolato (2003) concluded that all students in her study had the beginnings of selfauthorship but the degree to which they were self-authored before they arrived to college varied
depending on the degree of privilege they experienced. Pizzolato conceptualized college
admissions privilege as the “unsolicited benefit of not having to figure out how to apply to or pay
for college” (p. 804). Because high privilege students, such as student-athletes on fullscholarship, did not have to worry about the application process or how they would pay for
school they exhibited lower levels of self-authorship. Conversely, low privilege students who
had to navigate the application process themselves and figure out how they would pay for school,
experienced higher degrees of self-authorship.
Pizzolato (2004) continued her work on high-risk students when she interviewed 27 highrisk college students to examine how they coped with and adapted to the transition to college.
She found that high-risk students in her study entered college with self-authored ways of
knowing, but self-authorship disappeared quickly as students experienced marginalization
(Pizzolato, 2004). Pizzolato suggests that high-risk students may be particularly likely to have
experiences that compel them to question whether they belong in higher education. Thus,
“persisting students may therefore need to construct and rely on strong internally defined goals
of graduating, high perceptions of academic competence, and an internally defined sense of self”
(p. 426).
Pizzolato (2004) found that some students in her study managed external messages from
peers and professors (e.g., messages that suggested they did not fit in or were not able to keep up
academically) rather than be controlled by them when they got to college. Students who
experienced supported coping returned to their self-authoring ways. Supported coping refers to
students establishing social relationships as a strategy for developing “emotional clarity and
constructing responses to challenging situations” (Pizzolato, 2004, p. 436).
Pizzolato’s work with high-risk students (2003, 2004) suggests that they develop selfauthorship earlier and differently than their more privileged peers. It is likely that the meaning27
making processes of high-risk students have implications for how they make decisions that are
unique to this student population. I hope to extend and link the work on decision making and
high-risk students that is grounded in self-authorship by examining the relationships between the
two.
The literature included in this review provides the necessary foundation for my
dissertation study. It establishes the rationale for examining decision making from a selfauthorship perspective and suggests there is an important relationship between students’
developmental capacities and their ability to make good, well-informed decisions. Furthermore,
the research related to high-risk students indicates that this population experiences decision
making and self-authorship in ways that are different from other student populations. My study
is an opportunity to examine this phenomenon in greater detail. Pizzolato (2003, 2004) suggests
that high-risk students have self-authoring ways of knowing when they get to college but they
are not able to maintain those ways during college. I completed a longitudinal analysis with a
diverse group of high-risk students to gain a better understanding of the relationship between
decision making and self-authorship over the course of college.
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CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY & METHODS
In this chapter I lay out the methodology that grounds my dissertation study as well as the
methods used to identify the sample and analyze the data. Because I used an existing data set I
also discuss the methodology and methods of the larger study, the Wabash National Study
(WNS), which is the source of my data. The WNS is a longitudinal, concurrent, mixed-methods
project designed to discover the student experiences and underlying developmental capacities
that affect growth on seven liberal arts outcomes and on self-authorship. This dissertation study
used the interview transcripts from fall of 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 of 22 WNS participants
from diverse institutions across the US. I grounded my research in the constructivist paradigm,
which assumes that universal, absolute realities do not exist and seeks to understand individuals’
experiences and their perspectives (i.e., their constructions of reality), because it is consistent
with my worldview about education based on my experience working with college students and
my doctoral coursework (Creswell, 2007; Hatch, 2002). Additionally, this paradigm was an
appropriate choice as it is also the philosophical framework of the WNS.
Throughout the chapter I examine the tensions inherent in using an existing data set.
There are three key reasons I chose to use the existing WNS interview data for this dissertation.
First, WNS offered a diversity of institutional types and student demographics. As discussed in
the literature review, studies that examined decision making from a self-authorship perspective
have been limited by narrow participant populations based on academic discipline, geography,
gender, and/or institutional type. WNS offers the opportunity to fill this gap in existing literature
by studying the relationship between the decision-making processes and self-authorship of a
diverse group of students with different backgrounds who attended a wide-range of institutions
across the country. Second, the WNS coding system is inductive because it emerged from the
interview data. This inductive nature of the WNS coding system is important because it is
consistent with the constructivist paradigm that grounds my dissertation study and the grounded
theory methods that I used in data analysis. Finally, the WNS interviews provide longitudinal
data in the form of four narratives for each participant over the course of four years. These rich
data allow for the examination of changes in participants’ decision making and development
over time. To explore the relationship between decision making and the development of highrisk students I conducted a theme analysis of the four-year transcript sets for selected students in
order to identify students’ decision-making processes.
29
Methodology
My study explores the relationship between high-risk students’ developmental capacities
and their decision-making processes. First I explain the methodology of the dissertation study,
followed by the methodology of the WNS.
Dissertation Study Methodology
Constructivism suits my study particularly well since I seek to understand students’
meaning making in relation to decision making; and meaning making is essentially students’
constructions of reality. “While acknowledging that elements are often shared across social
groups, constructivist science argues that multiple realities exist that are inherently unique
because they are constructed by individuals who experience the world from their own vantage
points” (Hatch, 2002, p. 15). Thus, constructivism seeks to understand the experiences of
participants within the context of their lives and recognizes that participants’ subjective
meanings are shaped by their interactions with their environments and others (Creswell, 2007).
Since context plays such a significant role in individuals’ experiences and interpretations, people
in different circumstances or those who move into new contexts likely construct different
realities. The longitudinal interviews used as the data source for this dissertation provide an
opportunity to examine students’ experiences, how they interpret those experiences, and the
influence those experiences have on their meaning making.
Because knowledge within the constructivist paradigm is “emergent, contextual,
personal, socially constructed, and interactive” (Guido, Chavez, & Lincoln, 2010, p. 15)
researchers rely as much as possible on participants’ views and work to understand how
participants make meaning of their experiences. The subjective nature of this perspective leads
researchers to look for complexity of views; knowing there will be outliers as well as common
responses, they want a full range of findings (Creswell, 2007; Guido et al., 2010). Researchers
and participants mutually construct knowledge during the interview process. Research growing
out of this perspective emphasizes the use of broad, general questions so participants can
construct the meaning of their experiences. Constructive-developmental research in general and
self-authorship research in particular is consistent with the tenets of and has a long tradition of
being grounded in constructivism (Baxter Magolda & King, 2007; Kegan, 1982). Researchers
conducting interviews from this theoretical perspective encourage participants to discuss topics
30
they consider most salient in order understand how they make meaning of their experiences. The
interviews used in this dissertation followed the constructivist approach by using an informal
conversational interview designed to give participants flexibility to identify important
experiences and elicit their ways of making meaning about knowledge, self, and relationships
with others (Baxter Magolda & King, 2007). The ultimate goal of constructivist research is to
“make sense of (or interpret) the meanings others have about the world” (Creswell, 2007, p. 21).
Wabash National Study Methodology & Conceptual Design
Interview data used in this dissertation were collected for the Wabash National Study
(WNS) (http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/nationalstudy), a longitudinal, concurrent, mixedmethods project designed to discover the student experiences and underlying developmental
capacities that affect growth on seven liberal arts outcomes and on self-authorship. The WNS
team identified these outcomes as: integration of learning, inclination to inquire and lifelong
learning, effective reasoning and problem solving, moral character, intercultural effectiveness,
leadership, and well-being (King, Kendall Brown, Lindsay, & VanHecke, 2007). See Table 2 for
descriptions of these liberal arts outcomes.
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Table 2
Liberal Arts Outcomes, Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education
Integration of learning is the demonstrated ability to connect information from disparate
contexts and perspectives—for example, the ability to connect the domain of ideas and
philosophies with the real world, one field of study or discipline with another, the past with the
present, one part with the whole, the abstract with the concrete—and vice versa.
Inclination to inquire and lifelong learning reflects a strong desire to learn, ask questions, and
consider new ideas. Such learning involves taking initiative to learn, not being satisfied with a
quick answer, and possessing intrinsic motivation for intellectual growth. These dispositions
lend themselves to a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and wisdom.
Effective reasoning and problem solving involves the capacity to make reflective judgments;
think critically and independently; and analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information in order to
make decisions and solve problems.
Moral character involves the capacity to make and act on moral or ethical judgments, treating
others with fairness and compassion; this capacity includes several facets of morality;
discernment, reasoning, motivation, and behavior.
Intercultural effectiveness includes knowledge of cultures and cultural practices (one’s own
and others’), complex cognitive skills for decision making in intercultural contexts, social skills
to function effectively in diverse groups, and personal attributes that include flexibility and
openness to new ideas.
Leadership entails the seven core values of Astin and his colleagues’ Social Change Model for
Leadership. Within the model, the core values fall into three categories: personal or individual
values (consciousness of self, congruence, commitment), group values (collaboration, common
purpose, controversy with civility), and a societal and community value (citizenship).
Well-being encompasses four dimensions: subjective, psychological, social, and physical.
Subjective well-being is associated with happiness, life satisfaction, and life quality.
Psychological well-being is the pursuit of meaningful goals and a sense of purpose in life. Social
well-being refers to positive social health based on one’s functioning in society. Finally,
physical well-being is characterized by positive health-related attributes.
Note. From “Liberal Arts Student Learning Outcomes: An Integrated Approach,” by P. M. King,
M. Kendall Brown, N. K. Lindsay, and J. R. VanHecke, 2007, About Campus: Enriching the
Student Learning Experience, 12, p. 5. Copyright 2007 by John Wiley and Sons. Reprinted with
permission.
32
Students’ developmental meaning making was examined in the qualitative portion of the
WNS by asking students to discuss significant experiences, describe how they made sense of
those experiences, and explain how they affected the way they thought about the world,
themselves, and relationships with others (Baxter Magolda and King, 2007). Such discussions
provided the WNS team with the necessary interview material to assess students’ meaningmaking capacities (Baxter Magolda and King, 2007). The conceptual framework of the
qualitative component of WNS promotes understanding of the journey students make towards
wise citizenship, “meaning the educated person’s commitment to community” (King et al., 2007,
p. 3). This framework (see Figure 1) examines the relationship among student characteristics,
educational experiences, student interpretations of experiences, and the seven liberal arts
outcomes as students move towards wise citizenship (Baxter Magolda et al., 2008). This
conceptual model recognizes that students enter college with characteristics they have acquired
from prior experiences and meaning-making structures that mediate how they participate in and
interpret college experiences (Baxter Magolda et al., 2008). The cyclic model indicates that as
students’ meaning making becomes more complex, they are simultaneously able to progress on
the liberal arts outcomes and three dimensions of development. These changes influence their
student characteristics and interpretations of future experiences (Baxter Magolda et al., 2008).
Figure 1. Conceptual Foundation of the Qualitative Component of the Wabash National Study of
Liberal Arts Education (Baxter Magolda, King, Taylor, & Perez, 2008)
33
Method
In the method section I outline the methods used in the WNS and my dissertation study.
WNS Method
I provide an explanation of the quantitative and qualitative portions of the WNS project
because my dissertation study uses the WNS quantitative data to identify participants and uses
the WNS qualitative interview data to explore the relationship of decision making and meaning
making.
Institutional type and participant selection. WNS researchers used a two-step
sampling strategy to select institutions and identify first-time, first-year, traditionally aged
students to participate in the study. First, the research team identified 19 institutions from a pool
of applications of more than 60 colleges and universities that responded to a national invitation
to participate in WNS. These institutions were chosen based on their visions and practices
related to the educational goals of liberal arts education (Baxter Magolda, King, Taylor, &
Wakefield, 2012). These institutions represent a diverse range of characteristics such as
institutional type, size, and location. These 19 institutions comprise the survey portion of the
WNS. In the second step, six of the original survey institutions were recruited to participate in
the interview portion of the study. Again, these schools reflect “different institutional types, a
geographically diverse institutional sample, and student bodies that were sufficiently diverse to
increase the likelihood of obtaining an adequate sample of students of color” (Baxter Magolda et
al., 2012, p. 423). These institutions consist of four small private liberal arts colleges from
several geographic regions of the U.S., a private research institution in the Midwest, and a large
regional public institution in the West. Two are Hispanic-serving institutions and one enrolls
approximately 50% African-American students (Baxter Magolda et al., 2012). Students from
these schools were recruited to participate in the interview portion of the study and interviews
were conducted fall of 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. The study team interviewed 315 students in
year one and 228 (72%) of those students returned to be interviewed in year two (Baxter
Magolda et al., 2012). In year three 204 (64%) participants returned and in year four 177 (56%)
students completed the final interviews (Baxter Magolda & King, in press).
WNS data collection. I describe the WNS quantitative and qualitative data collection
processes because both serve as the foundation for my data analysis.
34
Quantitative data collection. At the beginning of their freshman year (fall 2006) 4,501
students completed WNS survey assessments that measured dimensions of intellectual and
personal development consistent with a liberal arts education (Pascarella, 2008). The 19
institutions that participated in the quantitative study represent four-year and two-year colleges
and universities located in 11 different states from four regions of the United States: Northeast,
Southeast, Midwest, and Pacific Coast. These schools included research universities, regional
universities, community colleges, and liberal arts colleges. For the larger institutions researchers
selected a random sample from each incoming first-year class. For the smallest institutions in
the study the sample was the entire incoming first-year class. The research team invited students
in the sample to participate in a national longitudinal study investigating the effects of college on
students and ways to improve the college experience (Pascarella, 2008).
The initial quantitative data collection occurred in fall 2006 and lasted between 90-100
minutes. Students were paid a $50 stipend for their participation (Pascarella, 2008). The data
collected included a WNS “precollege survey that sought information on student demographic
characteristics, family background, high school experiences, political orientation, educational
degree plans, and the like” (Pascarella, 2008, p. 2). Students also completed a series of
assessments that included a critical thinking test from the Collegiate Assessment of Academic
Proficiency (CAAP) and the Ryff Scales of Psychological Well-Being (SPWB). For a detailed
description of the quantitative methods see Pascarella (2008) and for the study overview visit the
WNS site at http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/study-overview/.
Qualitative data collection. WNS interviewers came to the study with a basic
understanding of student development theory since the WNS focused on student experiences and
how students made meaning of those experiences. Forty students in (or graduates of) higher
education administration or college student personnel programs were trained to conduct the
WNS interviews (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Interviewer training consisted of
approximately 15 hours of in-person instruction per year, including practice interviews and
feedback. Interviewers conducted 60-to-90 minute individual interviews that were audio
recorded and transcribed verbatim. The majority of the interviews were conducted in person at
the students’ institutions during years one through three. Researchers conducted year four
interviews via phone. I conducted 52 interviews during the duration of the study (2006-2009).
Each participant received a stipend of $30 for participating in each interview.
35
Following an opening introductory segment, the primary segment of the interview
focused on examining students’ meaning-making structures by asking questions about students’
key educational experiences and how they thought about and interpreted those experiences
(Baxter Magolda & King, 2007; Baxter Magolda et al., 2012). Interviewers engaged students in
conversation by asking them to describe their experiences, explain how they made sense of those
experiences, and discuss how the experiences affected how they decide what to believe (i.e.,
epistemological dimension), view themselves (i.e., intrapersonal dimension), and construct
relationships with others (i.e., intrapersonal dimension) (Baxter Magolda et al., 2012).
Interviewers asked students to discuss their most significant experiences, their best or worst
experiences, and challenges they had faced. Specific prompts elicited how students approached
and thought about decision making (e.g., Tell me about a time when you have had to make a
difficult decision. How did you work through that process?). Interviewers “encouraged students
to elaborate on why these experiences were important, how they made sense of the experiences,
and how they were affected by them” (Baxter Magolda, King, & Drobney, 2010, p. 50).
Although specific prompts were included in the interview protocol, the conversation was
constructed “in situ” such that the interviewer used the interviewee’s comments to guide the
conversation. Thus prompts were used as needed. Also, the interviews solicited material on the
seven liberal arts outcomes identified for the WNS without directly asking students to address
those outcomes.
WNS data analysis: Qualitative. Because my dissertation study is grounded in the
qualitative data analysis, I focus specifically on that portion of the WNS here.
A professional transcription service transcribed interviews verbatim. Trained
summarizers analyzed the transcribed interviews. Summarizer training included 15 hours of
face-to-face training, feedback on initial summaries until summaries were judged by the
principal investigators to be satisfactory, and continued annual training (Baxter Magolda & King,
in press). Transcript analysis occurred in two phases. In phase one trained summarizers read
interview transcripts to identify: 1) experiences students discussed as being important; 2) the
effect of the experience on the student; 3) how the effect was related to the liberal arts outcomes;
and 4) the institutional role, if there was any, in the experience. Summarizers compiled this
information into a summary report for each student. In phase two trained summarizers read
interview transcripts in order to complete a developmental assessment using the framework of
36
self-authorship (i.e., meaning making). I completed 41 developmental assessments as a
summarizer during the first three years of WNS and 30 developmental assessments from the year
four interviews. Summarizers assessed each interview transcript for development in the
epistemological, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions, as well as an overall assessment of
the student’s development. Interview summaries included a narrative from the summarizer
describing the student’s developmental position based on what was read in the transcript, quotes
from the transcript to support the assessment, and the assignment of a position on a ten-position
continuum from externally defined to internally defined (Baxter Magolda & King, in press;
Baxter Magolda, et al., 2008).
When the WNS project began the team did not want to limit the picture of development
to one theory so they synthesized the relevant developmental literature and identified three broad
categories of development: external meaning making, a mix of external and internal meaning
making, and internal meaning making. Developmental summaries were created for each
interview based on students’ responses with students’ meaning making being assessed as
external, mixed, or internal. However, summarizers noticed that not all external meaning
making was exactly alike as they looked across students; there were nuanced differences in the
external category. Thus, the researchers adjusted the development coding system to reflect those
differences. The result is a system that comes out of the data and distinguishes among three
positions of Solely External Meaning Making— Trusting External Authority, Tensions with
Trusting External Authority, and Recognizing Shortcomings of Trusting External Authority —
rather than just external (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). This refinement continued
throughout the project and resulted in variations of the three original developmental levels into a
10-position continuum (Baxter Magolda & King, in press; Baxter Magolda et al., 2012). In
addition to the three Solely External positions, the continuum includes two positions in Entering
the Crossroads (Questioning External Authority and Constructing the Internal Voice), two
positions in Leaving the Crossroads (Listening to the Internal Voice and Cultivating the Internal
Voice), and three positions in Solely Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning Making (Trusting the
Internal Voice, Building an Internal Foundation, and Securing Internal Commitments) (Baxter
Magolda & King, in press).
The WNS research team enhanced trustworthiness in several ways. First, during each
year of the study the principal investigators conducted extensive training for the interviewers and
37
summarizers. In addition, the WNS team had prolonged engagement with participants because
the interviews typically lasted over an hour and occurred annually. Finally, multiple WNS team
members were involved in data analysis and triangulated alternative perspectives and
interpretations (Baxter Magolda et al., 2012).
Dissertation Study Method
There are considerable advantages to using an existing data set to pursue my research
questions. These include: 1) The WNS is grounded in constructivism, the methodology that
resonates most with me; 2) The WNS assessed students’ development over four years and the
interviews invited conversation relevant to decision making; 3) participants attended diverse
types of institutions from different regions of the US; 4) the sample contains students from
diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds; and 5) the sample contains 22 students who completed
four years of WNS interviews and meet at least three of the criteria for being considered highrisk. (These specifics are discussed in more detail later in the chapter.) It would not be possible
for me to complete a longitudinal dissertation project without using an existing data set.
Sampling. I identified participants for my study from information obtained in the
quantitative portion of the WNS study. The survey data include demographic information
related to the characteristics of high-risk students. I selected interviews of students who have
three or more characteristics. These characteristics include: 1) insufficient academic
background (academic preparation); 2) poor prior academic performance (low high school or
first-semester college GPA); or, 3) personal characteristics that place students in a population
without a long or necessarily successful history in higher education (Pizzolato, 2003). Such
student populations include first-generation students, students of color, and students from low
socioeconomic backgrounds (Kuh et al., 2008; Pizzolato, 2003).
Specifically, I identified high-risk students based on low ACT scores (to indicate
insufficient academic preparation), low high school GPAs (to indicate poor prior academic
performance), and/or the personal characteristics of parents’ academic backgrounds (i.e., firstgeneration college students) and whether the student identified as a student of color. In order to
identify students from low socioeconomic backgrounds I selected students who received
financial aid in the form of federal grants since federal grant money is awarded based on
financial need.
38
I used a multi-step purposeful sampling process to identify high-risk students who
participated in WNS interviews. I started with the pool of 315 students who completed
interviews in year one of the WNS. Using the data from the quantitative survey, I ran a filter
using the statistical software SPSS to identify only those participants who were US citizens
(n=313). Next, I used SPSS to run crosstabs for each of the criterion of high-risk students with
the students’ unique record identification numbers. I then compiled a master spreadsheet of the
results from the crosstabs. This process yielded a total of 198 participants who had at least one
characteristic of high-risk students. Specifically, 75 participants received federal grants, 112
participants had low high school GPAs, 35 participants had low ACT scores (below 20), 80
participants identified as students of color, and 103 participants were first generation college
students. At this point I matched students’ unique record identification numbers from the
quantitative side of the WNS with the student codes the WNS research team assigned to each
interview participant. The WNS interview codes identify the participant, the year of the
interview, and the institution the student attended. I did not have access to students’ names.
Once the interview codes were placed in the spreadsheet I used WNS records to
determine the number of interviews each participant completed (1, 2, 3, or 4). Since this
dissertation study is intended to be longitudinal I identified high-risk students who had
completed interviews in all four years of the study (n=69). Of these 69 participants 22 met three
or more of the high-risk criteria. Specifically, 11 participants met three criteria, 9 participants
met four criteria, and 2 participants met all five criteria (i.e., received federal grants, had low
high school GPAs, had low ACT scores, identified as students of color, and were first-generation
college students). These 22 participants are the sample for this dissertation. Eighteen
participants identified as students of color, 17 held low high school GPAs, 16 were firstgeneration students, 15 had low ACT scores, and 13 were of low socioeconomic status (SES).
See Table 3 for details.
39
Table 3
High-risk Characteristics of Dissertation Sample
Arianna
Student of
Color
Low GPA
x
x
Bella
Benjamin
x
Bob
x
Cameron
x
Chase
Firstgeneration
Low ACT
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Daryl
x
x
x
x
Diana
x
x
x
x
Dolores
x
x
x
Dustin
x
Irene
x
Isabella
x
x
Jacob
x
x
Jessica
x
Josh
x
Julie
Laura
x
Maegan
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Vanessa
x
x
Victoria
x
Yolanda
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Roger
Low SES
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
40
Dissertation data analysis. Once I identified my pool of high-risk students in the
qualitative data I accessed those students’ summaries and transcripts. I analyzed students’
transcripts over the four years of the study. There were ample interview segments of students
discussing their decision making in the transcripts because many of the students’ stories about
challenges, dilemmas, and experiences involved decision making. I used grounded theory
techniques to make sense of the data since the goal of this study was to theorize about possible
relationships between high-risk students’ decision-making processes and their developmental
levels. While my study is grounded in the constructivist paradigm, I use grounded theory
techniques for data analysis because “grounded theory methods consist of systematic, yet
flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories ‘grounded’
in the data themselves” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 2). The grounded theory methods used provide the
necessary tools to identify, sort, and analyze the interview data in order to develop an “abstract
theoretical understanding” of high-risk students’ decision-making processes and the relationship
those processes have with students’ developmental capacities (Charmaz, 2006, p. 4). Grounded
theory is consistent with the constructivist paradigm of this study as both assume that realities
and theories are constructed and not found. Charmaz (2006) clarifies this point, “We construct
our grounded theories through our past and present involvements and interactions with people,
perspectives, and research practices…My approach explicitly assumes that any theoretical
rendering offers an interpretive portrayal of the studied world, not an exact picture of it” (p. 10).
I used grounded theory as an analytic approach to data previously collected, not as a
methodology that determined all aspects of my study. Consistent with grounded theory, my
study followed the inductive process in which theories are generated from the data instead of
being used to test hypotheses from existing theories. Additionally, I used constant comparative
methods that involved comparing data with data and data with codes during every stage of
analysis (Charmaz, 2006). However, tensions arise from using an existing data set because I am
constrained by choices made in the larger WNS study. For example, WNS participants
volunteered to participate in the quantitative portion of the study and a subset of those
participants also volunteered to participate in the qualitative portion of the study. Thus, I had no
control over participant selection in the larger data set. Also, I was not able to continue sampling
to fill out thematic categories that emerged during the analysis process (i.e., theoretical
sampling), or complete member checking, both of which are expectations of grounded theory
41
research (Charmaz, 2006). Overall, the advantages of using grounded theory techniques with an
existing data set outweigh the constraints. As Charmaz states, “Grounded theory methods can
complement other approaches to qualitative data analysis; rather than stand in opposition to
them…I view grounded theory methods as a set of principles and practices, not as prescriptions
or packages…” (2006, p. 9).
Process and steps. Grounded theory data analysis techniques include separating, sorting,
and synthesizing data through coding. Coding entails labeling units of data in order to describe
what is happening and provides a way to compare different segments of data with each other
(Charmaz, 2006). The categories created through coding become increasingly more theoretical
through successive levels of analysis. Charmaz (2006) explains that coding is the “first step in
moving beyond concrete statements in the data to making analytic interpretations” (p. 43):
Coding is the pivotal link between collecting data and developing an emergent theory to
explain these data. Through coding, you define what is happening in the data and begin
to grapple with what it means. The codes take form together as elements of a nascent
theory that explains these data and directs further data-gathering. (Charmaz, 2006, p. 46)
Charmaz (2006) explains that researchers using grounded theory techniques “build levels
of abstraction directly from the data and, subsequently, gather additional data to check and refine
our emerging analytic categories. Our work culminates in a ‘grounded theory,’ or an abstract
theoretical understanding of the studied experience” (pp. 3-4). In this study I developed a
theoretical understanding of high-risk students’ decision-making processes and the relationship
of those processes with the students’ developmental capacities. Two of the key features of
grounded theory are: 1) it follows an inductive process in which theories are generated from the
data rather than testing hypotheses from existing theories; and, 2) it uses constant comparative
methods that involve comparing data with data and data with codes during every stage of
analysis (Charmaz, 2006).
The dissertation study followed an inductive process in numerous ways. The analysis
phase of this study related to assessing participants’ development is inductive in two ways. First,
the WNS coding system came from the interview data as described earlier. This system reflects a
portrait of meaning making that emerged from the WNS interviews and allows for a participant
to be anywhere along the developmental continuum. My longitudinal assessment of participants’
42
development is also inductive because I generated holistic interpretations of students’
development across the four years of interviews. Thus my assessment emerged from and is
grounded in the interview data.
The analysis phase of my study related to assessing participants’ decision making is
inductive as well. I started by analyzing the decision-making patterns of individual participants
from the year one, two, three, and four interview transcripts. I identified decision-making
themes in each year and then compared those themes across the interviews from all four years.
Thus, I created a decision-making story for each participant based on the data from the
participant’s four interviews. I then compared those decision-making stories to identify themes
that span across the sample of high-risk students. Again, this process is inductive because the
themes emerged from the data.
This dissertation study used constant comparative methods as described in the following
five steps.
1) Identifying decision-making units and coding those units: I read the year one through
year four transcripts and identified all excerpts related to decision making for one participant. I
liberally identified decision-making excerpts, being sure to capture: decisions made, rationale
for decisions, decision-making processes, as well as beliefs, values, preferences, perspectives,
relationships, and experiences that influenced the participant’s decisions and how she or he
thought about decisions. This approach yielded the rich and detailed data necessary to
understand the nuances of an individual participant’s decision making and distinguish different
decision-making processes and themes across participants. After reading the four transcripts and
identifying all of the excerpts related to decision making I began the initial coding process for a
participant. I read through the participant’s year one decision-making excerpts and separated
each excerpt into units—segments of the excerpts that could be read on their own and convey a
complete idea. I coded each unit in order to “define what is happening in the data and begin to
grapple with what it means” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 46). I used the comments function in track
changes to highlight units and recorded the code in a bubble on the margins of the page. I
labeled the units with codes that categorized, summarized, and accounted for each piece of data
(Charmaz, 2006).
2) Constructing decision-making profiles: Once I completed coding for the year one data
I reread the codes for that year and identified emergent themes. I compared data with data and
43
codes with codes during this process as recommended by Charmaz (2006). Through this process
I identified decision-making themes for the participant based on the codes. At the end of the
year one decision-making excerpts I labeled the themes and provided evidence for those themes
with participant quotes and brief summaries of the participant’s decision-making experiences,
processes, and styles. I typically ended the year one portion of the decision-making profile with
a sentence or two that described the decision-making story for the participant for that year (based
on the codes and the themes).
I repeated this coding and theme-identifying process for the remaining three years of the
participant’s decision-making excerpts. I then arranged the themes by year at the end of the
decision making profile in order to read through the yearly themes, quotes, and experiences in
sequence. Finally, I read across the years and themes for the participant to identify that
participant’s decision-making story. This decision-making story was a summarizing narrative of
the student’s decision making over the four years of WNS interviews. The story crystallized
how the student made decisions across time and how/if the decision-making processes,
characteristics, or strategies changed across the four years. The decision-making profile created
categories that “crystallized participants’ experience[s]” and offered an “incisive analytical
framework that interprets what is happening and makes relationships between implicit processes
and structures visible” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 54). I completed this process 22 times which resulted
in 22 decision-making profiles (one for each participant).
As I moved from participant to participant, my initial coding and insights from coding
informed my continued coding. Thus I refined my coding and theme identification as I
progressed through the data. In this way I used the constant comparative methods consistent
with grounded theory (Glaser, 1965). I compared data and codes from excerpt to excerpt and
participant to participant in order to continuously refine the codes and interpretations of the
decision-making excerpts.
3) Memo-writing and theme analysis: After creating six decision-making profiles I wrote
a research memo based on those six decision-making profiles; these were my “preliminary
analytic notes” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 3). I read each decision-making profile and compared the
profiles against each other to identify decision-making themes across participants. Memos
provided me an opportunity to elaborate themes, define themes, identify gaps in themes, and
articulate theoretical meanings (Charmaz, 2006). I recorded the actions of the data, my
44
interpretations of those actions, and explored and filled out codes (Charmaz, 2006). As Charmaz
(2006) states “memo-writing constitutes a crucial method in grounded theory because it prompts
you to analyze your data and codes early in the research process” (p. 72).
I infused participant quotes in the memos to illustrate my points and themes—this
provided evidence for my analytical ideas (Charmaz, 2006). Reading across the quotes
prompted me to refine the themes and critically analyze the themes by asking questions of them.
I ended each memo with a summary of what had emerged from the codes and themes of the six
decision-making profiles and questions to keep in mind as I continued creating decision-making
profiles and future memos. After identifying themes in the initial memo I examined how the
next set of six decision-making profiles related to those themes. Concurrently, I identified new
themes that emerged out of the second set of six decision-making profiles and the accompanying
memo. This cycle of analysis and refinement resulted in three memos based on six decisionmaking profiles, one memo based on four decision-making profiles and a chart outlining the
overall themes that emerged from the profiles and memos.
Overall themes captured the general decision-making themes identified in the decisionmaking excerpts, a summary of all of the profiles. However, given the nature of this study, it
was important to: 1) maximize the inductive process by understanding the themes across years
and participants, and 2) maximize the longitudinal data by organizing the decision-making
profiles so they could be easily linked to each participant’s corresponding developmental profile
(developmental profiles are discussed in detail in step four of this section). In order to capture
this variation I created a longitudinal chart of the decision-making profile themes organized by
year. This allowed me to read across years and identify year-specific themes. These annual
themes documented the year-by-year decision-making progression experienced by most
participants. However, the annual themes did not capture all of the participants’ stories; this
analysis eclipsed the experiences of those who did not follow the same progression as the
majority of participants. For example, I identified the theme of students not struggling in their
decision making in the year one data. This was the case for the majority of students; for the most
part, in year one, the participants made decisions without difficulty or much wavering. However,
four students did struggle in their decision making during year one and their experiences were
masked because they represented a secondary decision-making story rather than the primary
decision-making story. This prompted me to further refine my analysis by examining the
45
longitudinal chart to read across the decision-making themes of each participant from year to
year. This by-person/by-year analysis captured the individual patterns and allowed me to
compare those patterns. Through this comparison I identified four compelling decision-making
patterns that encompassed the experiences of the 22 participants. Reading the longitudinal data
over time and by participant best captured my interpretation of the data, as well as, the themes
from previous levels of analysis. This step resulted in an understanding of what decision making
looked like across four years for the 22 high-risk student participants in this study. Four
decision-making patterns emerged from this analysis:
1. Reflective Ownership of Decision Making;
2. Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making;
3. Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making; and
4. Consistently Non-Reflective Decision Making.
I discuss these patterns and the participants who used each pattern in detail in the next chapter.
I then began the analysis phase of this study related to assessing each participant’s
development.
4) Reviewing each participant’s WNS developmental assessment summaries across four
years to create a developmental profile for each participant: The trained members of the WNS
team created developmental assessment summaries each year. That is, summarizers reviewed
the transcripts for the year they were assessing participants’ development and providing
rationales for those developmental assessments based on student quotes, but did not review the
developmental assessment summaries from previous years. I reviewed the four-year collection
of developmental assessment summaries for each participant to re-evaluate the assessments as a
set. Reading the developmental assessment summaries as a set allowed for a more in-depth
interpretation of the assessments because they provided context and clarification that was
missing when summarizers created the developmental assessment summaries in isolation. This
allowed for revision of the annual assessments when necessary. It is important to note that I was
the initial WNS summarizer for the year four developmental assessment summaries for the 22
participants in this dissertation study. I completed those summaries two months before I began
data analysis and coding for this dissertation.
46
An analytic challenge of this study is the complexity of assessing meaning-making
capacities and self-authorship. As previously discussed, meaning making is related to how
people think rather than what they think. The language that participants used can make it
difficult to assess their meaning-making capacities. At times participants sound like they are
using complex meaning-making structures because they have sophisticated vocabularies or
adeptly use socially progressive phrases (e.g., express an appreciation for diversity). However,
refined language skills do not necessarily mean students have sophisticated meaning-making
capacities. They could be parroting ideas from external sources or saying what they suspect
interviewers desire; in which case, they sound advanced but have external meaning-making
capacities. Similarly, there are times when participants’ complex meaning-making capacities are
difficult to identify because they are not polished speakers.
When completing transcript summaries and reviewing previously written summaries I
distinguished between participants’ language content versus meaning-making structures in order
to carefully assess their developmental capacities. I addressed this challenge by closely abiding
by the assessment guidelines provided in the WNS training materials (Baxter Magolda & King,
2008a). The guide emphasizes the need to focus on the source of participants’ thinking, feeling,
and social-relating rather than the content of what they think and feel. Baxter Magolda and King
(2008a) advise that the best way to identify meaning-making structures is to “find the reasons for
the person’s thinking. What is the central reason the person thinks this way …sees him/herself
this way…constructs relationships this way? Who is in charge of all this? The person or
someone else?” (p. 9). Following these recommendations enabled me to determine the degree to
which participants were operating on an external-internal perspective along the continuum.
When I reviewed the developmental assessment summaries as a set for a participant I
determined whether the developmental assessment summaries provided a plausible
developmental story—did the four years of developmental assessment summaries hang together
in a meaningful storyline? That is, rather than lifting the developmental profile from separate
interpretations I confirmed or refined the interpretations based on reading across the four years.
If the assessments appeared accurate I maintained the assessments from the summaries. If the
four summaries did not create a complete, plausible story I recalibrated the developmental
assessment based on reading the summaries for all four years for the participant. I agreed with
the initial developmental assessments created by the WNS team for 10 of the 22 participants
47
used in my dissertation study; thus, those assessment summaries needed no revision. For seven
of the 22 participants I agreed with three of the four annual assessment summaries and refined
just one year’s assessment summary for each participant. For those seven participants I did not
request a second opinion because the context provided by reading the four annual assessments as
a group made the need for revision exceptionally clear.
In the five instances that I refined the developmental assessments of participants from
more than one year I utilized a trained summarizer from the WNS team as a reviewer to
triangulate the change in assessments. Heather Shook Christman completed WNS training as an
interviewer and summarizer. When I concluded that the developmental assessments of a
participant needed refined I made my own assessment based on reading the summaries from the
four years of interviews. Independently, Shook Christman completed the same process. We
then compared our assessments. If our assessments corresponded, I used the mutually agreedupon refined assessment. Our independently refined developmental assessments matched for
one of the five participants that required a second opinion. When our refined assessments were
inconsistent, this occurred for four of the five participants that required a second opinion, we
discussed our individual rationales for the assessments until we reached consensus on the refined
developmental assessments.
I consolidated participants’ developmental assessments into one chart that included each
participant’s: 1) developmental assessment by year; 2) a rationale for each annual assessment; 3)
notations of interview transcript quotes that supported the annual assessments; and, 4) a
summary of if and how the participant’s development had changed over the four years. While
the WNS team initially assessed participants’ developmental meaning-making using the tenposition continuum described earlier in this chapter I used the four major meaning-making
structures of that continuum for this dissertation study. Those structures are: Solely External,
Entering the Crossroads, Leaving the Crossroads, and Solely Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning
Making. My reasoning was that the four structures would provide a clear read of each
participant’s development and the trajectory of development (if there was one) while the finer
grained positions reflect nuances within these major meaning-making structures. This process
resulted in 22 developmental profiles for the participants that spanned the four years of the WNS.
5) Analyzing the decision-making and developmental profiles for each participant to
identify the intersections between students’ decision-making processes and their developmental
48
capacities: In order to compare each participant’s decision-making and developmental profiles I
linked the two together in a comprehensive chart (see Appendix A for an example). This
allowed me to read across the two profiles for each participant. I initially read across the profile
pairs to ensure that the two were consistent with each other. Since I created the two profiles for
each participant in isolation there may have been interview data identified in one profile that was
not used in constructing the corresponding profile. In doing this comparison I identified
consistency in 20 of the profile pairs. This audit prompted me to revisit the original transcripts
of the remaining two profile pairs to resolve what appeared to be discrepancies in use of data.
One participant’s developmental assessment was revised from Leaving the Crossroads in year
four to Entering the Crossroads. I revised a second participant’s decision-making pattern from
Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making to Non-Reflective Ownership of
Decision Making.
I then created charts for each of the four decision-making patterns to identify any
relationships that emerged between participants’ decision-making and developmental profiles.
In each chart I listed the participants who used the decision-making pattern of that particular
chart and the developmental profile for each participant in that pattern. For example, in one
chart I listed the six participants who used the Reflective Ownership of Decision Making pattern
and in the column next to each participant’s pseudonym I identified the participant’s
developmental profile. These charts and the findings that emerged from them are discussed in
detail in the next chapter. This is the step that resulted in a description of how development and
decision making relate for the 22 high-risk students in this dissertation study.
Subjectivities. Consistent with the constructivist paradigm, I acknowledge that my
personal and cultural experiences shaped my interpretations during data analysis (Creswell,
2007). I brought subjectivities related to my assumptions and identity that needed to be
negotiated during this study. Two of my most significant subjectivities are my experience with
student development theory and my previous experience with the WNS. My Student Affairs in
Higher Education (SAHE) doctoral coursework focused on student development and selfauthorship. I came into this study with preconceived assumptions about the trajectory of
development, characteristics of particular developmental levels, and experiences that typically
serve as catalysts or barriers to student development. In addition, I have been a member of the
WNS team for five years as an interviewer and summarizer. During this study I needed to
49
remain open to new possibilities and worked diligently to ensure that the codes and analysis fit
the data, rather than forcing the data to fit my preconceived assumptions about development or
previous WNS experiences. Charmaz (2006) provides a helpful perspective, writing, “As Dey
(1999) states, ‘There is a difference between an open mind and an empty head’” and offers
strategies for negotiating this tension (p. 48). She suggests remaining open to the data, staying
close to the data, keeping codes simple and precise, and critically and analytically reviewing the
data and my analysis (2006). In addition, Charmaz (2006) offers specific questions that I asked
myself throughout the data analysis process in order to ensure I was being true to the data rather
than my interpretations being overly-influenced by the perspectives I brought into this study.
These questions include:
What process(es) is at issue here? How can I define it/them?
How does this process develop?
How does the research participant(s) act while involved in this process?
What does the research participant(s) profess to think and feel while involved in this
process? …
When, why, and how does the process change?
What are the consequences of the process? (Charmaz, 2006, p. 51)
Another subjectivity that I brought to the study is my identity; I do not have any of the
characteristics that were used to identify high-risk students. I entered college as a white, middleclass woman with strong academic preparation and prior performance, and a father with a
graduate degree in education. During analysis I was sensitive to the fact that I was studying a
population of which I am not a member. I negotiated this tension by looking at how participants
explain and understand their situations before I judged their behaviors or intentions through my
own logic (Charmaz, 2006). I used caution and sensitivity in order to avoid being judgmental or
condescending towards my participants. Furthermore, my extensive experience working with
high-risk students helped me avoid making generalizations about them and shaped my
understanding of them.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness of the WNS interview data are enhanced by prolonged engagement with
participants, multiple coders, peer debriefing on many analyses, and verbatim transcripts for
50
thick description, as was discussed earlier in this chapter (Baxter Magolda, et al., 2012).
Trustworthiness of this dissertation study was improved by my five years of experience working
as an interviewer and summarizer for WNS. This experience provided me with familiarity of the
data and understanding of qualitative interview methods and data analysis (Baxter Magolda et
al., 2010). In addition, I have 13 years of professional student affairs experience working in
support of students who possess the characteristics associated with high-risk students. This
experience provided me with a rich understanding of students in this population and their
experiences in the context of higher education. Trustworthiness was also significantly
augmented by using Shook Christman as a reviewer of the developmental assessments during
data analysis. Similarly, my interpretations of the data were reviewed by my dissertation
advisor, Marcia Baxter Magolda. Baxter Magolda offers 25+ years of extensive qualitative
research experience, expertise related to the study of self-authorship, and close familiarity with
WNS data and data analysis as a principal investigator of the project. Baxter Magolda reviewed
my interpretations to ensure that I adequately supported my codes, themes, and interpretations.
Furthermore, using substantial segments from participants’ interview transcripts in the findings
section provides supporting evidence and the rationale for my interpretations. Finally, I carefully
explained why I identified transcript excerpts as a particular meaning-making structure (e.g.,
Solely External or Entering the Crossroads) in the findings section of this dissertation. Because
students can sound internally defined but be operating from an externally defined capacity
readers could potentially question my assessments. Providing substantive interview transcript
segments and well-developed rationales for the assessments help readers understand the
assessments. This thick description gives readers the opportunity to determine whether those
interpretations are plausible and fit the data. Thick description of the participants also offers
readers the opportunity to judge transferability to other populations.
Limitations
The WNS interview data provide a richness and depth that would be difficult to replicate
outside of such a large-scale, national research project. Despite the advantages of using WNS
longitudinal interviews for this dissertation there are limitations to using this pre-existing data
set. One limitation is that the interview did not explicitly focus on decision making and
interviewers were not specifically trained or instructed to delve into participants’ decision51
making processes. While there was substantive and detailed data related to decision making, an
interview constructed and conducted for the purposes of this dissertation study would generate
data more directly aligned with this study. Furthermore, the size of the WNS team
(approximately 70 people served as interviewers and/or summarizers during the course of the
study) introduced multiple subjectivities into the data collection and analysis processes.
In addition, the pre-existing WNS data set does not allow for member checking or
theoretical sampling. Member checking is a recommended practice of qualitative research
intended to ensure trustworthiness and ethical treatment of participants (Creswell, 2007). In
member checking researchers provide participants with a written copy of their interpretations and
encourage participants to expand on prior interview responses and clarify or correct
interpretations. Since I do not have access to the participants I was not able to complete member
checks. Theoretical sampling is a recommended technique of grounded theory intended to fill
out categories or themes that emerge during data analysis but need refined with additional data
(Charmaz, 2006). Again, because I used an existing data set I was not able to complete
theoretical sampling.
Finally, it is important that I remind readers throughout the findings and discussion
sections of this dissertation that the results reflect the experiences of the 22 participants in this
study and are not meant to be generalized to the high-risk student population at large. This is
particularly important given the evidence that the WNS interviews can act as developmental
interventions for participants (Baxter Magolda & King, 2007). The interviews can serve as
venues for promoting self-authorship because they offer participants an opportunity to reflect on
and discuss their experiences in ways that are not typical in day-to-day life. Thus, the
participants in this study may demonstrate unique patterns of developmental growth because of
their participation in WNS. The interview as an intervention is an acceptable phenomenon in
constructivism since the paradigm assumes that context significantly influences individuals’
experiences and interpretations of those experiences (Creswell, 2007). Consistent with
qualitative research, it is my hope that readers will use my thick descriptions to inform their
thinking and practice and determine how it relates to their particular students. Despite the
identified limitations this study is grounded in sound methodology and methods and offers
readers deeper understanding of high-risk students, decision making, and development.
52
CHAPTER IV: DECISION MAKING & DEVELOPMENTAL CAPACITIES
The primary objective of this research study was to explore the relationship between
high-risk students’ developmental capacities and their decision-making processes. Specifically, I
wanted to determine if and how the 22 participants’ developmental capacities mediated their
abilities to make good, well-informed decisions. As discussed earlier in this dissertation, the
literature that examines decision making from a self-authorship perspective provides criteria of
good, well-informed decision making and the developmental capacities individuals need to make
such decisions. Based on this literature, sound decision making entails three criteria: 1)
gathering information – this involves considering multiple perspectives, that is listening to and
authentically considering conflicting advice, evaluating the credibility of sources, and reflecting
on one’s own goals, values, and beliefs; 2) processing information to reach a decision – this
involves balancing conflicting positions and weighing competing expectations and claims against
one’s own values, goals, and interests; and, 3) taking action that is grounded in the first two
criteria – this involves honoring one’s goals, beliefs, and values by making decisions consistent
with one’s own personal interests and values and using one’s internal belief system to mediate
external influences in decision making.
Four decision-making patterns emerged from the data analysis of the 22 participants in
this dissertation study. Each participant followed one of four patterns in their decision making:
1) Reflective Ownership of Decision Making; 2) Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision
Making; 3) Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making;
and, 4) Non-Reflective Ownership of Decision Making. Participants in each pattern varied in the
degree that they used the criteria of good, well-informed decision making detailed above. Those
variations were accompanied by variations in the participants’ developmental capacities. Table 4
provides the year-one and year-four developmental capacities of each participant by decisionmaking pattern. The remainder of this chapter discusses the extent to which participants in each
decision-making pattern used the criteria for making good, well-informed decisions and how the
participants’ developmental capacities mediated their ability to use these criteria. In order to
maximize the use of the longitudinal data I use in-depth narratives from participant interviews.
Thus, it was not possible to include excerpts from all 22 participants. Instead I feature the stories
of students that best illustrate the decision-making and developmental dynamics of each
decision-making pattern. I start with the most sophisticated pattern for ease of comparison.
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Table 4
Year One and Year Four Developmental Capacities by Decision Making Pattern
Decision Making Pattern
Year 1
Year 4
Reflective Ownership of Decision
Making
Diana
Irene
Roger
Daryl
Josh
Jessica
Entering the
Crossroads
Entering the
Crossroads
Entering the
Crossroads
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Leaving the Crossroads
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely Internal (Self-Authoring)
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Entering the Crossroads
Solely External
Solely External
Leaving the Crossroads
Entering the Crossroads
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Solely External
Entering the Crossroads
Entering the Crossroads
Solely External (no change)
Solely External (no change)
Solely External (no change)
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Leaving the Crossroads
Entering the Crossroads
Movement to Reflective Ownership of
Decision Making
Victoria
Arianna
Benjamin
Chase
Dustin
Isabella
Laura
Yolanda
Dolores
Movement to Recognizing the Need
for Reflective Ownership of
Decision Making
Jacob
Bella
Non-Reflective Ownership of
Decision Making
Bob
Cameron
Julie
Maegan
Vanessa
54
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making
The six students using this pattern came into college making reflective decisions and
maintained their thoughtful decision-making processes throughout the four interviews. The
Reflective Ownership decision makers were the most adept of the four patterns at using the
criteria for good, well-informed decision making throughout their college careers. The students
in this pattern were the only ones in the study that demonstrated the use of the criteria when they
entered college. During their initial interviews each of these students shared examples of their
decision making that entailed gathering information from various sources, including self and
others, processing the information in order to reach a decision, and taking action accordingly.
Students in this pattern made decisions consistent with their priorities in order to ensure their
needs were met. The reflection aspect of their decision making is evident in the practice of
identifying their priorities and interests. Their ownership of decision making took the form of
privileging their priorities over others’ even though this was a struggle. For these students
making a reflective decision was not an isolated event – they consistently used this approach
when making decisions. While there was consistency in their decision making they became
increasingly confident in their ability to use the criteria over time. That increased confidence
came by virtue of the students adopting more developmentally complex meaning-making
structures during their college careers, primarily bringing their internal voices to the foreground
and moving external influences to the background.
Three of the six students in the Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern
demonstrated meaning making reflective of Entering the Crossroads during their first interviews.
The remaining three students quickly progressed to Entering the Crossroads by the time of their
second interviews (which occurred during the fall of their second year). In this phase of
development students are aware of the need for an internal voice and realize the shortcomings of
relying on external sources for meaning making. They recognize the “differences among their
perceptions and others’ perceptions” of their identities, relationships, and worldviews (Baxter
Magolda & King, in press). In Entering the Crossroads students begin to actively work on
developing an internal voice by exploring how they want to construct their beliefs, identities, and
relationships (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Because this internal voice is new and
developing it is still often overshadowed by external influences.
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Possessing the developmental capacities associated with Entering the Crossroads enabled
these students to use the criteria of sound decision making in an initial manner, but they grew in
their ability to do so as they shifted from external meaning making to internal meaning making.
Initially these students struggled to use their internal voices because they were just starting to
develop and their internal voices were eclipsed by external sources. However, these students had
enough of an internal voice to act on when they experienced challenging situations or
dissonance. A commonality among the students in this pattern is that they all faced some type of
dissonance before entering college. For many of the students the dissonance centered on
difficult decisions they made prior to college. For example, Irene, whose story appears in detail
below, decided to attend a less prestigious school than her family and teachers had groomed her
for because of financial constraints and a desire to attend an institution with a diverse student
population rather than a predominantly white population. Other students held a combination of
social identities that have been traditionally marginalized in US society. For example, Diana
identified as an African-American woman who did not come out as a lesbian until she entered
college because she saw the “torment” that her openly-gay peers experienced during high school.
Typically students in this pattern were able to make decisions using their developing voices
when their experiences were making them so uncomfortable or miserable that they could not
stand the status quo any longer. It is likely the dissonance these students experienced before
entering college facilitated their ability to use the sound decision-making criteria prior to fully
developing their internal voices.
Five of the six students in the Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern ended their
college careers with the developmental capacities associated with Leaving the Crossroads.
Students at this developmental position are predominantly internally defined in their meaning
making but some external meaning making remains (Baxter Magolda & King, in press).
Whereas the external was in the foreground in Entering the Crossroads, internal voice has
strengthened sufficiently in Leaving the Crossroads to now be in the foreground. A student in
this position “works on developing his or her own distinct point of view by listening carefully to
his or her internal voice and trying to hear this internal voice over the noise and clutter from the
external environment” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). When the students in this decisionmaking pattern adopted the more complex meaning making associated with Leaving the
Crossroads, their confidence in and ability to use the criteria of good, well-informed decision
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making increased. As their internal voices moved to the foreground, they worried less about
external reactions and, thus, this increased their confidence. Therefore, their use of the decisionmaking criteria evolved in concert with their developmental meaning making. Cognitively, they
had the capacity to consider and evaluate multiple perspectives, which allowed them to
authentically consider conflicting advice. Intrapersonally, these students had the capacity to
identify their own values and beliefs. Interpersonally, they had the capacity to consider others’
perspectives without being consumed by them and honor their own goals, beliefs, and values.
Excerpts from Irene’s transcripts (pseudonym chosen by the student during the Wabash National
Study interviews) illustrate the Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern and how
developmental meaning making mediated her ability to use the criteria for good, well-informed
decision making.
Irene
Irene was a first-generation college student with a long history of academic success. The
high academic expectations she held for herself were reflective of the expectations of her
teachers and family. While Irene was not offered admittance into her dream school, she was
accepted by and intended to attend a well-respected private institution. Irene’s last-minute
decision to attend a less prestigious state school was the event that demonstrates she took
ownership of her reflective decisions before attending college. In her year one interview Irene
described the pressure she felt to attend a top-tier institution:
…everybody always expected so much from me in high school because they always
looked up to me or whatever because I was doing so much for the school and my
classmates, and then when I found out that I wasn’t sure about what college to go to
because they didn’t understand I had a financial problem it was just really overwhelming
towards the end of my school year. …They [her teachers] put a lot of pressure on me
because they always wanted the best for me I guess. I understand that, it’s just, it was
really overwhelming because I was the first one in my family to go to college. And it’s
really hard because everybody expects, even my family…they’re like you know you have
to go through a big college…and it’s just really upsetting because they’re choosing the
college based on what they hear because it’s a good college and they don’t understand, I
need to, how would I fit into that college if I was stuck there.
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Irene clarified that she recognized the importance of “fit” when she attended orientation and
realized, “Oh, my God. I don’t want to be here.” ’Cause it’s just white dominant and I’m from
the city and it’s a very diverse area and I just felt, I don’t know, just out of place.”
Irene’s financial constraints and need for a more diverse environment prompted her to
apply to a different university. Despite having legitimate reasons for making that decision, it
was still not easy for her:
And then I guess [student’s university] was one of my choices but my teacher didn’t want
me to go here because my boyfriend goes here and she wanted me to go somewhere else.
But it’s just, I realized it was my last choice because I couldn’t afford any of the other
schools and besides it has a really good nursing program and so it was OK. But it was
just really overwhelming towards the end of my school year when I was applying and,
and trying to get accepted to [student’s university] ‘cause…I applied in June and got
accepted in July and that was just in time to get into the last orientation. And I really
thought I wasn’t gonna go to college this semester and that really bugged me out because
I’ve always done so good in high school, getting good grades and now towards the end of
my school year I was breaking down because I didn’t know what college to go to. And
it’s just, everybody expected so much from me that I felt like I was unsatisfied and
everybody and so it was hard.
As she was making her decision Irene felt she had fallen short of the expectations that
others had for her and that she had internalized. She was experiencing overwhelming tensions
with external sources because her internal voice was just starting to develop. She struggled and
agonized over her decision because she was Entering the Crossroads in her developmental
meaning making. She was able to make the difficult decision to attend a state school because of
her initial ability to define her own values and priorities and strong feelings of not fitting in at the
predominantly white institution. Essentially she was so uncomfortable thinking about living in
such an environment that she acted on the fragile internal voice she was just starting to develop.
However, it was a struggle for her to do so and she had to convince herself that what she was
doing was acceptable because external sources continued to dominate her meaning making.
Thus, she tentatively used the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. Specifically,
she gathered information by reflecting on her own goals, values, and beliefs and considered
58
multiple perspectives when she questioned authorities’ (e.g., parents and teachers) plans for her.
Irene used the second criterion, processing information to reach a decision, by prioritizing her
values of affordability and diversity over external others’ expectations that she attend a “big” and
prestigious school. Finally, Irene honored her own beliefs and values by making a decision
consistent with her personal interests; that is, she acted on the first two criteria.
By the time of her first year interview Irene had reconciled herself with her decision and
recognized the beneficial outcomes of going through her difficult experience. She realized that
in the past she had made decisions in order to please others; now she was able to make decisions
to meet her own needs and to please herself:
…in high school I would seriously cry because I felt like I was disappointing everybody
around me. But, now that I’m in college and I’m doing things on my own without my
mom, without the help of my teachers…I’m doing everything on my own and it just
makes me know that I am doing all that I can, I am doing the best that I can…to succeed
in anything and I feel like if I’m doing the best I can then it’s all I need to satisfy me. …I
need to get out, break out of the mentality I need to satisfy everyone but first I need to
satisfy me before I satisfy everyone. ...It feels good because I’m making the decisions I
want because before I would always make the decisions of what they wanted, what they
thought was best for me and I guess it’s why in towards the end I always felt like I didn’t,
I was disappointed because I wasn’t doing what they wanted. Now that because it’s just
me I’ll just do my decisions to please myself and to make me happy rather than worrying
about what everybody else thinks.
Irene learned how to take reflective ownership of her decisions before she came to college. The
stress of meeting others’ expectations and her recognition that what would make her happy
conflicted with those expectations, led her to recognize the need for a new way of making
meaning. She began trying to actively construct her inner voice. Because she was just starting
this process, and did not have her internal voice constructed yet, she had to work hard to avoid
being pulled back into the external expectations of others. She continued this struggle as she
faced challenges in relationships with others and her nursing goals.
Relationships. Irene had a combative and uneasy relationship with her mom. She
described their relationship in her first year interview:
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We would always clash no matter what ’cause…I guess I had a little grudge with my
mom because my mom, like any typical Filipino parent, they’ll brag about their child to
people and I hated that the most ’cause, yeah, I was good in school…and what I would
hate about it is she would always brag so much about what I was doing or whatever to
other people but when it came to [me personally], I always felt like I was a big
disappointment to her. I never felt like I was good enough. Like what I did was never
good enough for her. I just wish she would say, “I’m proud of you,” but I’ve never heard
that from her. And it’s just like me and her always have this tension, we can’t seem to
express how we feel without clashing. …every time we do, we end up having a big
argument, so when I went off to college it was a lot better because we didn’t see each
other as much, and so when we do see each other it’s okay, we miss each other. That’s
the point, but if we see each other too much that’s when it’s like, “Oh, my God. She’s
gonna kill me or whatever.” …but I just feel like it’s better that we are not living in the
same household anymore…I think I have a better relationship with her now than before.
Despite having a better relationship, Irene and her mom still continued to clash, especially
around Irene’s progress towards becoming a nurse. Irene’s mom knew what it took to be a nurse
in the Philippines, which was a much faster process than in the US. Subsequently, she did not
understand why it was taking Irene so long to get into the nursing program at her school. Irene
attempted to explain that there were prerequisites and general education classes that she needed
to complete before she applied to the program. But her explanations did not satisfy her mom:
...I just kind of brush it off because she always wants to say what she wants to say but,
being the child you can’t really say anything, but I just hold my tongue and I’m like,
“Whatever.” If you think, if I don’t get into the nursing program she’s going to send me
to the Philippines. I’m like, you know, it’s not going to happen… She just wants me to
graduate faster, which she thinks she knows it all and she doesn’t understand what it
takes to go through the whole process of nursing... She doesn’t know. She thinks she
knows it all but she doesn’t [laughs]. …she doesn’t know what I’m doing, what classes
I’m taking. Just as long as I’m trying to get into the program is all that matters.
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Irene continued to have a strained relationship with her mom until her fourth year
interview. During that interview Irene described the difficult step she took to improve her
relationship with her mom:
Yeah, at first I was really scared. I didn’t want to. I was just crying, I didn’t wanna
address my mom, I didn’t want to address my sister. I thought they were gonna just gang
up on me, the two of them, and just say all the bad things about me. And then I didn’t
want to go home because I didn’t wanna confront them. But then, I knew I just had to
and, eventually I just ended up talking to my mom and my sister and we were just all
crying and telling each other this shouldn’t be this way and…we shouldn’t be talking to
each other this way and we shouldn’t be treating each other this way. So basically it’s
telling each other how we really feel – how we feel that we should be treated better. So
we just really just talked it out and let everything out there on the table. …We were
finally able to discuss all of the issues that were going on and then so now I can say that
me and my mom have a better understanding of one another. …we haven’t fought ever
since then because we just turned out to have a really better relationship with one another.
Irene’s growing internal voice and realization that avoiding this conflict was not going to work
anymore gave her the strength to confront her mom. Her growing internal voice made it
necessary to realign her relationships with important others so that she could continue to bring
her voice to those relationships.
Irene’s reflective decision making also enabled her to make a difficult decision related to
her long-time boyfriend. In her second-year interview Irene discussed how her participation and
leadership role in her sorority changed the nature of her relationship with her boyfriend. Her
sorority became a significant priority for her and because she had committed to being the
community action chair, she was not willing to cut corners on that commitment, even if her
boyfriend felt neglected. She found that she was too busy to maintain the relationship so she
decided to break-up with her boyfriend:
I mean I felt this for a long, ever since in the summer, so when it really came down to this
part, this point was last month, it was kinda easy for me to go but, I was feeling like, “Oh,
my God. Did we just…,” you know, I was still like, “Wow. You, we’re really not
together.” But it’s still a big relief because it just shows how I’m still able to stand on my
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own whether or not he’s around…So it’s still good because regardless of if he let me, I’m
still gonna do what I’m doing (laughs). …it just goes to show I don’t need a man in my
life to make me happy, so I mean, yeah, it was hard because four and a half years is really
long compared to other people.
Irene’s priorities had changed and her sorority was becoming a more important part of her life.
Thus, she made a decision that reflected her new priorities. This is another example of Irene
making reflective decisions based on her priorities and interests. She made the decision to make
herself happy, not to make her boyfriend happy.
Irene was able to make the decisions to break-up with her boyfriend and confront her
mom because she was developmentally Leaving the Crossroads in her second, third, and fourth
interviews. Though both voices were competing, her internal voice edged out the external for
dominance (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). In the intrapersonal dimension Irene had
developed increased confidence and in the interpersonal dimension she asserted herself in her
relationships and acted on her own needs. Her confidence in and ability to use the criteria of
good, well-informed decision making had increased because her internal voice was strong
enough to coordinate external influences. She no longer felt bad for not meeting others’
expectations, making acting on her own priorities less stressful.
Nursing. Irene originally decided to pursue nursing as her career because her mom
encouraged her to do so. However, her interest in nursing grew to be her own as she progressed
through her prerequisite courses. She liked the opportunity to help other people that nursing
provided and enjoyed the science classes, particularly anatomy and microbiology. In her second
and third interviews Irene discussed the difficulty of being admitted to her school’s nursing
program, saying that just 60 of 200 applicants were admitted each year. Many of her friends had
changed majors because their grades were not strong enough to be admitted and Irene worked
hard to “stay on the right track to get into the nursing program.” Irene was stressed by the
admission process and knew there was a chance that she might not get in because she did not
have straight A’s. However, it was still a shock to her when she was not admitted. In her fourthyear interview she described the particulars of her situation:
I’m trying to apply to the nursing program but there’s little bumps that’s not allowing me
to apply because I don’t meet one particular requirement because…the nursing advisor,
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she’s constantly revising the application every year making it difficult for a lot of
students to apply to the nursing program. …so what happened was I was supposed to
apply this last spring, but I needed to take one more class which is physiology, and I was
supposed to take that last summer – the summer of ’08 but I couldn’t take it because I
didn’t have transportation to the school that I was supposed to go to so I was pushed
back. I didn’t want to take it at [her university] because I heard…the location is really
horrible and a lot of people end up failing the class and I couldn’t jeopardize that, having
a C or lower in my transcript, so I waited until summer again. So this past summer I just
recently took the class and that was the last class I needed to take to apply to the nursing
program and when I applied this semester, I had to write a petition because there’s this
additional requirement now that you have to have a 3.0 at these four different classes
which were classes I took my freshman year. And at that time…you didn’t need
that…for the application to apply to nursing, you just needed to take the class and you
just needed to have a C or better. And those are the classes I got two C’s and then two
B’s. I didn’t have a 3.0. So I wrote a petition telling them…I’ve never gotten a C ever
since freshman year. I’m a fourth year now and all I’ve gotten is A’s and B’s and I’m
trying to explain to them that it’s not fair that all of a sudden you – you put this
requirement on people and those are things I took three years ago. …I’m gonna try one
more time next year, but I’m tryin’ to maybe retake those classes and see if I can get a
better grade on those because I don’t want to give up on the nursing program. But that’s
what I’m trying to do right now. …It’s just very frustrating and…I feel it’s unfair because
I think the new requirements should apply to the people who are beginning to start their
studies at [student’s university] and they shouldn’t apply to people who are in the process
of trying to apply to the nursing program.
Irene’s petition had already been denied once and she had just one more opportunity to
petition her admittance into the nursing program. Despite this significant setback Irene created a
backup plan that would enable her to continue pursuing nursing:
… like nursing, if it doesn’t work out at [student’s university], I’m gonna change my
major to health science and then from there I can just graduate within a year or so, a year
and a half. So I don’t want to transfer just because it’s just harder to transfer out to
63
different schools because many schools are not accepting transfer students because of all
the budget cuts…So just changing my major I think would be easier for me to just
graduate from this school and get my bachelor’s in health science and then from there I
can master in nursing…Just other programs that after you already have a bachelor of
science that you can actually apply and major in nursing or master in nursing. So yeah,
that’s my game plan.
It was a priority for Irene to become a nurse:
Well with nursing I’ve always – my mom, she’s not a nurse but she’s always been in the
hospital and just seeing how she interacts with these different patients, I really want to do
something like that. I’m really good with science. After working my butt off and really
liking all my science classes, I really like knowing about what’s going on with my body
and what’s going on with the diseases and how to cure it and just how to work with
patients.
Irene was working through a significant disappointment and change in her plans at the
time of her fourth interview. Despite being disappointed and frustrated, she was not stymied.
She had identified an alternative route to becoming a nurse in case she was not admitted to her
school’s program. Thus she gathered information by considering multiple perspectives and
reflecting on her own goals and values, components of the first criteria for good, well-informed
decision making. She used the second criterion, processing information to reach a decision, by
weighing different options against her goals and interests. This helped her create an alternative
plan for pursuing nursing if she was not admitted to her school’s program. Irene did not look for
answers from other people to help her move forward and she did not abandon her hope of
becoming a nurse. Instead, she reflected on what would be the best option for her and made her
decisions accordingly. This demonstrated her use of the third criterion because her decision was
consistent with her personal interests and she relied on her internal goals and values rather than
external others’ expectations and constraints in her decision making. Irene indicated that her
leadership roles in her sorority contributed to her apparent resiliency:
I think it definitely makes me a stronger person…I’m always struggling and I
think…especially with the nursing program. It allows me to cope with it and realize it’s
64
not the end of it. There’s other choices and I guess I’ll pick myself up and still be able to
go forward to whatever I want to do. Regardless of how many times I get turned down or
whatever, with all my leadership roles it makes me a stronger person and keep moving
and keep being determined and strive for whatever I believe regardless of what keeps
throwing me down.
Once again, Irene’s use of the decision-making criteria was facilitated by the developmental
capacities associated with Leaving the Crossroads. Cognitively, she mediated external
influences by critical analysis. Intrapersonally, she demonstrated acceptance of herself and
happiness with doing her best and in her own way. Interpersonally, she was once again acting to
please herself rather than others.
Irene started her college experience able to make reflective decisions. However, she got
better at it throughout her four years in college. At first she did it under duress as she worried
about disappointing others, later she was not concerned about disappointing others. She
consistently identified her priorities, determined what was in her best interests, and made her
decisions accordingly. She took ownership of her decision making. The decisions were not
typically easy for her to make, but she made them nonetheless. Irene’s ability to make those
difficult decisions is reflected in her personal philosophy that she shared at the end of her fourth
interview:
...I go by the theme of living the dash. Living the dash means living life to the fullest.
No regrets – no holding back and doing whatever it takes to live my life in the way I want
it to be, whether it’s school, my family and my sorority, it just allows me to know that
I’m in charge of my life and that I can do whatever I want as long as I put my mind to it
regardless of what gets in my way.
Synthesis
Though I use Irene’s story to illustrate the Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern,
there were five other participants who came to college with the ability to make reflective
decisions. Even the students in this pattern who started at Solely External meaning making could
use the criteria because of the dissonance they experienced prior to college. This dissonance
made them so uncomfortable that they acted from internal feelings that they did not routinely
65
share openly in their day-to-day lives. They were able to act on those normally concealed inner
feelings despite pressure from external influences when they faced emotionally challenging
decisions. As students’ developmental capacities grew more complex and they cultivated their
internal voices, they were increasingly confident and skilled in their use of the sound decisionmaking criteria.
Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making
Nine dissertation study participants experienced a substantial shift in their decision
making throughout their four years of college. These students’ decision making progressed from
being influenced by external factors, including practical considerations, their perceptions of what
they ought or should do, and family influences, to taking ownership of their decisions. In the
first year of interviews the decisions made by students using this pattern had an underlying
current of being what these students perceived they “ought” to do. Such an approach meant that
students’ decisions were based on responding to external influences and that the students did not
use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. The students in this pattern did not all
follow the same path, but by their year-four interviews they used the criteria in their decision
making. Many students faced significant struggles that either prompted or demonstrated their
use of the criteria. These struggles ranged from interpersonal conflicts to not being accepted into
their undergraduate major of choice. For some students the progression to ownership of their
decision making was an incremental process; others made the change in a few large steps. Either
way, this ownership took the form of listening to themselves, challenging others’ expectations,
and developing increasing confidence in their ability to be self-reliant and self-directed. A few
students clearly articulated what taking ownership of their decisions meant to them – no longer
worrying about what other people were thinking, gaining the courage not to comply with a
parent’s expectations, or having confidence in the plans they made for themselves.
Just as the decision making of these students progressed, they also experienced a
progression in their developmental meaning making. All nine of the Movement to Reflective
Ownership students initially demonstrated meaning making reflective of Solely External. In the
Solely External phase of development students rely “strongly on external sources for knowledge,
self-definition, and decisions about how to relate socially” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press).
Because these students have no internal voice they look to authorities for knowledge, define their
66
identities through external expectations, and act in relationships to acquire approval. Possessing
the developmental capacities associated with Solely External prevented the students from using
the criteria of sound decision making because they did not have even the beginnings of an
internal voice. Therefore, external influences dominated students’ decision making during this
time. Seven of the nine students in the Movement to Reflective Ownership decision-making
pattern ended their college careers with the developmental capacities associated with Leaving the
Crossroads. As discussed in the previous section of this chapter, students at the developmental
position of Leaving the Crossroads are predominantly internally defined in their meaning making
but some external meaning making remains (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Students in this
position listen carefully to their internal voices. Because those internal voices are in the
foreground in Leaving the Crossroads, they are adept at using the criteria for good, wellinformed decision making.
The two remaining Movement to Reflective Ownership students’ developmental journeys
were consistent with the developmental progression experienced by the bulk of students in this
pattern; their meaning making moved from Solely External to Entering the Crossroads and
Solely External to Solely Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning Making respectively. Students in
the Entering the Crossroads developmental phase are aware of the need for an internal voice and
realize the shortcomings of relying on external sources for meaning making (Baxter Magolda &
King, in press). As discussed in the Reflective Ownership section of this chapter, students
possessing the developmental capacities associated with Entering the Crossroads are able to use
the criteria of sound decision making in an initial manner and with less confidence than students
with the capacities associated with Leaving the Crossroads. One of the 22 participants in this
study demonstrated meaning making reflective of Solely Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning
Making by the time of her fourth interview and she followed the Movement to Reflective
Ownership pattern of decision making. In Solely Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning Making the
“internal voice is the mainstay; the overall structure for knowledge, identity, and social
relationships is internally grounded” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). The internal voice
mediates external influence through critical analysis based on internal criteria. The
developmental capacities associated with self-authoring meaning making enabled this student to
easily use the criteria of good, well-informed decision making. In all cases, students who made
the move to reflective ownership in their decision making also moved towards self-authorship
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along the developmental continuum. While the Reflective Ownership decision makers used the
criteria when they entered college, the Movement to Reflective Ownership decision makers used
the criteria by the time they left college. Dustin’s interview excerpts provide the context to
examine the relationship between his development and use of the sound decision-making criteria.
Victoria’s excerpts illustrate how a student with the meaning-making capacities associated with
self-authorship used the criteria.
Dustin
In his first year of college Dustin was very aware of his transition from being a high
school student to an adult. As the youngest of nine children from a tight-knit family, that
transition was daunting:
S (student): I suddenly feel like I’ve become an adult. And I’ve turned 18 for a while but
I didn’t really feel like I’m an adult. I feel I’m still a kid. But once I entered college, I
suddenly felt like I’m a grown up. And I suddenly feel like people aren’t really going to
take care of me anymore, and I have to depend on myself if I want anything to be done.
I (interviewer): How do you feel about being an adult? What’s it like?
S: It doesn’t feel good because…now that I’m an adult I have to take care of myself.
…Someone always prepared my meal for me, remind me to eat, and have my clothes
washed for me. Now I have to do everything by myself, and I’m in a state where I’m
preparing to get into the real world so it’s kinda scary.
Dustin’s hesitancy to becoming an adult was reinforced by his parents. They held significant
influence in Dustin’s life and continued to treat him like their dependent charge. This included
making important decisions about Dustin’s college plans:
I didn’t really choose to go here cause I wanted to go to a university but my parents
thought I’m still too young and I can’t take care of myself yet. So they say I should go to
[student’s university] where it’s close to home, and maybe later on in my future, I can
possibly transfer to a different school.
Dustin allowed his family to over-ride his choice in college and did not challenge their decision.
This is an important example of Dustin not taking ownership of his decisions and relinquishing
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that responsibility to his parents. At the same time, Dustin longed for the freedoms associated
with being an adult:
S: I know it’s kinda tough because in my mind I’m an adult, but in my parent’s eyes, I’m
still a kid. So sometimes, I feel restricted cause my parents wouldn’t allow me to do the
things I like. But then again, when I really think about it, they’re only helping me.
They’re only giving me guidelines into adulthood, so I guess it’s good and bad what
they’re doing to me cause yeah, they’re just trying to guide me through the right way and
help me not follow in the footsteps of my brother. Cause he’s not going to school right
now and he doesn’t really have a career so he’s basically just wasting his time right now.
And my parents don’t want me to do that; they want me to use my time wisely.
I: So how do you react to that idea that your parents are trying to guide you through this
experience? How do you react to both the good side and the bad side of that?
S: Most of the time I would listen to them and obey them, but sometimes when I feel like
I can’t take it anymore, like it’s overwhelming, I would rebel and kinda just do something
that is terrible but not, not to the extreme.
I: Okay. Can you, can you give me an example?
S: I would sneak out of the house or something or go to someplace where they wouldn’t
want me to go to and just kinda hang out and have fun for awhile and then come back
home, and everything’s normal.
I: So what goes through your head at that moment where you decide to sneak out?
S: I’m thinking about how unfair it is cause I have to obey them all the time, and when I
request to do something, they wouldn’t let me. So I feel kinda angry, and I feel kinda
foolish cause I’m 18, and I have to sneak out of my own house. [Laughs]
Dustin was confused about his role as an adult. He was afraid of taking care of himself and
delegated significant decisions to his parents, but at the same time he desired more freedom.
This confusion meant that Dustin had little practice making decisions, and this inexperience is
evident during his second interview in his discussion of how he chose his major:
S: When I applied to college I thought about what my hobbies are and what I really like,
and I figured I didn’t really like any profession, and that since the only thing that interests
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me for working is just to make money, so I figure business management since it deals
with money, and so I just chose that profession.
I: We never talked about you being an entrepreneur before. What makes you interested
in that?
S: In high school when I was about to graduate I really didn’t know what I really wanted
to do, and I thought about everything and I just felt that managing – making money and
stuff was something I like to do, and so, I decided to go here and be in the business
department. So, yeah, I wanted to open my own business because I've always liked
freedom, and I would like to show up or not show up, it's up to me.
I: Is there a particular type of business that you're interested in?
S: Well, as long as it makes a profit, and I don't have to work too much, that's my kind of
business. [Laughs]
Dustin had a rationale for his decision to be a business major that made sense on a base level –
he liked money and business was a way to make money; he was pursuing what interested him.
However, his thought process did not have depth or an understanding of the realities of being a
business owner. To own a successful business, the owner must “show up” regularly. Dustin’s
choice in major was not a horrible decision by any means; but, it does not demonstrate use of the
three criteria of sound decision making. Dustin did not gather information by considering
multiple perspectives and did not process information by balancing conflicting positions and
weighing competing expectations against his own values.
Dustin’s desire for freedom was also apparent when Dustin discussed his appreciation of
college classes, saying, “It’s a good thing cause you get a feeling of freedom, you know? Cause
in high school when you go to class you feel like you’re trapped for an hour until you get
released.” But in year one, he was still learning to manage that freedom. On the day of the
interview, he had taken an exam he was not prepared for because he did not realize it was
scheduled for that day:
And today I was just caught so totally unprepared and I felt overwhelmed by how I didn’t
prepare yesterday cause yesterday I thought about looking at the syllabus to see if
anything’s going to happen today, but I decided not to. So, that was just devastating…
Cause I haven’t had a bad grade in a while.
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The day’s events left him “disappointed” and feeling like he had let his parents down because he
had planned to do his homework the day before but became distracted with surfing the internet:
Whenever I do bad in school I feel like I hurt my parents someway cause in high school I
was always taking the honor class and the AP class and I’ve always done well, even with
my slacking off.
Dustin’s desire to meet his parents’ expectations while trying to transition into adulthood
can be heard throughout his first three interviews. His value of family, a value that he said came
from his family and his Asian culture, meant that Dustin’s parents influenced many aspects of
Dustin’s life. For example, Dustin relied on his parents for academic motivation saying that he
only told them when he earned bad grades, rather than good grades, because, “…then they would
kind of lecture me, sometimes yell at me, and I guess it kinda motivates me to do better.” This
motivation helped Dustin work harder in order to impress his parents, as he explained,
“…anyone would want to look good in front of their parents.” In addition, Dustin felt obligated
to achieve academic success in order to make his parents proud and become successful enough to
take care of them when they grew older:
S: What I wanted was to take a break from school, and my parents really wanted me to go
to school. And, it was a really hard choice, but then in the end, I choose to listen to my
parents.
I: What made you decide to listen to them?
S: Because they place so much hope and value in me because all of my brothers and
sisters have grown up and have their own life and whatever. And my parents all wanted
them to go to college and whatever, and do well in school, but they didn’t do so well in
school, and it really disappointed them. And my parents place all their hopes in me, and I
figured, even after I graduate and get a job and whatnot, I’d still live with them; and I feel
since no one is stepping up to the plate, it’s up to me to take care of my parents.
In the previous excerpts Dustin described both a desire for freedom and an obligation to
meet his parents’ expectations. When making decisions, if what he wanted conflicted with his
parents’ expectations, he privileged his parents’ wishes above his own. By doing so, Dustin did
not use the criteria of good, well-informed decision making. His prioritization of his parents’
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expectations was consistent with his Solely External meaning making capacity. In his first three
years of school Dustin consistently relied on external sources for knowledge, self-definition, and
social relating. Interpersonally, he acted to acquire his parents’ approval. Intrapersonally, he
was defined by his relationship with his parents and relied on them as an external source of
motivation. Cognitively, he did not create his own plans but instead followed external formulas,
those endorsed by his parents, related to his education, career, and vision of life after college.
Unlike Irene, Dustin did not experience overwhelming tensions from external influences because
he had not yet started to develop an internal voice. He was content to follow the external
formulas provided by his parents in his decision making.
In his fourth-year interview, Dustin described a number of significant events that
coalesced to facilitate his development and prompted him to take ownership of his decision
making. The first significant event that Dustin discussed was joining a fraternity:
S: I feel like after I joined the fraternity I gained a sense of confidence. I’m more willing
to meet people. I’ve become a lot more active on campus. I’m a lot more sociable. And
I guess I’ve become the person that’s not afraid of confrontation when it’s against
something I strongly believe in.
I: And do you have an idea of what it was about joining the fraternity that made you more
social and made you more confident?
S: I guess when I joined the fraternity, I felt more of a sense of belonging. I felt that
because in our fraternity all the members are very supportive of us and we don’t really
put each other down and so when I say something, I’m not afr – it doesn’t make me feel
like oh, they’re going to laugh at me and make me feel like a fool. I can just be myself
and just say what’s on my mind.
I: You said you have a different view about college now after joining that fraternity.
What do you mean by that?
S: Before that I felt like college seemed to just be a place for learning, and I didn’t see too
much opportunity to gain any other experience of college besides educational purposes.
But through the fraternity, I felt a lot of new opportunities for me that I wish I had joined
earlier so I could have taken advantage of these opportunities. I realize that you can take
a lot of jobs and positions on campus and would just benefit you in one way or another.
And there’s also another fun aspect to it. You get to meet a lot of people, there’s parties
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here and there, and it just made college so much more fun, and I felt like I’m actually
more involved as a student…So I’m taking a lot of chances out there because what used
to stop me was the fear of being rejected, but now I feel that you know what? The worst
thing they can do is say no. So it doesn’t hurt to try, so I’m doing a lot more than I did
before.
The social support from Dustin’s fraternity helped him develop a stronger sense of confidence
and broadened his college experience. In addition, Dustin was proud of the person he was
becoming because he joined a fraternity that upheld his values and helped him stay true to those
values:
S: I think all of this confidence is coming from my fraternity because even I notice that
I’ve become a lot more confident in the things I do. And I think it draws mainly from our
fraternity motto, our beliefs. In our fraternity we have this thing that we all have to
memorize and try to use it in our own life. …It’s called the True Gentleman. And it talks
about what a true gentleman does and how does he conduct himself. And so what we
strive to do is become the true gentleman. I know it’s hard and you can never be like 100
percent that. That’s what we all strive but what’s important that we strive to try to be 100
percent of a true gentleman. And I felt that my confidence come from there…
I: When you first read that True Gentleman motto, did you agree with it completely?
S: I thought it was a wonderful thing. Because I come from a very religious background
and we were always taught…that they expect us to become a better person, to help one
another. And so I’ve always been into that. And when I saw the True Gentleman, it was
the key selling point for me to join this fraternity because I felt if this is what the guys in
this organization strive to be, then it’s something I also want to be. Because I really
dislike people that are mean to others and don’t really care too much. So when I first saw
it I was incredibly impressed with it.
Connecting with a group of men committed to the values he held was another way the fraternity
helped Dustin build his self-confidence.
The second significant event that Dustin discussed during his fourth-year interview was a
change in his conceptualization of his family. He was initially disappointed to realize that his
siblings were starting to strike out on their own and go their separate ways. He eventually
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processed this change and saw it as an indication that he needed to start taking responsibility for
himself:
S: I felt like it’s made me a bit stronger and a bit more independent. Because I’ve always
had a heavy reliance on my family – they’re always my safe house. Whenever I feel I
need help, I always come to them. But now I feel like I need to solve these things on my
own, and I need to just grow up and do my own thing. And try to live my life.
I: Did that realization hit you one day or did you slowly figure that out over the last year?
S: I would say more of hitting me one day. It was after a couple of holidays, and I felt
terrible because we weren’t really together anymore for the last couple of holidays over
the year. And it was a very, I guess traumatic event for me because – I don’t know, I was
quite depressed over it and it took me a while to finally get over it and just think about it
and tell myself, that’s just how life is sometimes. You just can’t have things the way
you’ve always wanted it to be.
I: I imagine it felt kind of scary, that if your family had been your safe house as you
described it, to kind of start to feel like the safety is slipping away a little bit?
S: I was incredibly hurt by it and I just really didn’t know what to do. Well the fraternity
made a really big impact because they to me are like my second family. An extension of
my family. I come there for moral support and other kind of support whenever I feel like
I need someone to help me. And I just feel like they would always be there because we
share a bond together.
I: So you kind of found one safe house when the other one started to disappear.
S: Yeah, and the thing was I wasn’t really looking for another sanctuary, but I just
happened to stumble upon it. Which was fortunate for me.
Dustin came to terms with the changing nature of his family and through that process realized
that he needed to start taking ownership of his life. The support of his fraternity helped him
through that difficult process.
The final significant event that Dustin discussed in his fourth interview was what he
called a “breakdown” at the end of his junior year:
I have to discuss about my junior year. At the end of my junior year, I pretty much had a
breakdown. I really didn’t know where or what I was doing with my life. I felt like I was
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stuck, like oh what the heck am I doing here? You know, like I didn’t know – I didn’t
have a sense of any direction and I just felt like oh, wow, success or something? I’m
pretty sure I won’t get. But come my senior year I’ve experience so much and I just – I
guess I found my way in life. I found what I enjoy doing. I found the kind of career path
I want to take. I found confidence in my schoolwork, confidence in myself, and I guess
the lack of confidence has made me always stressing out and always worried about what
the next step is. And now, I’m not worrying about the next step. So I guess I feel a lot
less stressful.
The prospect of entering his senior year thrust Dustin into crisis. There was a symbolic
significance of entering his final year of college that spurred Dustin to reflect on his plans and
his future. He realized that he had no plan and no direction. In the past he had been content
focusing on meeting his parents’ expectations. This approach meant that he never seriously
considered his own interests and left him feeling lost during this critical time. Dustin’s
emotional turmoil prompted him to take stock of what he wanted and where he was going. He
was willing and able to take on that task because of the increased self-confidence that he gained
from the support of his fraternity:
I: Were there particular people or events in your life that kind of helped you through that
breakdown and kind of get you unstuck?
S: I guess there have been people around me saying positive things to me, but I didn’t
really – well it did kind of give me more support to not give up, but it didn’t really help
me in terms of figuring out myself. But I, I really did appreciate it, their help, to keep my
morals up.
I: So you had to do the work of figuring out how to get yourself out of it and how to find
your way.
S: Yeah, so I guess it ties in with me becoming more self reliant. Yeah.
I: And so when you think about how you were able to find your way, were there certain
strategies you found like were helpful for finding some of those answers?
S: I’m not exactly sure I have a strategy. But what I did was – I just think about the
things that make me happy and what kind of things I would want to do with my life. And
so I just took time to get back in touch with myself basically…I just locked myself in my
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room and then I just put my soft music in the background and I just laid there and I just
thought about my whole life. Thought about everything I’ve done up to this point.
Thought about every little incident, and you know, and just think.
Dustin’s discussion of the process he went through at the end of his junior year to make
decisions regarding his future has a rigor and depth that was missing from his second-year
interview when he described his process for choosing business as his major. When he chose his
major, he did not reflect and did not dig below surface considerations. At the end of his third
year he dug deep and took ownership of his decisions. He was invested and connected to his
decision in a way that he had not been in the past. Getting in touch with himself through
reflection helped Dustin realize that he “wasn’t quite ready to start working yet.” He decided to
continue on to graduate school to earn his teaching credentials to be an economics teacher.
A series of experiences culminated in Dustin making the Movement to Reflective
Ownership of his decision making. He joined a fraternity, reconsidered the role of his family in
his life, and had a “breakdown” at the end of his junior year (i.e., experienced dissonance). He
engaged in these experiences in a way that helped him increase his confidence and self-reliance.
This new-found sense of confidence enabled him to reflect and take ownership in his decisions in
ways that he had not been capable of before. During his fourth-year interview, Dustin
demonstrated that he was using the criteria of sound decision making. He gathered information
by considering multiple perspectives and reflecting on his own goals, values, and beliefs. He
used these processes as he reconceptualized his relationship with his family and refined his
future career and educational plans. He processed information to reach a decision by balancing
conflicting positions and weighing competing expectations against his own values, goals, and
interests. For example, he reflected on past experiences and identified what he enjoyed in order
to create his own plans for his future. Finally, he took action grounded in the first two criteria by
making decisions consistent with his personal interests and values. By the time of his fourth
interview Dustin used his internal belief system to mediate external influences in his decision
making. He no longer prioritized others’ expectations but instead prioritized self-approval as he
made decisions.
Dustin’s use of the sound decision-making criteria and the accompanying movement to
reflective ownership of his decision making paralleled the significant change in his meaning
making during that same time period. By year four Dustin was actively working to establish his
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internal voice by listening to himself and engaging in introspection to determine his goals and
plans. Dustin was in the Leaving the Crossroads phase of his developmental journey. While
external meaning making remained, he was predominantly internally defined as he worked to
“hear his internal voice over the noise and clutter of the external environment” (Baxter Magolda
& King, in press). Cognitively, he saw the need for his own vision of his future and created his
own plans for that future. He was no longer consumed by his parents’ expectations and was
motivated by his interests and happiness. In the intrapersonal dimension Dustin had an increased
confidence in himself and sense of direction. He attributed his confidence to his membership in
his fraternity and began listening to his internal voice as he reflected on his goals and interests in
order to clarify his vision and plans for the future. In addition, Dustin no longer identified
himself through his family. He clarified his own vision of his identity as a self-reliant individual.
Interpersonally, Dustin no longer acted to acquire his parents’ approval; instead he acted on his
own interests and honored his own goals, beliefs, and values. By his fourth interview Dustin had
replaced external sources of knowledge, identity, and ways of relating with others with his
internal voice. He established his own sense of knowledge, crafted his own identity, and acted in
relationships to meet his own needs.
At the start of his fourth year Dustin realized he had changed but hoped to continue in his
progression:
I would say I have a lot of self reliance. I wouldn’t say that I’m quite to the point where I
feel like I’m completely able to stand on my own. But actually I’ve made a lot of
progress, and so hopefully, I can be able to fully rely on my own self.
Victoria’s story reflects the ability to fully rely on oneself that Dustin was hoping to achieve.
Victoria
Early on Victoria followed God as an external formula but over the course of time she
came to understand the need to make meaning for herself. By her fourth-year interview Victoria
possessed the developmental capacities associated with Solely Internal (Self-Authoring)
Meaning Making and easily used the criteria of good, well-informed decision making. Baxter
Magolda and King (in press) emphasize the reflective nature of self-authoring students in their
description of this meaning-making position:
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In the cognitive dimension, increased trust in the internal voice allowed young adults to
take ownership of how they made meaning of the world rather than looking to others to
construct their perspective. While they were aware of others’ opinions and perspectives,
they tended to be introspective and engage in reflection as a means of making sense of
external events. Intrapersonally, individuals recognized that they were in control of their
emotions and were able to create their own happiness. Acknowledging the malleability
of emotions was particularly important as young adults navigated challenging situations
and determined their responses to external events. Within the interpersonal dimension,
growing trust in the internal voice led individuals to continually reevaluate relationships,
particularly ones that were not grounded in a sense of mutuality and respect. Some
lamented the loss of relationships that did not provide space for one’s internal voice,
while others pondered how to construct new interdependent relationships.
Victoria illustrated this reflective stance and clarifies what using the decision-making criteria
sounds like from the developmental position of self-authorship.
Victoria described her decision to start a mentoring program for African-American
teenage girls, the Inner Voice League, or IV League for short, saying:
…the whole purpose and I try to tell them all the time is I don't want them to be
influenced by what society says they have to do or what society says they have to
be…and they can just learn about themselves and what they really want to be. I think the
reason why I came up with it, why I wanted it to be like that is because my friends and I,
we always talk about how did we end up being so different and, not like all the other
girls? None of my friends in my close circle, none of us are pregnant. We're all in
college. We're all doing well. We all have great goals for our lives. And so we talked
about it, "How did we end up so different from everyone else?" And so I guess we really
realized that we just spent time with ourselves and with each other talking about what we
wanted to be and building each other up, and bringing out the best qualities in each other.
So I wanted the IV League to be able to do that for the girls.
Victoria had learned to trust her inner voice and engaged in reflection as a way to make sense of
her experiences and the experiences of other young African-American women. This process
facilitated her use of the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. She gathered
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information by considering multiple perspectives and reflecting on her own goals, values, and
beliefs. She processed information by balancing conflicting positions against her own values
goals, and interests. Finally, she took action grounded in the first two criteria by pursuing her
goals in college. Her starting the IV League is perhaps an attempt at creating mutually
interdependent relationships for others.
Victoria’s value of self-reflection helped her progress in her developmental journey to
self-authorship and in taking ownership of her decision making:
I think it really helps you to figure out who you are as a person. That's why I was so
excited when my friend came up with the name, Inner Voice. I was like, "That's perfect,"
because I think a lot of times people are so influenced by everyone else, what everyone
else has to say about them and the lives in society and this all other stuff, but I mean once
you really find and start listening to yourself, I think that can have a very good influence
in your life. I don't listen to other people. Like, my mom, when I told her I was moving
to [other state] she was like, "No you're not. You can't." She was saying all this stuff.
"Mom, I'm not listening to that. I know this is what I want to do, so let me do it and help
me do everything I can to do it." And so I think once people get that, just listening to
yourself, figuring out who you are, people would be a lot happier.
Victoria’s perspective reflects the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions as noted in the selfauthoring quote above.
Victoria’s well-developed inner voice shaped the way she made meaning and made
decisions:
I always feel like we only have one life to live. I feel I have the rest of my life to do what
everyone else wants me to do, and so for now I'm just gonna do what I…I'm sick of
people wanting what they want from me. Like, my biological father, I love him to death,
but I just can't be around him too long because he's the type of person, like, he wants me
to do what he wants me to do. And I always tell him, "I am 21 years old. I do what I
want." Like, [laughs] when I told him I was moving to [state], 'cause he lived in [state]
and he was just so excited and he's telling me all these things I got to do, but I don't want
to do that. I want to do what I want to do. It's my life. And so I guess I'm just kind of at
the point where, I mean I can do what you want me to do later on, but for now I want to
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live for me while I have no children, no husband, no nothing. I have no responsibilities
but to make sure I eat every day and that's it [laughs]. I'm the only mouth I have to feed
and so I just feel like I can live my life without having to be controlled by other people.
Victoria was no longer willing to let her decisions be “controlled” by other people. Instead she
controlled her decision making and ensured that the decisions were consistent with her priorities
and the life she wanted to live. This included reorienting her relationships with her parents to
coordinate their input with her internal goals. Her cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal
developmental capacities enabled her to consistently and confidently use the criteria for sound
decision making.
Synthesis
The progression of Dustin’s and Victoria’s decision making and developmental meaning
making is representative of the experiences of the students in the Movement to Reflective
Ownership of Decision Making pattern. The students who made the move to reflective
ownership in their decision making also moved towards self-authorship along the developmental
continuum. As the students’ developmental complexity progressed they became more adept at
using the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. The students who moved to
reflectively owning their own decisions frequently recognized the change in their decisionmaking process. They either recognized a change that allowed the ownership to occur, such as
developing more confidence in themselves, or they recognized that a change had occurred, such
as commenting that they had made a plan for their futures or were able to challenge a parent’s
expectations. Furthermore, these students did not view taking ownership of their decisions as an
isolated incident – the experience changed their perspectives of decision making overall. They
recognized that taking ownership in a particular context affected how they would make future
decisions. Many of these students articulated newly developed philosophies or approaches to
decision making that grew out of making the move to reflective ownership. For example, Laura
ended her fourth interview by saying:
Well, I have to say I became more confident in myself. I know last year, everything – I
mean even academically everything was going great…my mentor job was going great.
Everything was falling into place but a part of me wasn’t happy. I wasn’t really being
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true to myself, so when I began to be true to myself and be real with myself and realized,
you know, why I’m not happy and when I changed that a lot of things started happening.
I became, like I said, more confident and…just had a sense of freedom. A sense that
everything will be okay… and, I mean, I hadn’t realized, it doesn’t really matter what
these people think about me or what they say; it’s about how I feel and the decisions that
I made.
Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making
Two participants followed the pattern of Movement to Recognizing the Need for
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making; they were moving towards reflective ownership but
did not reach it by the time of their fourth-year interviews. This pattern’s defining characteristic
is that the students recognized the need to take reflective ownership of their decisions. They did
not use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making when they started college but by the
time of their fourth interviews they had begun to use at least two of the criteria.
Bella started her college career having limited involvement in her decision making and
not using the decision-making criteria at all. She did not have well-developed reasons behind her
decisions and she relied on others to make decisions for her. For example, she chose her out-ofstate college based on virtually no knowledge of the institution and a recommendation from a
friend. As she progressed through her four years of college she became more engaged in her
decision making. By Bella’s fourth year she recognized that she had decisions to make related to
her future. She realized that she was happier with and received more support from her college
friends than her family, so it was important to her to live geographically close to those friends
after she graduated. For Bella, assessing her priorities and recognizing that she would need to
make decisions in order to fulfill those priorities was a significant change from the way she
thought about decisions during her first three years of college and demonstrates that she had
begun using the criteria for sound decision making. Specifically, she gathered information by
reflecting on her own goals, values, and beliefs and processed information to reach a decision by
weighing competing expectations (her parents’ and her own) against her own values, goals, and
interests. However, she did not use the third criterion – she had not yet taken action grounded in
the first two criteria. She saw the need to use the third criterion but had not done so yet. Bella
was increasingly able to use the criteria as she adopted more developmentally complex meaning
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making. Bella possessed the developmental capacities associated with Solely External meaning
making during her early interviews. By the time of her fourth interview she had the
developmental capacities associated with Entering the Crossroads. At that time she had enough
of an internal voice to use the first two criteria but stopped short of using the third.
Like Bella, Jacob, the other student who followed the pattern of recognizing the need for
reflective ownership of decision making, increasingly used the criteria for good, well-informed
decision making. Excerpts from Jacob’s transcripts illustrate how changes in his meaning
making facilitated his ability to use the criteria.
Jacob
Jacob started his first year of college involved in his decision making. He had practical
and pragmatic reasons behind his choice in college and area of study. He chose his school
because it was close to home and had a strong engineering program. He wanted to save money
by commuting and did not think he was ready to live by himself yet. He chose mechanical
engineering for his major because of the high-earning potential and the limited experience he had
with the field in the past:
S: I had an interest in kind of robotics…cuz back when I was young I used to be around
some people who do that kind of stuff and that kind of got me interested.
I: So you did a lot of it growing up like building things or making things or fixing?
S: Not really, I just kind of watched it, you could say but I kind of had a little, I guess,
experience…
Jacob provided additional clarity during his second interview that revealed the significant
influence his parents had in his choice of major:
Well, I didn’t really decide to pick it at first…because my parents were forcing me to
become some sort of engineer. And then, later on I started looking into some engineering
majors and I kind of had an interest with all the mechanics and robotics that mechanical
engineering had to offer. And, one thing I wanted to be able to do in mechanical
engineering is kind of get into the automotive industry, so.
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Jacob had been interested in pursuing art as his major but his parents were not supportive of that
option. After researching engineering he found that he had interests compatible with the major,
such as liking cars, but his understanding of the discipline continued to be vague:
Um, well I’m not so clear yet, about the details on it (chuckle) we’re ah getting clear
about it, but from what I hear it’s basically like, you’re gonna be building machines that
people are using for instance, in construction work…if you see all those big machines
that you use, that’s actually a machine I would have to build for them.
Jacob gave a slight indication that choosing his major because his parents wanted him to be an
engineer might have some shortcomings; but for him, it was worth it, because it pleased them:
I think now they feel proud of me. Like, they feel happy for me, but at least now, I mean
they told me to go to engineering, but they didn’t tell me specifically which one, so you
know I kind of had my choice there, a little. Yeah, I did have my choice there (chuckle).
So yeah, they feel pretty good about it. They know I’m going to be successful, hopefully.
Jacob was content to pursue engineering in order to meet his parents’ expectations. He
privileged their interests above his own; a process for making decisions that was consistent with
his Solely External meaning making. As discussed in the previous section, in the Solely External
phase of development students rely “strongly on external sources for knowledge, self-definition,
and decisions about how to relate socially” (Baxter Magolda & King, in press). Possessing the
developmental capacities associated with Solely External prevented Jacob from using the criteria
of sound decision making because he did not have an internal voice.
Jacob enjoyed the comfort of living at home, despite the two hour, each way, commute
by bus that he took each day, saying:
Okay. For instance, I still don’t know how to cook and I still get cooked food from them
(chuckle). So, I still get home cooked meals. If I were to be independent I would [have]
to cook on my own…I would [have] to do laundry (chuckle) on my own…I’m not sure if
I would be able to right now. I feel pretty satisfied at home.
Although Jacob enjoyed the security of living at home, he was growing in his independence. In
his second interview he described working to re-prioritize school over his social life, saying, “if I
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want to be lazy and slack off, then why not go somewhere else or if I really want to be here, then
I better start changing my attitude.” The changes he made included managing his time better,
studying at the library more, and attending class regularly. His independence also meant that he
had more freedom in his social life, “And like my parents will even let me stay out late
sometimes.” He offered this example:
Well, they just trust me more now. Like…one time, that [was] a school day, it was on
Thursday. I came home around 2:00 at night from (chuckle) my friend’s house. But they
didn’t really mind…They were actually sleeping (chuckle)…but I told them in the
morning what time I came home and they said why’d you come home so late? I was just
hanging around…just talking about stuff.
Another indication that Jacob was maturing was his progress in overcoming his shyness; this
made him feel more confident in his interactions with others. He was “progressing little by
little” in asking professors for help, participating in group projects, and chatting up girls.
Improving his social skills made him feel like he was “becoming a better person, you know
being more happy, being more happy around people and not just being alone all the time.”
In his third year Jacob’s experiences in his engineering classes caused him to question his
major:
I: So based on these two classes that you’ve had, is mechanical engineering still
appealing to you?
S: Not as much [laughs].
I: Why is it not as appealing anymore?
S: Well, first of all ’cause I still have to keep taking math classes. Math is not really in
my interest anymore. Chemistry, after I like took chemistry, I felt kind of interested in
more, but then mechanical engineering I kind of want to stay on just because of the
money for it, I guess you’d say.
I: Okay and can you remind me how you originally picked mechanical engineering?
S: Yeah, it was just like an interest towards me, I guess, ’cause I thought I would
probably be interested in doing robotics but that’s way too complicated [laughs], and I
guess I just kind of wanted, I had a interest in cars so maybe I just wanted to stick with
that just to deal with the cars.
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I: Okay and is there anything that would ever make you consider switching?
S: If I get really good in this chemistry course ’cause this chemistry course is actually
five or six units, I think. So it’s a really big deal, so if I do really well I might consider
switching.
I: Okay and what would that, if you did really well in that class what would it tell you?
S: I’m more interested in chemistry than with engineering.
Jacob was struggling in his classes and losing interest in his engineering major. He decided the
best way to proceed was to gather more information:
I kind of want to learn more about my major; I know a little bit of details but I want to
learn more, like exactly. I’m not sure if I even want to stay with this just to get into the
automotive industry with this. I don’t know. I might want to get into aerospace or
something like that. I don’t know. …I’ll probably talk to my counselor. Also, talk to
other people about their majors, particularly I’ve been asking people who are science
majors, like biology majors, chemistry majors all that. I’ve been asking how is it for their
classes, how is it being in that field, and most of them tell me it’s pretty good but it’s a lot
of work, but also the good thing about it is you don’t have to take that many math classes
[laughs] …’Cause in engineering I have to take up to Calculus three and then I have to
take two more math classes after that. In chemistry, I think you only have to take up to
Calculus two or Calculus one.
Jacob was contemplating a change in major and career plans and was in the process of using the
first criterion of good, well-informed decision making – gathering information. He was listening
to and authentically considering conflicting advice. Because Jacob was still making meaning
from a Solely External position he was not able to recognize multiple perspectives and he had
not yet begun reflecting on his own goals, values, and beliefs. He gathered information from
external sources but not himself. He knew that mechanical engineering was not working out but
had not begun crafting his own vision or developing an internal identity. He was stuck. Jacob’s
reliance on external influences prevented him from fully utilizing the criteria for sound decision
making.
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At the time of Jacob’s fourth interview he had considerable updates to share; he had
changed his major and transferred to a community college. During his third year in school Jacob
continued to struggle in his engineering classes and did not enjoy them like he thought he would:
…at first I thought I would be really interested in it, because I really wanted to work on
cars or something. But, then I didn’t realize how hard it would be, and then I don’t
know…I just started realizing what kind of work that they do and such. And I guess I
wasn’t prepared for that. …Like for instance, from what I learned is that if you become a
mechanical engineer the jobs are going to be pretty tough. …one aspect of it…that I
didn’t like is the drafting part. And lots of mechanical engineers have to do drafting and
…if I wanted to go the way I wanted to go, which was the automotive industry, I would
definitely have to use drafting a lot. Like designing the cars, designing the engines and
stuff like that, and I thought I would really enjoy that at first, but apparently it’s not
something for me or something that I can handle.
Learning more about the field of mechanical engineering helped Jacob realize that it was not a
good fit for him. He was hesitant and “stressed out” thinking about changing his major, but he
eventually became certain that “I didn’t see myself in that kind of future or in that kind of field.”
After talking to his counselors and some friends, and considering his interests, he decided to
switch to another major in the engineering department because if he moved outside of
engineering it would be like starting over as a first-year student; he considered that option “a
waste of time.” He decided to major in computer science since he had “a little bit” of experience
building computers and was “really interested in hardware.” Jacob was also considering
electrical engineering as a back-up option if he did not enjoy computer science but he was not
alarmed that another change in major would postpone his graduation:
To me that’s not important…I’d rather take my time to learn what I need to learn and if
I’m not sure about something then well, that’s why I’m learning, to see if I want to stick
with this or if I want to change or not. That’s why it’s better for me to take my time and
not worry about a graduation date, because I know it’s going to take me a long time.
Another significant element of Jacob’s story is that he transferred to a community college
after his third year because of tuition increases “and personal financial problems.” (Jacob
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continued as a WNS participant in his fourth year because the interview was completed via
telephone.) He intended to return to his university when he could afford to but in the meantime
he was enjoying his community college experience:
I don’t know, it’s kind of exciting in a way I guess; and even more relaxing for me
because it’s not as far…I don’t have to travel as far, and I kind of have college experience
now so I can talk to people more easily, get to know professors more easily as well. It’s
really an enjoyable experience for me; so it’s like I’m taking a break from [former
university] for a good reason; to relieve all that stress I had last semester I guess you
could say.
Part of the stress relief for Jacob was having a substantially shorter commute, more confidence
because of his prior university experience, and his interactions with the professors and students
at the community college. But part of the stress relief was related to the non-technical classes
that he was taking; he was enrolled in Spanish and English classes:
Like it’s a wonderful thing I guess you could say. It’s a great thing actually. ‘Cause like
I said, right now I’m actually enjoying my classes. I know it’s not even the technical
classes I should be taking, but I mean still, I never enjoyed classes this much…before I
left [former university].
Jacob’s newly found internal voice may have sparked his exploration of courses outside of the
technical classes he “should” be taking because he is more interested in learning rather than
following a formula towards a specific degree.
Jacob’s change of major to computer science demonstrates how, in year four, he was
better able to use the criteria of sound decision making than he had been in previous years. In
year one Jacob did not use the criteria at all and chose his major based on his parents’
expectations. In his third year he partially used the first criterion, gathering information, to
explore his options. In his fourth year Jacob’s use of the criteria continued to progress. This
progression was prompted by the dissonance he was experiencing in his mechanical engineering
classes and realization that he could not see himself working in that field. This progression was
consistent with his increased meaning-making capabilities as he was Leaving the Crossroads
developmentally. In addition to considering the perspectives of external sources when he
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gathered information, Jacob’s internal voice allowed him to reflect on his own goals, values, and
beliefs (a developmental capacity that he did not possess the previous year). He assessed his
skills and interests based on his classroom experiences and spoke with counselors and peers to
learn about career options inside and outside of engineering. He used the second criterion,
processing information to reach a decision, by weighing competing expectations against his own
values, goals, and interests and balanced conflicting positions (e.g., those of his parents, advisors,
and his own). Finally, he had taken preliminary steps of using the final criterion, taking action
grounded in the first two criteria. He was in the process of honoring his own goals, beliefs, and
values by using his internal belief system to mediate external influence in his decision making.
Jacob was just beginning to use the third criterion. He did not use it to the same degree
as the fourth-year students of the previous patterns – Reflective Ownership and Movement to
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making. He did not demonstrate the confidence of those other
students and he had not yet recognized a change in his overall decision-making process. The
students who used the patterns previously examined in this chapter either recognized a change
that allowed them to take ownership of their decisions, such as developing more confidence in
themselves, or they recognized that a change had occurred, such as commenting that they had
made a plan for their futures or were able to challenge a parent’s expectations. Jacob stopped
short of these insights – he recognized the need for ownership of his decision making in this
situation and was just starting to take action. He seemed to be on the cusp of joining the
Movement to Reflective Ownership pattern.
Synthesis
Bella’s and Jacob’s decision making changed significantly over the course of their four
interviews. They both progressed in their use of the decision-making criteria and recognized the
need to take ownership of their decisions. Yet, these two students did not develop the confidence
in using the criteria of sound decision making reflective of the previous two decision-making
patterns. One possible reason why they stopped short may have been because they did not
recognize the need for ownership of their decision making until their fourth-year interviews.
Prior to their final interviews the students were content to be less engaged in their decision
making. This may explain their slower progress towards taking ownership of decisions and
using the criteria of sound decision making.
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Non-Reflective Ownership of Decision Making
Five students entered college making decisions based on minimal reflection and
maintained that decision-making pattern throughout their college careers. These students were
focused on long-term goals, such as their careers, and they made decisions that they perceived as
moving them closer to those goals. They made practical decisions based on their interests and
priorities, and they did not name others as having a strong influence in their decision making.
Yet, as the students described their decisions, they sounded more like math problems or exercises
in logic rather than true decisions; “If I want X, I need to do Y” or “Because of A, I chose B.”
They did not engage in substantive self-reflection or seriously consider alternative options; that
is, they did not use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making either at the beginning
or by the end of their college careers.
These students’ consistency in decision making is indicative of the limited development
in meaning making evident in the Non-Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern. Three of
the five students demonstrated meaning making reflective of Solely External during all four
interviews. Because these students possessed the developmental capacities associated with
Solely External they were not able to use the criteria of sound decision making. They did not
have the internal voice necessary to use the criteria.
The two remaining students using this decision-making pattern moved from Solely
External meaning making to Entering the Crossroads by their fourth year (one student was in
Entering the Crossroads in years three and four and the other student was in Entering the
Crossroads in year four). While some participants in this study used the criteria for sound
decision making at this developmental position, these students did not. Despite the beginnings of
an internal voice, these participants may not have used the criteria because they had no reason to
do so. Unlike the other participants, these students had not experienced significant dissonance
by the time of their fourth interviews. Thus, they were not prompted to use their inner voices or
the criteria for sound decision making. In fact, the students using this decision-making pattern
appeared to be frequently successful in their decision making, in that they did well in school and
made consistent progress towards their long-term career goals. Their decision-making style
seemed to work for them in their particular situations. However, some students who used this
method of decision making seemed to be setting themselves up for future problems and
difficulties because they had not worked through the particulars of their decisions reflectively.
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Excerpts from Vanessa’s and Maegan’s transcripts illustrate the Non-Reflective Ownership
decision-making pattern and how their developmental meaning making inhibited their abilities to
use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making.
Vanessa
Vanessa approached decision making in a direct and straightforward fashion. She sized
up situations to determine the most practical option based on her objectives, and made her
decisions accordingly. She did this with no indecision, contemplation, or wavering. Consider
the following excerpt from her first interview:
I: How did you decide to come to [student’s college]?
S: They offered me the most money.
I: Uh huh.
S: That’s it.
I: Yeah, were there other options that you considered?
S: Yes.
I: What were some of the factors that you thought about when you were selecting schools
to apply to?
S: If they had my major and how much they was willing to give me, and that was it.
I: What’s your major?
S: Law.
I: Okay. So do you know what you want to do with it?
S: I want to be a lawyer.
It is tempting to dismiss this exchange as an anomaly since it is from her first interview and it is
possible that Vanessa was shy or wary of communicating more freely. However, Vanessa’s
decision-making discussions did not change throughout the four interviews, even with an
interviewer who she worked with twice (in years three and four) and who built a strong rapport
with Vanessa. Vanessa’s reasons for choosing her school and major seemed reasonable to her,
but were not based on any real self-reflection. In year two Vanessa explained how she chose her
major and her future career plans:
S: Uhm I want like political science.
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I: And is that still your major?
S: It is.
I: So what makes you want to major in political science?
S: Because I want to be a lawyer.
I: Tell me more about that.
S: (laughs) I want to be a family lawyer that deal[s] with divorces and child support and
custody, things like that.
I: And what motivates you to focus on those areas?
S: Cause that’s probably like – I can’t deal with dead bodies. So that’s the easiest part of
a lawyer, probably.
Vanessa’s explanations were straightforward and appear no more thoughtful or developed than
they were in her first interview. Her year three discussion of her career plans continued in the
same vein:
I: And so what steps are you taking to get yourself to a law school?
S: I’m trying to get all these grades down and I’m taking a practice LSAT in October, so.
I: And so do you think you’ll like law?
S: The law I want to study, I think I will but all these other classes I have to take, no.
I: What law?
S: Family law, dealing like [with] divorces and child support…
I: What made you decide to do that?
S: Because I don’t like dead bodies. I don’t want to be a criminal lawyer and then I was
like, “Well, I don’t even like kids so that might be easy.”
I: Mm-hm. That’ll be easy?
S: Yeah and I don’t even like kids, so.
I: Well, if you don’t like drama, family law is a lot of drama.
S: Yeah, sure. But I mean I think I can deal with it [better] than anything else.
As a third year student Vanessa’s rationale for entering family law had not evolved since
she first started college. Her reasons for choosing family law were not well thought out and
potentially flawed. Yet, Vanessa did not recognize any potential shortcomings in her decision
making. Vanessa’s lack of critical reflection continued in her fourth year as she explained her
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plan for negotiating her shyness and dislike of talking in front of people with the demands of
being a lawyer:
I: So, when you want to become a lawyer or attorney… So, tell me about that, how have
you figured out what you want to do with that?
S: Because I want to be a family attorney, a family lawyer. And they really don’t talk in
front of a lot of people in a courtroom. It’s just gonna be me, my client and the defender
and the client, the judge, that’s about it. And I’m probably not gonna see those people
again in my life after I get my check. So, that’s the way I look at it. I just have to talk for
a[n] hour in front of people I never see again.
I: So, what made you select family law?
S: ’Cause I want to deal with divorces and child support and custody of the kids and stuff
like that. I don’t want to do criminal law, ’cause I don’t like dead bodies and stuff like
that.
I: So, how did you decide that it was family law and divorce? I mean, some people
would hate that. Why do you think you are interested in that?
S: I don’t know, ’cause I just – I don’t know, I guess, divorce… I don’t know why I
picked that one. I guess that was the one that just popped in my head, ’cause I don’t want
to do criminal, again, I don’t want to do business. So, I was like, oh, family law. And it
just popped in my head.
Vanessa’s vision of her future career suggested that she had not developed a more sophisticated
reasoning for becoming a lawyer than she had in her initial interviews. Despite having been
questioned about her thought-processes in the past, she had not been prompted to refine her
understanding of her desired career in law. Instead, she held fast to her perception of what
would be required of her and how she would negotiate that with her shyness and dislike of public
speaking. Vanessa’s motives made sense to her considering her career goals. However, that
logic does not withstand even the slightest scrutiny from an outside perspective. In four years
Vanessa had not developed a more complex understanding of her chosen profession and her
place in it because she did not use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. Her
inability to gather information, process information, and take action accordingly was consistent
with her Solely External meaning-making capacities. She did not have the internal voice
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necessary to employ the criteria. It seems inevitable that the shortcomings of Vanessa’s
approach to decision making will come into play soon. However, for the time-being, Vanessa’s
focus on her goal had served her well to an extent – she was graduating with strong grades and
preparing for her LSATs. In her four years of college she had not experienced enough
dissonance to prompt her to change how she was making meaning.
Maegan
Maegan also used the decision-making pattern of Non-Reflective Ownership, but her
decision making had a different tone than Vanessa’s. Maegan’s decisions were grounded in her
experiences, yet, like Vanessa, Maegan’s decision making lacked any true self-reflection. She
had goals and through her decisions she seemed to consistently and successfully work towards
her goals but did so without critical analysis. For Maegan, feasibility and immediate practicality
were the determining factors in her decision making. In her first interview Maegan described
how she chose to attend her institution:
I: How did you decide to come to [student’s college]?
S: I really didn’t (laughs)…they called me one day and they said “Hey, if you apply here,
we’ll waive the fee, if you apply over the phone” and I said “Oh, okay.” So I applied, I
was accepted, and I didn’t bother applying anywhere else, cuz I didn’t have a whole lot of
money to spend on application fees. So I got accepted here, got a whole bunch of
scholarship, and it ended up being a better place, and I like it here, so I’m glad that I
came here.
I: You applied over the phone? How do you do that?
S: They ask you your name, and your social security number, and all that stuff, and then
basically they send this little envelope to your house and there’s a checklist of things you
need to send them, like your transcript, and all that stuff, and then you just take that to
your guidance counselor and they send them whatever they need. That was pretty easy
(laughs).
I: Oh, okay. Did you think about applying to other colleges?
S: Um, I don’t know. Not really.
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Maegan fell into the opportunity to apply to her college and based on her priorities – scholarship
money, location, and quality of school – she decided to attend. This is an example of a decision
that involved minimal reflection.
Her decision to major in early childhood education was based on her experience working
at a preschool for two years:
S: I want to do early childhood education, I want to teach kindergarten preferably, and
elementary education, double major, so that I can have a wider range of teaching, and
eventually I want to have my doctorate degree, eventually.
I: Wow. Why that?
S: More money. Cuz teachers don’t get paid anything, but if you have a higher degree,
you do get more money, so.
I: Oh. Do you know how much?
S: I think, last time I looked, the starting salary for a teacher, what I’m going into, was
like $20,000 a year.
I: Oh, you looked it up?
S: Yeah, at one point. That was maybe a year ago. So it might have changed since then,
it’s not a lot. It’s definitely not a lot, but having a higher degree, I do know that you get
more money. I don’t know how much more, but more (laughs) than less.
I: What about being a teacher attracts you?
S: I like little kids. I worked in a preschool for two years and I fell in love with them.
Originally I wanted to be a psychologist, and then I started working in the preschool and I
started writing lesson plans and I started working with the children and actually seeing
them learn stuff it was just so much fun and- little kids are so fun, cuz they don’t judge
you, they don’t care. You act so goofy or whatever, and they love it. That’s why I like
little kids, cuz they don’t judge.
Maegan had a sound understanding of what it is like to be a teacher. However, her discussion of
why she would like to earn her doctorate degree lacked clarity on the kind of advanced education
that is typical in these settings. Teachers with Master’s degrees earn higher salaries but
individuals with doctorate degrees are rarely in these roles. This is another example of Maegan
making a decision with no self-reflection to back it up.
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Maegan’s non-reflective decision making may come from her long history of being
functionally independent and making decisions on her own:
S: I really want to teach kindergarten. I’m set on it. And everyone’s like, “ya know,
you’re spending more money at college than you will be makin’” and I was like “yeah,
but you gotta like it.”
I: It sounds like earning a good salary is something that’s really important to you.
S: Um, I guess. I mean, it is, but it isn’t. I’m not worried about it, I mean, obviously
being a teacher I’m not going to make too much money, and I won’t have my doctorate
degree for a while, but, I don’t know- I personally, like even in the job that I have now,
I’d rather like my job and get paid less than get paid more and hate my job every day.
I: Is that something that you had to think about?
S: Um, no, not really. No, I mean, it was my decision, there was definitely people along
the way that tried to deter me from that decision, they’re like “no, they don’t make a lot
of money, do something else.”
I: Who were those people?
S: Mainly my parents. And I know that sounds really mean, but once they saw that I was
actually serious about it they were like “oh, okay, so great, go be a teacher.” I don’t
know, (long pause), they’re always like “why don’t you pick something different cuz you
know, teachers don’t make a lot of money and they’ve got to do this and put up with that”
and I’m like, it goes back to that thing “you don’t understand, you just don’t.” And then
once I got here, and I started actually doing all my stuff- I got here all on my own, I got
my own student loans, I got my own scholarships, I got everything on my own, and they
realized that I was actually gonna do it, so they’re like “oh, okay, we’ll support you
then.”
I: Oh yeah. They didn’t offer you any advice on these things?
S: On getting loans and stuff? Not really, I’m very independent person…as far as
mentally doing things on my own, I’ve always done my own stuff. I did- the only time I
ever asked my mom for help with anything was I need tax information for FASFA and
stuff like that. As far as scholarships, I picked up applications, I filled them all out, I
turned them in. I bought my stamps to send ‘em, I made sure I had everything together, I
kept all my files in a little file folder and I made sure I sent the college what they needed,
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and made sure I filled out all my PSN things, and all that stuff you’ve got to fill out for
student loans, and made sure I got everything and when the bill came in, cuz it wasn’t
really bills, my balance was pretty much zero after that, and I was like “yep, I’m in
college now” and everyone’s still running around trying to find money, and their parents
are like “how are you going to afford this?” and my parents were like “well, she did it on
her own, so yay her.”
For Maegan, financially responsible decision making was a necessity. Her parents encouraged
her to make significant decisions on her own and financial considerations loomed large as she
made decisions related to college and her career.
Maegan continued to think about her future in terms of practicalities in her third
interview when she discussed why earning a doctorate degree interested her:
S: As far as college, I just want to teach college 'cause that's where all the money is.
I: Is there anything else about teaching in college besides money that interests you?
S: Well, the fact that you can say, "I have a doctorate in whatever, and I teach at so-andso college." I mean, you get a lot of respect from people for that. So, especially, I'm the
only person in my family – well, I'm the first person in my family that's been to college,
so for me to make it to that step's not only just, "Oh, I went to college," but then I'm
eventually teaching college too, so it's one step up.
Finances and prestige were Maegan’s prime motivating factors for considering an advanced
degree. These are legitimate considerations that prompt many people to further their educations.
However, these were the only considerations that Maegan discussed. Maegan gave no indication
that she had thought more deeply about becoming a faculty member than these obvious, external
benefits. Her priorities continued to be of a strictly material nature. She did not discuss why
teaching at the college level was an important or valuable profession or what interested her in
learning more about her field of education and what she hoped to gain intellectually or
personally. In her fourth interview Maegan continued to discuss the option of teaching at the
college level as a practicality:
I just am keeping it as a valid backup option because whether I want to admit it or not, I
mean, teachers do get burnt out doing the same thing over and over again. And teaching
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college is just another form of teaching; you’re still teaching what you know, you’re just
teaching it in a different context.
The desire for a “backup option” does not demonstrate self-reflection or thoughtfulness.
A final example of Maegan’s non-reflective decision making was her decision to
complete her field experience in Finland:
S: Our school actually has – you complete three field experiences all together, and
student teaching is your third one. The first I did – the first one you’re in the school for
three hours a week, and then the second one you’re in a school setting – it depends on
how you do it. If you do it in like a normal semester, you do six hours a week, but I
opted out and chose to do a study abroad for my field experience. So I actually got to
teach in an international school in Helsinki, Finland, and so you were actually in the
school the whole day…it was the same amount overall, but it was a shorter period. So
instead of being in there six hours a week for the entire semester, we were there every
day for two weeks, or something like that. It was pretty fun though.
I: Okay. So how did you choose to go to Helsinki?
S: Well, they had an interest meeting for it first. And my first initial thought was,
“There’s no way I can afford to go to that.” But I went anyway because my friend was
like, “You really should go and see about it.” And I was like, “Okay.” Well I went and
ended up finding out that you were allowed to use financial aid for it because it counted
as a class. See, I didn’t know that it counted as a class at the time. And so I was like,
“Okay, that’s cool.” I went and talked to my financial aid counselor and went through a
whole run around with that, finally ended up getting just enough money to go, just for the
trip itself. And then for spending money I just saved up what I could. But that was how I
ended up going, actually.
Maegan took advantage of the opportunity for an international student teaching experience.
Once again, the only consideration she discussed was a financial one. She did not discuss why
she was interested in going abroad except that her friend encouraged it. Once she knew she
could afford it, she made the decision with no genuine self-reflection.
Like Vanessa, Maegan’s decision making had served her well to some extent. She passed
the PRAXIS teaching certification exams with strong scores and earned 34 out of 36 on her
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teaching portfolio, the final requirement for her education degree. This decision-making pattern
moved her towards her career goals, but she had no internal or substantive motivations for those
goals. Also like Vanessa, Maegan’s meaning making remained Solely External during her four
years of college and she did not use the criteria for sound decision making.
Synthesis
One reason why the students in this decision-making pattern never adopted the criteria
for good, well-informed decision making was because they perceived that what they were doing
was working for them. They did well academically and made progress towards their long-term
career goals. Without dissonance, they had no real reason to change how they made decisions or
made meaning. The students in the other three decision-making patterns – Reflective Ownership
of Decision Making, Movement to Reflective Ownership of Decision Making, and Movement to
Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership of Decision Making – all had events that
prompted them to reevaluate their decision making and, consequently, recognize shortcomings in
their decision making and ways of making meaning. This recognition of shortcomings resulted
in the students changing how they made decisions, either before or during college, and using the
decision making criteria. It is possible that Vanessa and Maegan, as well as the other three nonreflective decision makers, may never be prompted to change their decision-making processes.
However, if these students encounter challenges and dissonance, their decision-making
approaches may be less effective in those contexts and they may then adopt the criteria. It is
likely that their lack of self-reflection in decision making will become problematic in the future.
Developmental Capacity Mediates Good Decision Making
The findings of this study suggest that high-risk students’ developmental capacities
mediate their abilities to make good, well-informed decisions. Specifically, as students’
developmental meaning making became more complex their ability to use the criteria for good,
well-informed decision making increased. While there was some variation in each decisionmaking pattern, the majority of the students became more confident in their use of the criteria
when they possessed the developmental capacities consistent with Leaving the Crossroads.
The students using the Reflective Ownership of Decision Making pattern had developed
the beginnings of an internal voice by the time they started college or had experienced enough
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dissonance to act from internal feelings that they did not share under normal conditions. As the
students became more developmentally complex their internal voices grew and they became
increasingly confident in their use of the criteria for sound decision making. Five of the six
participants in this decision-making pattern finished the study with their internal voices in the
forefront as they were developmentally Leaving the Crossroads. Jessica, who remained in
Entering the Crossroads, was able to use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making but
was not able to do so with the same degree of dexterity and confidence as the other students in
this pattern. Similarly, eight of the nine students using the Movement to Reflective Ownership
of Decision Making pattern finished the study with their internal voices in the foreground; seven
of the students were developmentally Leaving the Crossroads and Victoria was using Solely
Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning Making. Dolores was the only student in this pattern to end
the study in Entering the Crossroads. Like Jessica, she was able to use the criteria for sound
decision making but not with the same level of confidence as the other Movement to Reflective
Ownership students. The Movement to Recognizing the Need for Reflective Ownership in
Decision Making pattern was consistent with the previous patterns; as students progressed
developmentally they progressed in their abilities to use the decision-making criteria. Bella was
in the process of using the first two criteria (i.e., gathering information and processing
information), which was consistent with her Entering the Crossroads meaning making. Jacob,
who was Leaving the Crossroads, had begun the process of tentatively using the third criterion
(i.e., taking action that is grounded in the first two criteria). He was not as confident in the use of
the criteria as the other students who were Leaving the Crossroads, but he had begun the process.
He likely was less confident than the other students because he did not recognize the need to take
ownership of his decision making until his fourth year of college.
The first three decision-making patterns are consistent – they indicate there is a link
between development and decision making. Specifically, as developmental complexity
increased, students’ use of the criteria became more consistent and confident. The bulk of the
students were Leaving the Crossroads by the time of the fourth interview, thus their internal
voices were in the foreground of their meaning making. The fourth decision-making pattern,
Non-Reflective Ownership of Decision Making, diverges from the other patterns. The students
using this pattern never used the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. Three of the
students remained Solely External during their college careers – their development did not
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become more complex, and accordingly, their use of the decision-making criteria did not
increase. However, two of the students in this pattern diverged from the other students. Bob and
Cameron were Entering the Crossroads by the time of the fourth interview, thus they were
beginning to develop the start of an internal voice. Yet, they continued to not use the decisionmaking criteria. All of the other students in this study were able to at least partially use the
criteria for sound decision making when they possessed the developmental capacities associated
with Entering the Crossroads. Sometimes the use of the criteria was tentative from this
developmental position and sometimes students could only use two of the three criteria, but they
had begun using the criteria. Bob and Cameron possessed the beginnings of an internal voice but
still did not use the criteria for sound decision making. Thus, the developmental capacities
associated with an internal voice are a necessary but insufficient condition for good, wellinformed decision making.
One reason Bob and Cameron did not use the criteria despite their developmental
meaning-making capacities may have been their inability to think abstractly. Throughout their
four years of interviews these students discussed their experiences and decision making in
concrete and literal terms. They did not provide details related to their thought processes; they
only discussed the practical considerations (e.g., financial, time, career) of their decision making.
This is consistent with the other Non-Reflective Ownership decision makers but is surprising
given the presence of an internal voice. Although Bob and Cameron were beginning to develop
internal voices they were not yet prominent in their decision making.
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CHAPTER V: DISSONANCE, SUPPORT & SELF-REFLECTION IN DECISION MAKING
This study provides a comprehensive understanding of four decision-making patterns
used by high-risk students in the study and the relationship between participants’ meaningmaking capacities and their use of the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. As
developmental complexity increased, students’ use of the criteria for good, well-informed
decision making became more consistent and confident. In this chapter I discuss my
interpretation of these findings. First, I situate the results of this dissertation study in the broader
context of the literature related to high-risk students’ development and decision making. Next, I
examine the decision-making patterns to identify the situational and student characteristics that
prompted students to develop an internal voice and use the criteria for sound decision making. I
also consider the salient factors that limited the developmental growth and use of decisionmaking criteria for the Non-Reflective Ownership decision makers. Finally, I offer
recommendations for future research and practice.
Nuances in High-Risk Students’ Developmental Capacities
The findings of this study extend the previous research related to high-risk students and
self-authorship theory. While the majority of Baxter Magolda’s (2009a) traditional-aged
participants were not developmentally Leaving the Crossroads until after college, the majority of
the high-risk participants in this study, 13 of the 22 students, were Leaving the Crossroads by the
time of their fourth-year interviews and one student was using Solely Internal (Self-Authoring)
Meaning Making. This finding is consistent with more recent research (Baxter Magolda’s
participants were in college 20 years ago) indicating that marginalized students may develop
self-authorship at an earlier age than more privileged students because they must negotiate more
dissonance than do their peers (Abes & Jones 2004; Torres & Hernandez, 2007). Students in this
study experienced extensive dissonance related to their thinking, identities, and relationships
with others, and, as reported, they varied in their abilities to negotiate this dissonance. The
closer students were to having an established internal voice, the better they were able to work
through dissonance. Based on my experience working with high-risk students I do not find this
outcome surprising. When I compare the high-risk students I work with to their peers I find that
many of the high-risk students begin establishing their internal voices earlier in their college
careers than their peers do. However, this is not always the case. As I discuss in more detail
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later in this chapter, dissonance is not the only element necessary for development; high-risk
students also need support.
This dissertation study also refines previous literature that explored the development of
high-risk students. Pizzolato (2003, 2004) indicated that the high-risk students in her studies
entered college with at least the beginnings of self-authorship. In contrast, only three of the 22
participants in this study had the beginnings of an internal voice when they began college. That
is, 19 of the 22 participants entered college with Solely External meaning-making capacities, and
the remaining 3 students had just the beginnings of an internal voice as they were Entering the
Crossroads. This longitudinal study indicates that a few students entered college with fragile
internal voices but they were not self-authored. One possible explanation for the discrepancy
between my findings and Pizzolato’s is that Pizzolato (2003, 2004) may have been observing
something other than self-authorship in her participants. One possibility is that she may have
been seeing the Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern that appears to be self-authored.
Students using this pattern in my study were able to make reflective decisions when they faced
particularly difficult and emotional challenges despite not yet having an established internal
voice. Because these students were emotionally overwhelmed they were able to act in ways that
appeared self-authored. However, in reality they were reacting against an external experience
that made them uncomfortable rather than acting based on internal motivation. In such cases the
students were reacting to negative external influences rather acting in the internally-driven,
proactive manner representative of self-authorship. The students in my study could be perceived
as self-authored in year one but the benefit of longitudinal data is that it clarifies that these
students were not using internal criteria but were reacting against external circumstances.
Perhaps Pizzolato’s (2003, 2004) participants exhibited this same capability.
Another distinctive finding of my study is that the students began developing their
internal voices quickly. Fourteen students were at least Entering the Crossroads by their yearthree interviews and 14 students were Leaving the Crossroads or Solely Internal by their fourth
interviews. While this supports the notion that high-risk students develop their internal voices
earlier and differently than their peers, this is not true for all high-risk students. The high-risk
students in this study possessed a range of developmental meaning-making capacities over the
span of the four annual interviews. Three students ended the study at Solely External meaning
making and five students were Entering the Crossroads in their fourth-year interviews. Thus,
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just as it is not possible to predict students’ decision-making patterns based on their meaningmaking capabilities alone, it is not possible to predict the developmental capacities of individual
students based solely on their high-risk characteristics. Instead, what contributes to selfauthorship is a combination of dissonance, support, and personal characteristics.
Role of Dissonance, Support, and Self-Reflection in Good Decision Making
In the synthesis of chapter four I highlighted the relationship between students’
developmental meaning making and their use of the criteria for good, well-informed decision
making by decision-making pattern. In this section I examine the similarities among the stories
of students using the different decision-making patterns and identify factors that promoted or
hindered students’ developmental growth. The stories of students using the Reflective
Ownership and Movement to Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns shared important
similarities that promoted their development and use of the criteria for sound decision making.
Those similarities include dissonance, support received through significant involvement in
campus organizations, and the capacity to self-reflect. Given the complexity of these three
dynamics, in the next section I once again use student narratives to describe how these elements
influence students’ decision-making processes and developmental capabilities.
Dissonance
Students using the Reflective Ownership of Decision Making pattern entered college
using the criteria for good, well-informed decision making and experienced some type of
dissonance prior to attending college. The dissonance was either spurred by a difficult decision
the students faced or difficult experiences related to their social identities. For example, Irene
struggled with not meeting the expectations of others with her choice of college. Her desire for a
more diverse campus community conflicted with her parents’ desire for a more prestigious
school. Roger challenged the beliefs of his Mexican-American family when he severed ties with
the Catholic church. Roger risked jeopardizing his relationship with his mom because the church
discriminated against his gay identity. Diana chose to “closet” herself during high school
because she feared the “torment” experienced by her out peers. Josh learned the importance of
“having a strong sense of self” as he transitioned into an affluent high school:
I went to private school…I was the only black male in my grade, so, that was interesting,
there was a lot of finding myself in high school. I had to figure out what was important
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to me, to remind me of who I was…but also, learning new parts of me and being able to
socialize with the upper class friends I was making, or to their mansions… The first time
was kind of intimidating, I was like, “Wow, my house would fit in their living room.”
One or two had a maid, that was just freaky (laughs), someone to pick up after them. I
was ready to do my own dishes, they’re like, “No, just leave them in the sink.” Uh,
riding in limos, going to country clubs, that was really different experience… it was a
private school in an upper class environment, it’s like the middle of suburbia, and I’m
from [students hometown] so, I’m used to an urban city life. And, it was very different
experience for me, middle class, going to an upper class school.
Josh experienced dissonance because his social identities were incongruent with the context of
his high school. In order to make sense of his situation he reflected on who he was and what his
new environment meant to him. This level of introspection at a relatively young age likely
contributed to Josh’s ability to use the decision-making criteria when he arrived at college and
his progression to Entering the Crossroads in his meaning making by the time of his year-two
interview.
Students using the Movement to Reflective Ownership pattern also experienced
dissonance, but for these students the dissonance came during college rather than prior to
college. Chase and Dolores experienced dissonance when they were unable to find answers they
expected in their self-help books and Benjamin faced a crisis after a difficult break-up with a
long-time girlfriend. Similarly, Laura, Yolanda, Isabella, and Dustin experienced challenges
related to choosing, maintaining, or changing their majors. Yolanda’s story illustrates the high
level of dissonance these students experienced around their majors. During her year-four
interview Yolanda described the difficult decision to change her major from pre-nursing to Child
and Adolescent Development (CHAD) because she was not doing well in her classes and
realized she would likely not be admitted into the nursing program. Yolanda was exceptionally
nervous as she summoned the courage and confidence to tell her parents about her change in
major:
Well it was a very nerve racking situation because…I’ve never gone against what my
parents have wanted. All my life I’ve listened to them…I’ve always gone with what they
wanted and so I knew having to tell them that I wanted to change majors was gonna be
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really hard. …I was so nervous... And it was driving me nuts… never in my 22 years of
life have I ever gone against what they wanted. …not that I didn’t know how to put in my
own opinion but I just never had to because whatever they thought, I always thought it
was good enough.
Yolanda described the tension she experienced with her mom after she announced that she had
changed her major:
It was really difficult at first…cause whenever…I went home…if we didn’t talk about
school it would be fine but the minute school got brought up it just wasn’t pretty…My
dad was the middle man for us, will you tell her that she needs to do this, this, and that. It
was like that for a couple months that we just couldn’t talk about school…now we can
talk about school and she won’t get mad the way that she used to but I can still tell that
she doesn’t like that I changed majors but I think, at the same time I think deep down
inside…she’s happy because now I’m really doing something that I wanna do and I’ll be
able to graduate really soon.
In the end, despite the initial tension between Yolanda and her mom, Yolanda felt like the
experience was a good thing for her and her family:
I know it made things tough for a little bit but now when I look back at it I think it was
good for it to happen cause now…I can…go against what they’re gonna think if I want
something differently. …I had never done it before so I didn’t know how they were
gonna react…but it turned out to be good. …I’m not a little girl anymore, I’m gonna
make my own choices even if they’re not gonna match up with hers. I guess it taught me
how to grow up and it taught them to let go. …it also taught me you don’t always have to
go with what your parents want. You have to learn how to do things for yourself and
what you wanna do.
Yolanda assessed her situation, reflected on her goals and interests, and prioritized her
perspective over her parents’ expectations. This process demonstrated Yolanda’s use of the
decision-making criteria and prompted the development of her internal voice. In her previous
interviews Yolanda had no internal voice; she was making meaning from a Solely External
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position. Her year-four meaning making of Leaving the Crossroads was likely facilitated by her
decision to change her major and the resulting conflict with her mom.
For the Reflective Ownership and Movement to Reflective Ownership decision makers
the process of working through their challenges and struggles contributed to the students’
developmental growth and decision-making abilities. These students’ stories illustrate how
dissonance can promote development. Furthermore, the experiences of the Reflective
Ownership students support the literature that suggests marginalization can be a powerful factor
in facilitating students’ development (Abes & Jones, 2004; Pizzolato, 2003, 2004; Torres, 2009;
Torres & Hernandez, 2007).
Support
The second characteristic shared by the students using the Reflective Ownership and
Movement to Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns was the students’ significant
involvement in campus organizations. Student development theory asserts that students need a
combination of challenge and support in order to manage dissonance and evolve in their
developmental meaning making (Sanford, 1962). While the challenges faced by Reflective
Ownership students were abundantly clear in their interviews, their sources of support prior to
college were less apparent. Some of the students in this decision-making pattern discussed the
support they received prior to college from important people in their lives as they worked
through their dissonance; this included, parents, teachers, extended family members, and trusted
friends. Although some students using this pattern did not identify supportive others prior to
college, all but one student established significant networks of support during college through
their involvement in campus organizations. Similarly, five of the six students using the
Movement to Reflective Ownership pattern also developed support networks through their
campus involvement. Supportive others helped students evaluate situations, reflect on their
perspectives, identify their goals, values, and beliefs, grow in confidence, and act in ways that
honored themselves and their beliefs. Thus, these supportive relationships fostered students’
cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development and their abilities to make good, wellinformed decisions.
Jessica, Diana, and Roger discussed the support they received from their schools’ LGBT
organizations, including Q-Tip (Queers Thoughtfully Interrupting Prejudice) and Spectrum as
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they transitioned into their university communities and explored their sexual identities. Greek
organizations also provided students with a substantial amount of support; Irene, Jessica, and
Yolanda received support from their sorority sisters while Daryl and Dustin relied on their
fraternity brothers for support. Most often these students attributed their growing sense of
confidence and self-reliance to their Greek affiliations. Their brothers and sisters encouraged
their internal voices by prompting them to prioritize their interests and expectations over those of
others. In addition, the students described the unconditional acceptance that they felt from their
peers as significant sources of support that enabled them to speak their minds more freely
because they felt accepted for who they were and no longer feared rejection. The students also
participated in volunteer opportunities that supported other students or members of local
communities. Benjamin served as a tutor for high school migrant students. Laura became a
mentor for under-class women at her school and Chase served as an RA (resident advisor).
Diana facilitated campus tours and presentations for her school’s recruitment of traditionally
underrepresented students (e.g., low-income and students of color). These activities provided
students opportunities to build their self-confidence and make sense of different aspects of their
identities as they helped others. For example, Benjamin explored what it meant for him to earn a
college degree as a Mexican-American given the discrepancies in educational opportunities that
he saw in his community (and the larger society) between Hispanic and White students.
Beyond connecting with campus organizations many of the students in the Reflective
Ownership and Movement to Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns engaged in
significant leadership responsibilities on campus. For example, Daryl coordinated special events
for his institution’s Malcolm X Center, participated in undergraduate research opportunities, and
started a hip-hop dance organization on campus. Likewise, Diana held leadership positions in
her residence hall, student government, and Q-Tip while Roger ran track and founded his
school’s mock trial team and art club. The students developed meaningful friendships with their
peers as they worked around common interests. These trusted others provided support and
counsel for the students in this study as they made difficult decisions and faced challenges during
their college careers.
The students’ involvement also gave them opportunities to build relationships with and
receive support from individual members of their university communities. For example, Laura
trusted the advice of an advisor she met through an organization related to her major and Diana
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valued the counsel of a cadre of student affairs professionals. The most striking example of the
university community rallying around in support of a student was when Daryl returned to school
at the start of his fourth year after the death of his five-year-old cousin:
…everything happened so fast…school was here before you knew it. And I was not in
no sense, shape or fashion to go through school… my auntie had pushed me…I guess she
was talking to my mom and they had convinced themselves that I would be fine when
school started. But school was such a struggle for me, and…sometimes I didn't even
wanna be here. …my aunt stays 30 minutes away, and some days I wouldn’t need to go
to class. I would just go over [to] her house for a few days. And I just couldn’t really
deal with it. …but last semester was really, really, really rough. It wasn't really until
December when I really tried to get my mind into…focusing on the school. But those,
those few months, it was really, really bad. I tried to talk to my school psychiatrist, but
he wasn't really helping me at all because everybody was so worried about me, they were
like, "You need to go talk to somebody." And they kinda pushed me to go talk to him.
And when I did go talk to him, I felt like he wasn't doing anything for me, so after two
sessions I just pretty much called it quits on him. …so me and the dean of students ended
up talking a lot, and I would go by his office probably three times a week and just talk,
and things like that. And his secretary talked to me all the time, and I had a few
professors that I can talk to. My old boss that used to work here, she doesn't work here
anymore, she even called me and we talked and things like that. So I really got to figure
out who really cares for me. And then people in my [fraternity] house had the respect for
me and they were here for me, so I really appreciated that. At one point, on Labor Day
we all went to my aunt's house for a barbecue and I thought that was nice of them to go
with me and do that kind of thing. But yeah, it was tough. I think a lot of it came from
inner strength and, I mean, even though talking to people, you might think it helps, but I
really think it was just finding it within myself, and again, if it wasn't for music, I don't
even know where I would be, because I mean, I still listen to music constantly,
but…when I didn't feel like talking to nobody or I didn't talk, I always had my
headphones on listening to all kind of music and things.
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Along with his inner strength, the support Daryl received from his university community helped
him weather his overwhelming grief for his cousin.
The dissonance experienced by students using the Reflective Ownership and Movement
to Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns accounts for the challenge side of the
developmental equation while campus involvement provided the necessary and complementary
support. These two elements combined to promote the students’ development and use of the
sound decision-making criteria. Since 12 of the 15 students using these patterns entered college
with Solely External meaning making and the majority possessed an internal voice by the time of
their year-four interviews (with 12 students Leaving the Crossroads and one student with Solely
Internal (Self-Authoring) Meaning Making) this study indicates that these students received the
balance of challenge and support necessary to foster their development. Challenge without
support would have likely left these students mired in dissonance and stymied in their
developmental growth.
Self-Reflection
The third similarity among the students using Reflective Ownership and Movement to
Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns was their ability to self-reflect. These students
were willing and able to carefully consider their experiences, perspectives, identities, and beliefs.
Some of the students started college with the ability to self-reflect and learned more sophisticated
and deeper methods for introspection during college. Other students entered college with
minimal reflective capabilities but developed them over their college careers. These students
understood the importance of determining what they thought and why they thought that way.
They also recognized that identifying their perspectives, goals, and values required them to
genuinely explore and listen to themselves. Thinking about and for themselves was often a
difficult experience as students deliberated among options, questioned long-standing and firmlyrooted beliefs and values, and struggled with the possibility that their perspectives may conflict
with those of valued others (e.g., family) and important authority figures (e.g., teachers and
church leaders). That is, self-reflection enabled and provided students with a way to engage with
the dissonance they experienced. Without the ability to self-reflect the students would have
likely assimilated their dissonance-causing-experiences into their established meaning-making
structures. However, for these students self-reflection entailed identifying goals and values,
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assessing situations, and learning from previous experiences. These are all practices that
promote development and use of the sound decision-making criteria as they are the pre-cursors
of accommodation. That is, in order for students to accommodate dissonance, and thus grow in
their meaning making, they must first determine what they think and evaluate the context of their
particular situations in light of what they think. Excerpts from Diana’s interview illustrate how
self-reflection is a tool for mediating dissonance, facilitating development in the three
dimensions (cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal), and promoting the use of the sound
decision-making criteria.
Throughout her four interviews Diana demonstrated a refined ability to self-reflect. She
thought about herself and her experiences as she purposefully decided who she was and who she
wanted to be. Diana’s ability to reflect was indicative of her level of developmental meaning
making; she started college with capacities associated with Entering the Crossroads and by her
second-year interview demonstrated capacities associated with Leaving the Crossroads. Her
discussion of her plans to come out to her mom during her year-two interview illustrate her selfreflection capabilities and how those relate to her cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal
developmental dimensions:
I’m still in the process. I haven’t came out to my family…that’s in the near future but
coming to college, I was afraid because I didn’t know how people would take it but the
great thing about my friends were that when I came out to them they were like, “Oh, we
knew.” (laughs) …cause my thing was like I’m still me. It’s just one part of who I am.
It’s not who I am. It’s just a part and my friends were like, “We still love you for the
person you are.” And that was awesome for me to see people that they still accept me.
…It’s not that big of a deal to them and, because it’s not, for me it’s not that big of a deal.
It’s not like, oh, my gosh, I’m gay (laughs). So…I’ve actually gained more friends since
I came out and which is great. …I think it was important for me to come out while I was
in college just because I’ve had to hide it in secret and it was eating me up, to be honest
with you. In high school I knew that there was something different about me and at the
beginning of high school, I couldn’t put a name to it. …I was afraid. I mean I had seen
other people come out in high school and the negative reaction of people and the words
and just torment they had to go through and I was like, “I can’t do that. I’m too, I can’t
do it.” I was, I’m not that brave (laughs). I couldn’t put myself through that so I just
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kind of put myself in the closet and actually was in denial. …Then once I got to college I
was like, “I can’t deny this anymore.” And so I came out and it was great. Like I felt
free and now I’m ready to come out to my family, to really come out, to be free of this
secret I’m hiding.
I: How do you think coming out has helped you grow?
S: I think coming out has helped me grow in that I don’t hide anything. I don’t feel the
need to hide anymore. I’m pretty much, I put myself, especially on campus, it’s like,
“This is who I am. You accept me for me or you don’t.” Where before I was always,
“Oh, well, this is only one part of me” or I would put on a façade about this and pretend
to be someone I wasn’t. Where now I’m comfortable being myself and I think I’ve
become so comfortable on campus being myself that now when I go home I can’t go back
to the person I used to be and feeling to hide, so that’s why I’ve come to terms with
having to come out to my family, so that I can be the same person I am on campus at
home.
I: And have you decided when you’re gonna do that?
S: …since I don’t go home often…over Thanksgiving break and I’m scared. When you
do something that’s, it’s big. …It’s scary, but I’ve come to terms with it if it is a positive;
if it’s a negative. I’ve come to terms with that. It might not be a positive reaction, but
I’m ready for it and I need just to let them know who I am.
I: And who do you talk to about that? In other words…who’s your support system?
S: My support system is the members of Q-Tip… A lot of them have all had different
experiences and so I may go talk to them and also my friend. He told me, “If you need
someone to talk to just to get that little pep talk before you go, call me.” …he’s had a
positive coming out story and he’s gone through the…negative, so he’s really a lot of my
support system because he’s able to just listen…and he knows what I’m going through.
As she reflected on her sexual identity Diana processed her feelings and experiences and made
meaning of them for herself. Cognitively, she was not looking for outside sources of knowledge
or formulas to follow. Instead, she considered different perspectives and options and devised her
own ways of thinking about her identity, relationships with others, and plans for the future.
Intrapersonally, Diana established a clarified vision of her own identity and genuine acceptance
of herself. In the interpersonal dimension Diana had established authentic, trusting relationships
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with her peers and was beginning to act on her own needs by coming out at school and making
plans to come out to her family. Her decision indicated that she was willing to risk those
relationships in order to be true to herself. Diana’s story illustrates the power of self-reflection
and how it promotes development and coincides with the use of the criteria for good, wellinformed decision making. In her year-four interview Diana articulated the practical and
developmental benefits of self-reflection:
…and even the negativity that comes from being here, different relationships that haven't
worked out to doing bad in school it's all impacted me, but from that has risen positivity,
from me learning from those experiences and changing the next one so it won't happen
again. …I became the person that I always wanted to be, and I'm still becoming that
person. It's not like within three years…it's going to take a lot of time. It's going to take
years. But I see myself putting the foundation down to being the person I want to be.
Diana’s story encompasses the three similarities discussed in this section – dissonance created by
coming to terms with her sexual identity, support she received from her friends in Q-Tip, and
self-reflection as she considered her experiences, refined her identity, and made decisions in
order to be true to her vision of herself. Self-reflection and support helped Diana negotiate the
dissonance she experienced.
Synthesis
In the findings section of this study I concluded that the developmental capacities
associated with an internal voice are a necessary but insufficient condition for good, wellinformed decision making. The similarities shared by the students using the Reflective
Ownership and Movement to Reflective Ownership decision-making patterns provide
clarification of additional characteristics that prompted the use of the good, well-informed
decision-making criteria and students’ development. Dissonance, support received through
involvement in campus organizations, and self-reflection are themes that spanned the students’
stories and promoted these students’ development and sound decision making. For the students
in this study a combination of these three factors translated into sound decision making and
developmental growth. The students using the Movement to Recognizing the Need for
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making pattern, Bella and Jacob, were just starting to
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evidence these characteristics by the time of their fourth interviews. In particular, they were
starting to experience dissonance that prompted them to recognize the need to take reflective
ownership in their decision making (Bella was thinking about her desire to live close to her
college friends rather than her family after graduation and Jacob was in the midst of identifying a
major that better fit his interests and abilities). They were also starting the process of engaging
in authentic self-reflection. While Bella was not involved in campus organizations, Jacob was
starting to engage in such at activities at his community college as he volunteered to translate for
Spanish patients receiving medical care from English-speaking medical professionals. As
discussed in the previous chapter, experiencing dissonance late in their college careers delayed
their use of the decision-making criteria. It is likely that this delay could also be linked to these
students’ less developed capacity to self-reflect and lack of campus involvement.
Limited Dissonance, Support & Self-Reflection in Non-Reflective Ownership Pattern
As with their use of the decision-making criteria, the students using the Non-Reflective
Ownership Decision Making pattern also differed in their experience of dissonance, support, and
self-reflection as compared to the other students in this study. In the previous chapter I
introduced the notion that these students likely adopted and maintained this decision-making
pattern because they had not experienced dissonance. This is not the only discrepancy between
the Non-Reflective Ownership decision makers and the other students; they also engaged
minimally in campus organizations and, not surprisingly, as the name of this group suggests, did
not engage in self-reflection. In this section I more closely examine the factors that differentiate
the Non-Reflective Ownership decision makers from the other high-risk students in this study.
The students using the Non-Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern had
experiences that had the potential to create dissonance. For example, Bob, Maegan, Julie, and
Vanessa were first-generation college students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and Bob,
Vanessa, and Cameron identified as students of color. Societal marginalization of individuals
with these social identities is frequently identified as a source of dissonance. In addition the
students experienced life events that also had the potential to create dissonance. For seven
months Maegan struggled with doctors to identify and treat a mysterious illness that left her
emaciated and weak during her junior year. Vanessa repeatedly expressed disappointment in not
being accepted into campus organizations that she attempted to join such as the soccer team and
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orientation student staff. In his fourth year Cameron had not yet passed a writing proficiency
exam required for graduation. Bob’s3 commitment to her Seventh Day Adventist belief of not
working from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday conflicted with her responsibilities as an
orientation leader. Despite experiencing challenges, stress, and disappointments these students
did not experience dissonance in the same way as the students using the other decision-making
patterns. Instead of engaging in or interacting with dissonance the students repeatedly
assimilated their experiences into their established meaning-making structures. How is it that
these students were never prompted (or forced) to genuinely engage in or accommodate
dissonance?
Prior developmental research (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2009a; Kegan, 1982,
1994; Sanford, 1962) supports the interpretation that a combination of early (i.e., external)
developmental meaning-making capacities and lack of appropriate support in mediating
challenges likely inhibited these students from engaging in dissonance and using the criteria for
sound decision making. The data from this longitudinal study supports this possibility.
However, the ability to self-reflect offers an additional point for consideration. The students’
stories in this study highlighted the recursive relationship among developmental capacities, use
of the decision-making criteria, dissonance, support, and the ability to self-reflect. Perhaps the
Non-Reflective Ownership decision makers were unable to recognize and/or make sense of
dissonance because they did not have the ability to self-reflect. In turn, these students were not
prompted to grow in their developmental meaning making which inhibited their use of the
decision-making criteria. The ability to self-reflect enabled the students using decision-making
patterns other than the Non-Reflective Ownership pattern to use the criteria for sound decision
making. It is not possible to use the criteria (e.g., consider multiple perspectives or identify
goals, values, and beliefs) without the ability to look inward and self-reflect. I concluded on the
basis of the findings that use of the decision-making criteria is mediated by students’
developmental capacities. It is possible that students’ developmental capacities are mediated by
their ability to self-reflect. Specifically, self-reflection may be a prerequisite necessary for
noticing, recognizing, engaging, and/or addressing dissonance. I use analysis of Julie’s interview
excerpts to support this interpretation.
3
Bob was the pseudonym chosen by a female WNS participant.
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Julie is an example of a student who had experiences before and during college with the
potential to facilitate dissonance and developmental growth. Yet, she remained Solely External
in her meaning making throughout college and never used the criteria for sound decision making.
Her story suggests that while she faced challenging situations she never developed the propensity
to truly reflect on those experiences. She described them in detail but only explained her
reactions in concrete, literal terms. She did not discuss these experiences in ways that indicated
any true introspection. Taken alone, the following excerpts could be considered isolated
examples and dismissed as exceptions. However, together as longitudinal perspectives over
time, they reveal a pattern of Julie’s lack of self-reflection.
Following her parents’ contentious divorce Julie’s home-life became burdensome.
Julie’s mom resented the court’s decision to award custody of Julie and her siblings to her father
and retaliated by instigating a string of groundless lawsuits against Julie’s dad to regain custody
of her children. This continued well into Julie’s college career. Julie consistently supported her
dad in court which triggered a cycle of alienation and reconciliation with her mom as she sought
to penalize Julie for her loyalty to her dad. In her year-two interview Julie discussed the
repercussions she faced after she wrote an affidavit in support of her dad:
…it was just basically writing a letter saying how I felt and all this kind of stuff. So I did,
and I… felt okay about it… They went to court and…My mom was supposed to have a
going-away party for my brother the next weekend. And she called me and she was like,
“Don’t even come to the party,” and I’m like, “What is wrong with you?” …I was so
upset… and talked to my dad and come to find out she had, of course, lost the case and
she was very mad, and she was like, “We need a timeout.” I’m like, “Parents and
daughters don’t have timeouts. What are you talking about?” So I was like, “Okay.
Whatever.” So she stopped talking to me. …for three months and then…we got close, or
not close but we talked more. And then Mother’s Day came around and she was like, “If
you wouldn’t have done what you did, we’d be fine,” and I’m like, she wouldn’t tell me
what I did, how I did was wrong. And she was like, “Just know my love is
unconditional,” and I’m like, “Unh-uh, it’s not if you’re not talking to me,” so it was just
weird. …I don’t understand.
I: So how do you sort this all out?
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S: I just see that she needs to grow up…put things behind her. Because I didn’t do it
because I hate my mom; I did it because I care about both of them and I don’t think it’s
right for her to blame my dad for things that happened at her house. …So I think I kind of
hurt her feelings…I think that she just needs to grow up and realize that everybody’s not
out to get her.
Weary of her mom’s cycle of manipulation, Julie coped by defusing her mom’s attempts to pull
her into an argument:
…my parents have to go back to court, so I’m like, “So what do I do? Do I say
something?” or whatever, and my dad is like, “Well since you wrote that affidavit, you’re
probably gonna have to say something,” and I’m like, “It’s never gonna end.” So, my
mom is like… “So are you ready to talk?” I guess she feels like I’m not ready to, I guess
she feels like I didn’t write the affidavit and that’s what makes her mad. I told her,
“Yeah, I’m ready to talk.” She’s like, “Are you ready to talk in front of everybody?” and
I’m like, “Mm hmm.” …there’s not a problem and she wants me to react and get upset
and get angry, but instead I’m just like, “Okay,” you know, “It doesn’t really bother me
and sorry that you’re mad.”
After years of similar exchanges Julie may have learned to cope with her mom’s volatility by
disengaging. Such a strategy may have reinforced Julie’s tendency to not engage in reflection.
Thinking too much would jeopardize Julie’s ability to separate herself from her mom’s behavior
and emotional hijacking. In such a situation not reflecting was likely an asset rather than a
liability. Unfortunately stifling her self-reflection prevented Julie from growing developmentally
or using the criteria for sound decision making. These consequences mediated her other college
experiences.
For example, in her second-year interview Julie described her process for choosing her
major:
It was social work, I declared it right before I went out for the summer. I don’t know
why I decided to declare it. But then during the summer I did research on what social
workers do and all this kind of stuff. I took an introduction to social work class and I was
like, “Maybe I don’t want to do this.” …so I have it as a minor, just because I think it’ll
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be a good thing to minor in, and political science is now my major. So, I see my history
teacher a lot.
I: So transitioning, what do you enjoy about political science?
S: Well, my boyfriend over the summer, we’ve been friends for a long time and we just
decided to date, don’t know why. We’re not dating anymore. But, he’s a political
science major, and my dad and I always talk about politics…my dad is like, “The price of
oil is up,” and I’m like, “What’s that mean?” He’s like, “Gas prices are up.” So, I mean
we talk about different things. …I want to work maybe in public administration and work
for the state or something, but I’m not sure. But like I can do more with this major. So
I’ll decide after this semester what I want to do. I don’t want to keep changing my major.
Julie stumbled upon her new major based on the preferences of important others. She did not use
the criteria for sound decision making and she certainly did not exhibit any reflective capacities.
Furthermore, she lacked an adequate support system. While her dad and boyfriend supported her
by encouraging her, they were not supportive of her in terms of prompting her to think about her
interests, goals, and aspirations (i.e., there is no indication that they prompted her to reflect).
Julie had the opportunity to connect with a supportive other with the potential to initiate
self-reflection when she began meeting with a school counselor after the tumultuous break-up
with her boyfriend. She described this experience in her third interview:
I decided to go…’cause I was crying all the time…I would get upset…worry about things
and freak out and cry and it’s 2:00 in the morning and I was like, “I really, really need to
talk to somebody.” …I…knew [counselor] from before…we had talked before and I was
like, “She seems pretty nice.” So I went in there just bawled for straight 30 minutes. She
was like, “It’s okay. It’s okay.” And I was like, “No, it’s not. I don’t ever cry.” And
after that I just felt like…this is why I think you need somebody to talk to that doesn’t
really know me, that’s not in my life all the time, that can just give me honest advice
about it, so I started talking to her…I just go in and say hey to her now…I’m just like,
“Hey, [counselor].” And she’s like, “Hey.”
I: What do you think you’ll take away from it?
S: I’ve learned that you don’t need somebody else to make you happy. I used to think,
“Oh, he’s my boyfriend. He’s like my friend.” No, it’s not about that. It’s about you,
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your confidence yourself and just getting you straight with yourself. … I learned a lot
from it…I just take that my family is more important… Any guy who even starts to get
in the way of you and your family then he’s not worth your time…
I: And how do you feel about yourself now?
S: Oh, I feel much better…working at the Olive Garden, I think that’s what got me away
from [boyfriend], it pretty much consumed all of my time and when I was in there…these
guys were like, “Hey, you’re really nice, blah, blah, blah.” They didn’t try to look at me
like, “Oh, yeah, you’re stupid.” You know? …So from that I think I’m more confident, I
feel better about myself. I know what I want. I know that I don’t have to have a guy…I
think that’s why [boyfriend] and I went back and forth, back and forth, ’cause it was a
comfort thing and it was a security thing, we’re happy, we’re cute together. We get along
most of the time, so from that I’ve learned you don’t need that. That’s like a stupid thing.
What a missed opportunity. Julie had the time and emotional space dedicated to reflection, and
yet, her job at Olive Garden did more for her self-confidence than working with her counselor.
Her externally defined self-confidence, obtained from the validation she received from her
coworkers, allowed her to break-up with her boyfriend without seriously reflecting on why the
relationship was not right for her. The recursive pattern continued; her developmental capacities
remained the same, and despite the opportunity to engage dissonance with appropriate support,
her lack of self-reflection continued. Furthermore, her year-four discussion of her future plans
confirmed that the criteria for good, well-informed decision making continued to remain elusive
for Julie.
During her third year Julie took advantage of a spring break trip to Italy sponsored by her
school:
I decided to go kind of last minute. Our history and political science department did a
trip to Italy. I thought it was reasonably priced. I talked to my dad and he was, like, do
it. You know, you’re in college, you might as well. You’re not gonna get these
opportunities whenever you get older. So I decided to do it… We were there for – I want
to say nine days. We went to Venice, Florence and Rome and little places in between. It
was my first time out of the country, so it was fun. I want to go back. …having a tour
guide lead us around was really fun, but I think actually going and, venturing for myself
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would be a little more funner too, I mean, ‘cause you’d have a little more time to visit the
places that you found to be your favorite and stuff like that.
Julie described what she took away from that experience:
Well, you get to see different types of cultures…and you learn a lot. You’re submerged
in a different environment. And our school is all about diversity, and I think traveling
promotes that. …So just talking to different people, it’s given me a good perspective on
life and just traveling in general, ‘cause a lot of people are, like, “No, you shouldn’t travel
out of the country. You shouldn’t go by yourself.” People just have negative ideas about
traveling overseas, but it was amazing. It was fun.
This experience prompted Julie to make plans to travel to Australia after she graduates. She
discussed her interest in going to Australia:
Like, it was just a random decision. I’ve never been that far overseas. Obviously, I’ve
only been to Italy, but I felt comfortable because…I would be able to understand the
language. …there’s not that much of a language difference. I wait tables at the Olive
Garden and this group of Australians came in a couple weeks after I decided I wanted to
go to Australia, and they were talking and I just felt like, you know, I think I could go
there and understand people and get along. They’re very carefree and…seems like I
could get along there. So, I mean, I’m excited. My friend said she might go with me, so
if she does, she does. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t.
With graduation a few months away Julie continued to search outside of herself rather than
looking inward as she discussed her career plans:
Not quite sure. I think I want to do human rights, civil rights, but I’m not exactly sure
specifically what I want to do with that. I want to work with people, but not in the social
work aspect. So time will tell. I mean, I guess maybe traveling I’ll find what I really
want to do.
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Synthesis
Julie’s story supports the notion that self-reflection is an important component of student
development and sound decision making. Her resistance and/or inability to reflect prevented her
from developing more complex meaning-making structures and using the criteria for good, wellinformed decision making. While the developmental literature (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001,
2004, 2009a; Kegan, 1982, 1994; Meszaros & Lane, 2010; Pizzolato, 2003, 2004, 2005) links
self-reflection with development, this study suggests that self-reflection should be considered a
critical component of development. Accordingly, future research exploring the interconnection
between self-reflection and development is an important next step.
Furthermore, although some students are able to (or are forced to) engage with and
accommodate dissonance into more sophisticated meaning-making capacities on their own, it is
well-established in the literature that many students, including those who are high-risk, require
appropriate support in order to navigate this process (Baxter Magolda, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2009a;
Kegan, 1982, 1994; Meszaros & Lane, 2010; Pizzolato, 2003, 2004, 2005). The students in this
study offer an important reminder of this principle. For example, Irene did not identify a source
of support that helped her negotiate the dissonance of choosing a college that did not meet
external expectations. However, Diana discussed the valuable support she received from her QTips friends as she thought about coming out. It is important to remember that both of these
students started college making meaning from Entering the Crossroads. As a collective, the
students using the Reflective Ownership of Decision Making, Movement to Reflective
Ownership of Decision Making, and, to a lesser-extent, Movement to Recognizing the Need for
Reflective Ownership of Decision Making patterns received the necessary support to negotiate,
or begin to negotiate, dissonance. This enabled these students to grow developmentally.
Conversely, the students using the Non-Reflective Ownership decision-making pattern generally
did not have the necessary support to engage with and/or negotiate dissonance. They were
further hampered in their development because they did not utilize self-reflection. Researchers
and practitioners must be cautioned against assuming that dissonance alone, whether caused by
marginalization or other factors, is enough to promote the development of high-risk students.
These students require the same appropriate support as their peers given that their everyday
experiences frequently include challenge but may not always offer sufficient support.
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The longitudinal nature of this study proved to be particularly beneficial in that it offered
an opportunity to observe the interplay of developmental capacities, use of the decision-making
criteria, dissonance, support, and the ability to self-reflect throughout the students’ college
careers. As a result, the study illuminates the recursive relationship between external
environment and individual characteristics that mediate (i.e., promote or inhibit) high-risk
students’ development and ability to make good, well-informed decisions. Just as the findings
clarify the relationship between students’ developmental complexity and their use of the
decision-making criteria, my interpretation of the findings refines understanding of the
relationship among developmental capacities, dissonance, support, and self-reflection.
Specifically, this study suggests that students’ capacity for self-reflection mediates their ability to
engage with and negotiate dissonance. Thus, in order to help high-risk students successfully
negotiate dissonance educators must provide support in such a way that it facilitates students’
engagement in self-reflection. Such practice promotes students’ development of more complex
meaning-making structures and the use of the criteria for good, well-informed decision making.
Recommendations for Supportive Practice
High-risk students typically face significant academic, economic, social, and personal
challenges in their lives (Aud & Hannes, 2011; Avery & Daly, 2010; Carey, 2004; Choy, 2002;
Engle & Tinto, 2008; Lareau, 2003; McDonough, 1997; Martinez, Sher, Krull, & Wood, 2009;
Snyder & Dillow, 2010; Tinto, 1993; Walpole, 2003). These complexities contribute to a
disproportionate number of high-risk students leaving college without earning a degree (Aud &
Hannes, 2011; Carey, 2004; Engle & Tinto, 2008). High-risk students must make good, wellinformed decisions to navigate the challenges they face and persist towards their educational
goals. Thus, supporting high-risk students in their decision making is an important means for
educators to promote this population’s educational persistence and degree attainment. The
findings of this study suggest that to help students use the criteria for good, well-informed
decision making, educators must promote their developmental capacities, which requires
engaging students in authentic relationships through reflective conversations.
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Reflective Conversations and the Learning Partnerships Model
This study’s data indicate that students could benefit from reflective conversations with
educators. Through meaningful conversations, educators model, teach, and engage students in
self-reflection. Inviting students to share their experiences and perspectives prompts students to
think about those experiences and develop their own perspectives. Sincere questioning
encourages students to identify, explore, and articulate the sources of their thinking and feeling.
When questions stem from genuine interest and care, that is they are not critical, judgmental, or
condescending, they create a safe space for students to carefully consider their beliefs, values,
and goals and evaluate situations in light of those interests. When I think about my work with
students facing academic challenges I realize that I have been most successful when I engaged
students in authentic conversations and encouraged them to reflect. This takes on particular
importance with high-risk students whose voices are often marginalized rather than validated.
Valuing their perspectives helps them build confidence, helps me as an educator understand their
particular circumstances and perspectives, and helps us collaborate to strategize how to navigate
the college environment. Furthermore, my experience on the WSN team also resonates with my
work experience and this study’s findings. As an interviewer I engaged with students in
reflective conversations as I asked them to discuss their significant experiences and describe how
those experiences influenced their thinking, identities, and relationships with others. Students
who participated in WNS pilot study found the reflective conversations so beneficial to their
thinking that they clamored to continue in the longitudinal study. This prompted the WNS
principal investigators to translate the WNS interview into a conversation guide to be used in
everyday practice. Baxter Magolda and King (2008b) call these types of interactions “reflective
conversations” and frame them as opportunities to support students’ development. The authors
created a set of guidelines as a reference for educators facilitating these conversations that
includes prompts and follow-up questions to encourage students to reflect on and interpret
important experiences, but emphasize, “The key element is encouraging students to make sense
of their experience rather than the educator making sense of it for them” (Baxter Magolda &
King, 2008b, p. 9). Individual conversations offer important opportunities to provide appropriate
support to high-risk students. For example, if Dustin had been engaged in a reflective
conversation during his second year at college around the reasons he chose business as his major,
he may not have faced a “break-down” in his third year as he contemplated his future.
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Reflective conversations also provide a venue to help students use the criteria for good,
well-informed decision making. The high-risk students in this study vividly articulated the
various challenges they faced around decision making, including: the fear of not meeting others’
expectations, the realization that they had not been true to themselves in the past and the desire to
be true to themselves in the future, struggling to figure out who they were and who they wanted
to be, revising plans based on their experiences and interests, and prioritizing their interests over
those of others. Purposeful conversations based on trust offer important opportunities to support
students as they navigate the difficulties of decision making. For example, Julie would have
benefitted from an advisor asking her to explain her rationale for choosing her major and helping
her examine the benefits and limitations of that process and the outcome. In the short-term, Julie
may have identified a major that genuinely excited her. In the long-term, such an experience
may have helped her realize the importance of looking inward as she thought about her future
plans rather than hoping she would find an answer in Australia.
A framework I particularly like for constructing meaningful, reflective conversations is
the Learning Partnerships Model (LPM). As described in the literature review of this
dissertation Baxter Magolda’s (2004) LPM is a framework for facilitating students’ development
by challenging them through three assumptions about learning and supporting them via three
principles for educational practice. Both Meszaros and Lane (2010) and Pizzolato and Ozaki
(2007) advocate this model as an effective means for supporting high-risk students. In addition,
Hornak and Ortiz (2004) advocate the LPM as complementary to their multicultural education
framework designed to help students reflect on their racial and ethnic identities. Thus the LPM
seems particularly appropriate to my sample. The LPM is particularly useful as a model for
facilitating reflective conversations in the context of my findings because it creates dissonance,
provides support, and facilitates self-reflection.
The first assumption of the LPM portrays knowledge as complex and socially constructed
and challenges students’ cognitive development by introducing multiple perspectives and
ambiguity (Baxter Magolda, 2004). This assumption encourages students to identify what they
believe and choose among multiple options. The second assumption, that self is central to
knowledge construction, is associated with the intrapersonal dimension of development because
students must know who they are in order to determine what they believe (Baxter Magolda,
2004). This requires students to develop an internal identity rather than being defined by others.
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The third assumption, that knowledge is mutually constructed by sharing authority and expertise,
challenges students to participate in relationships as equal partners (Baxter Magolda, 2004). The
LPM explicitly uses three principles for constructing practice in ways that facilitate learning
partnerships to support students in engaging these challenges.
The first principle, validating learners’ capacity to know, demonstrates respect for
students’ thoughts and feelings and builds their confidence by reinforcing their abilities to
understand and make decisions (Baxter Magolda, 2004). The second principle, situating learning
in the learners’ experiences, encourages students to share their life experiences. This principle
assures students that their knowledge and experiences are valuable and respected (Baxter
Magolda, 2004). The third principle, mutually constructing meaning, invites students into
mutual reflection on how to make sense of their experiences and perspectives. This principle
combines the knowledge of the educator with the knowledge of the learner to clarify their
perspectives, develop more complex understandings, and make sounder decisions (Baxter
Magolda, 2004). Given its emphasis on the three assumptions and three principles, the LPM
offers a promising framework for bringing high-risk students’ unique experiences into the
educational setting and thereby promoting their self-reflection, and in turn, promoting their
development and use of the sound decision-making criteria.
While all of the students in this study encountered challenges they did not all have good
learning partners in negotiating the complexities of their lives. In such cases the students
struggled to mediate external influences with their internal voices. Furthermore, because some
of the students did not have learning partners who offered to share authority with them or
encouraged them to identify and choose their beliefs, they were not prompted to self-reflect.
Diana is an example of a student who was fortunate to have authentic learning partners. Her
friends in Q-Tip encouraged her to bring her internal identity to the forefront as she considered
her sexual orientation and validated her voice by respecting her thoughts and feelings. The
learning partnerships she established with her peers prompted her to come out to her family and
act in ways that were true to herself. Similarly, Dustin was able to establish learning
partnerships with his fraternity brothers because he trusted them to accept him for who he was
(i.e., validation) and they encouraged him to bring his authentic self into relationships. The
resulting confidence helped Dustin establish a more self-reliant internal identity. This in turn
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enabled Dustin to reflect on and identify his goals and plans for the future based on his interests
and values.
Like Diana and Dustin, many students in this study identified campus involvement as a
significant source of support. LGBT and Greek organizations; volunteer, mentor, and tutor
opportunities; and leadership positions were specifically identified as supportive experiences.
The students’ stories suggest that these activities were particularly effective in providing support
because they offered students opportunities to establish learning partnerships by demonstrating
the assumptions and principles of the LPM (Baxter Magolda, 2004). For example, tutoring
migrant students prompted Benjamin to consider the gap in educational opportunities for these
students (and other Hispanic students) compared to White students because the experience
portrayed knowledge as complex and socially constructed and challenged him to identify what
he believed (the first assumption of the LPM). This experience also situated learning in his
direct experiences (the second principle of the LPM). Exploring their sexual identities through
LGBT organizations emphasized that self is central to knowledge construction as Jessica, Diana,
and Roger worked to establish their internal identities rather than be defined by others (the
second assumption of the LPM). They had the confidence to take on this challenging task
largely because of the validation they received from their peers (the first principle of the LPM).
Finally, the Greek organizations shared authority and expertise with Irene, Jessica, Yolanda,
Daryl, and Dustin by providing unconditional acceptance (i.e., validation) and encouraging the
students to participate as equal partners in the mutual construction of knowledge (the third
assumption of the LPM). These experiences also involved situating learning in the learners’
experiences (the second principle of the LPM).
These high-risk students made connections to environments that enacted the three key
assumptions and principles of the LPM, and as a result, grew in their developmental meaning
making and use of the criteria for good, well-informed decision making (Baxter Magolda, 2004).
Thus, the data from this study suggests that educators should encourage students to participate in
these types of student organizations and activities. However, it cannot be assumed that
participation in all organizations facilitates learning partnerships (Baxter Magolda, 2004).
Accordingly, it is imperative for educators to purposefully incorporate the three assumptions and
principles as they develop, coordinate, and advise such programs in order to provide appropriate
support to high-risk students in the form of learning partnerships. Educators who interact with
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high-risk students in individual, group, or classroom settings are well-positioned to engage
students in reflective conversations grounded in the LPM (Baxter Magolda, 2004). Creating
these conditions in areas that are particularly relevant to high-risk students, such as academic
advising, academic support, classrooms, financial aid, and diversity affairs, offer well-placed
opportunities to support high-risk students.
Reflective Conversations in Academic Advising
For Julie LPM-based academic advising might entail an academic advisor prompting her
to think about and identify her interests, skills, and values as she explored major and career
options (validating her ability to know while challenging her to bring herself to what she knows).
This could be done by asking Julie to reflect on prompts on her own and then discussing her
ideas during a series of follow-up sessions. The prompts could include questions related to
classes she has excelled/struggled in and why that was; classes she found interesting/boring and
why that was; majors and careers she has considered in the past and what about those interested
her; the benefits and limitations of jobs she, friends, and family have held; her vision for
work/home balance; the kinds of messages or expectations that others communicate to her
regarding majors/careers and her thoughts about those messages; and/or, how she envisions her
workday looking (e.g., in an office or in the field, independent or collaborative projects)
(situating learning in the learner’s experiences). During the follow-up session the advisor and
Julie would engage in a reflective conversation based on Julie’s self-reflection. The advisor
would ask follow-up questions as necessary and push Julie to deliberately consider and explain
her responses in order to model what true self-reflection looks/feels like (mutually constructing
meaning). Between sessions Julie could be asked to consider additional prompts that she and the
advisor generated together and the task of investigating different options through skills and
interest assessments and/or informational interviews. This process would also model the criteria
for good, well-informed decision making (gathering information, processing information, and
taking action grounded in the first two criteria) (Pizzolato & Ozaki, 2007).
Learning Partnerships in Academic Support
An example of academic support that engages students in reflective conversations and is
grounded in the LPM comes from my work as a learning specialist at a learning center. My
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office coordinates an academic intervention targeted at first-year students earning below a 2.0
grade point average in their first semester of college (i.e., high-risk students because of poor
prior academic performance). An important component of the initiative is a learning strategies
course that students are strongly encouraged to take. Our goals for students enrolled in the
course are for them to: 1) become more aware of and educated about themselves as learners; 2)
develop effective study behaviors, strategies and habits; 3) employ strategies and techniques to
establish a realistic plan for educational success; 4) develop an understanding of the educational
process of acquiring a degree and its influence on their lives and personal goals; and, 5)
authentically engage in their education in order to achieve their educational and career goals.
These course goals are achieved by designing lesson plans and assignments based on the LPM
and that encourage self-reflection.
For example, the Goal Setting and Priorities class session begins with students
completing an assessment to identify their reasons for choosing to attend college. Students rankorder approximately 20 items that include attending college to pursue a particular career, grow as
an individual, and achieve a high earning potential. Other items indicate that college was: not so
much a choice as a family expectation, a way to get away from their family or hometown, and a
means to finding a spouse or life partner. After completing the assessment students identify their
three highest ranked options, indicating the most influential reasons for attending college, and
their three lowest ranked options, indicating the least influential reasons for attending college
(situating learning in students’ experiences). Students then write individual reflective responses
to prompts based on the reasons they identified for attending college. The prompts ask students
to interpret the degree to which school is a priority for them based on their reasons for attending
college; determine whether their actions and approach to school reflect that degree of priority;
and examine the degree to which their typical level of motivation corresponds with their actions
and their identified degree of priority for school (validating students’ capacity to know). Next,
students gather in small groups to discuss their experiences, observations, and realizations and
identify academic goals for the semester based on those conversations (defining learning as
mutually constructing meaning and sharing authority and expertise). For the rest of the class
(and the next session) students identify the key criteria for effective goal setting, assess and
refine their goals based on the criteria, and identify benchmarks for monitoring progress towards
their goals throughout the semester. This class serves as a springboard for a more substantive
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learning goals assignment due the following week. This is just one example from a semesterlong class that meets twice-weekly of practice grounded in the LPM facilitating reflective
conversations. If all faculty implemented such practices in their courses high-risk students
would benefit even more.
Bringing Self-Reflection into Financial Aid Counseling
Another area conducive to supporting high-risk students through reflective conversations
is financial aid. Many financial aid offices take a customer service approach to working with
students by funneling students to websites for information and online forms and providing inperson assistance via walk-up service counters that limit privacy, signal to students that
interactions will be brief, and minimize opportunities for students to receive assistance from the
same staff member during subsequent visits. Financial aid offices could implement a learning
partnerships approach by restructuring in ways reflective of academic advising or academic
counseling offices. During regular meetings students’ assigned counselors could facilitate
reflective conversations by asking students to describe their experiences and goals related to
school and finances, thus situating learning in students’ experiences and validating their capacity
to take responsibility for their finances. Counselors could also mutually construct meaning with
students by working with them to explore options that best address individual students’ unique
needs and circumstances. Such an approach would teach and model for students how to reflect
and use the criteria for good, well-informed decision making. This structure would also
encourage students to engage in authentic conversations because meeting with the same
counselor over a number of sessions would help to establish trust, an important component when
finances are involved. Reflective conversations are particularly important in the domain of
financial aid for high-risk students because the variables—tuition increases, students
receiving/losing scholarships and grants, and their often tenuous financial stability—are
constantly in flux, thus portraying knowledge as complex and socially constructed. Furthermore,
the high-stakes consequences related to student loans and debt require students to understand and
take ownership of financing their educations, making self central to knowledge construction.
Despite being an area which clearly requires well-informed decision making, financial aid is not
a context that is typically identified as having potential to facilitate students’ development;
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reflective conversations grounded in the LPM provide a new perspective on practice in the
support of high-risk students’ development.
Helping Students Process Marginalization in Diversity Affairs
A final example of an office charged with the responsibility of supporting high-risk
students is diversity affairs. The students in this study most frequently discussed feeling
different or marginalized because they belonged to social groups not well-represented in higher
education. Benjamin, Cameron, Daryl, Diana, Dolores, Dustin, Irene, and Jessica all discussed
the difficulties that their families and students in their communities faced in gaining access to
higher education. These students often felt a responsibility to serve as role models for their
younger siblings and communities in order to encourage others to attend college and to create
gateways for access to education. Many of the students in this study intended to pursue teaching
as a career or participate in short-term teaching programs like Teach for America in order to help
more students gain access to higher education.
Benjamin and Daryl talked specifically about their personal experiences of feeling
marginalized or different on their college campuses. Daryl explained his experiences on a predominantly white campus:
I: And could you talk to me how it is to be a black man in a white fraternity?
S: Well it’s not really that big of a difference. For me it’s a better understanding of them
and I guess for them it’s a better understanding of me…a few of them, I have deep
conversations with so…to get them to understand [that] some things they say or do, I
don’t find funny. They think it’s hilarious and I’ll explain why.
I: Can you give an example when you’ve had one of those conversations before like
someone did something that they thought was funny and you explained why you didn’t
think it was funny?
S: Yeah, that happened yesterday…we were watching an African film and...this couple
is about to get married so they do a lot of ritual dancing…it wasn’t outrageous, but it was
out of the ordinary. …it was understandable for me cause when I was in elementary
school, our school was completely Afro-centered. I mean Kwanza and everything. You
had to be in 3rd grade and up to join this, we did African dances and the drums and
stuff…so I knew a little history about it…I know some different dances and what they
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call tradition or events and stuff where they do these traditional dances. …of course it
was out of the ordinary for them, but I understood it more. So we was walking back to
the house and I’m kind of known around the house, kind of around here too cause I
dance. I’m a hip hop dancer. So one of the guys was like I was trying to get your
attention or something like that and he just start…like he tried to show me what they was
doing which I already knew. He’s smiling and I was like that’s not funny. He’s like
what? I was like that’s not funny. I mean it’s a tradition… It’s a tradition of dance and
how they do it like that. I don’t know what happened cause I didn’t see him after
that…we just went in the house and went our separate way.
I: How did that make you feel? How did you interpret what he was doing?
S: I mean it was more his face…he was just smiling and laughing the whole time…
I: Did you think he was like making fun of it or laughing at it?
S: Yeah, cause he was like I know you can dance better than that. …it kind of bothered
me, because it’s not that I can dance better than him. That’s a traditional dance…and I
felt really bothered by it.
I: What about that exactly bothered you?
S: Cause first of all, they always try to get me to dance more, so they can do it their way
and…they try to do what I do and it doesn’t look right and so they’ll turn it to a joke and
then I don’t find it funny at all and so that’s why I feel like he was turning that into a joke
and then they find that funny. …then why would you do it to like a culture that I’m a part
of and do it?
I: Did you find that insulting?
S: A little.
I: Does that happen frequently to you here?
S: It happens, not a lot, but it happens.
I: And how does that impact your experience at [college] or how you think about your
school?
S: Sometimes I think it’s not their fault all the time. Ya know [college] doesn’t go by
who they think is going to do things like that. …it just opened my eyes… Ya know you
can hear stuff about what people say, but actually once you see it that’s when you like see
that’s dumb.
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I: When you’re actually a part of it, does that make you have a stronger reaction to it?
S: It makes me feel…like it reminds me that I’m African American. Cause see when I
was back at home ya know you’re not reminded day by day that you’re African American
because you’re surrounded by all of them and so you just act normal. But then you come
here and it’s all these different things. Sometimes they happen on purpose and
sometimes accidental, that remind me that I’m African American.
I: How does that feel to be reminded about that?
S: At first I was like shocked. I was like wow ya know. Dang, back up. Now it’s like,
I’ll just be like, “Just somebody else ignorant” ya know.
I: Does it ever get tiring to be reminded that way?
S: No, I don’t think, it would probably get tiring, but I haven’t got to that point yet…It
really doesn’t happen that much.
Daryl may have been engaged in reflective conversations about his experiences through his
participation in his school’s Malcolm X Center or an immersion study tour he took that focused
on African-American history and culture. He certainly would have benefited from the support of
a learning partnership as a way to process and make sense of his marginalizing experiences.
Despite receiving support from his fraternity brothers in some contexts, those learning
partnerships may have fallen short in the context of race.
Benjamin’s transition to college was a disorienting experience. Many of his friends did
not attend four-year institutions and this was a source of tension for Benjamin as he renegotiated
those relationships and thought about his identity during his first year:
S: …and it’s just, knowing that everyone else was just kicking back…and I was the one
going into the career center, doing all the work and it’s just, why am I doing all this work
if they’re not doing it? …that’s when I started learning a little bit more that I…I wasn’t
really who I thought I was. …learning that my friends didn’t make it…straight to a fouryear college and I did…I had two groups so most of one group did go to college but
they’re the nerds and…the other group was the ones that I really hanged out with and
none of them came to…four-year college so it just makes me kind of shaky, knowing that
I used to hang out with them and they didn’t get in here so I don’t know if I was hanging
out with…the right crew…how should I put a boundaries of who should I hang out with
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or who not ‘cause obviously I have a different values in life than them…that they didn’t
get into college.
I: So how do you think that influenced your relationship with…your friends from home?
S: Well, I try not to change it but it’s just time. …it’s changing no matter what. I try to
keep it the same but…they seem like they’re the ones that are putting…me up because I
go to college instead of me putting myself up ‘cause I’m going to college. They still have
that close-minded, I guess I can say, because I lived over there. They’re still in their own
little world that, well, if you go to college, you’re better…and that’s how I thought. And
now that I’m over here, well, anyone can make it to college. It’s just you gotta put effort
to it.
Benjamin was struggling to reconcile his past identity and expectations with his college identity
and expectations during his first few weeks of college:
S: It’s just, when I came to college I…was all into cars…and that’s all I wanted to do.
…I didn’t wanna meet new people, I didn’t wanna do anything that college brings to you
and then, once I was in here, little by little, you start liking it, interacting with other
people and this and that. So it’s just, you start learning different things that you
really…could learn from to…broaden…your life.
I: So what is it that you really started liking about it?
S: I’m still getting used to it so…it’s just been six weeks so I can’t really say, “I’ve
redefined myself to be this,” when…it took me eighteen years to refine myself back at
home. [laughs] …Well, I’m broadening…how I thought before so…I’m not in that
little…well, I’m still talking out of that little box I used to be in but it’s just…it’s hard to
do it in just…six weeks when…you basically built your whole life in there for…well, I
did for eighteen years and now…I can’t expect myself to pop out of it like that. …I think
not even throughout the four years or five years I go to college, I don’t think I’m gonna
pop out until I really go out to the real world and then I’ll be, “Oh, this is how it is now.”
So it’s…I think it’s just, every step you take is a different lifestyle you…you gotta get
used to. It’s like the fittest does it…What…? How is it?
I: Survival of the fittest?
S: Yeah, there you go. [laughs]
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Benjamin would have benefitted from processing his experiences with a diversity affairs
professional through reflective conversations. The educator could have helped Benjamin
negotiate his two worlds and find himself in the midst of these tensions. Benjamin was already
working to make sense of his new experiences and how they were influencing his perceptions of
himself. In his case it would have been particularly important for the educator to validate
Benjamin’s capacity to know to help him feel more confident in his abilities to make sense of his
experiences and determine his new perspectives of himself and his life. The diversity affairs
professional could do this by asking Benjamin to describe his considerations for attending
college, identify the benefits and limitations of his new situation in relation to his home life, and
discuss how his experiences and feelings since coming to college compared to the expectations
he had prior to college. Such questions would also situate learning in Benjamin’s experiences
and validate his thoughts as he described his conflicted thoughts and emotions (Baxter Magolda,
2004). The educator could have engaged Benjamin in mutual construction of meaning by
reassuring him that what he was experiencing during his transition to college was common for
many students, especially students of color (Benjamin is Mexican-American), and working
together to help Benjamin identify ways to manage his immediate dissonance as well as
strategies for processing and reflecting on his experiences and changing perspectives throughout
his college career. The educator could have also helped Benjamin consider his options in
maintaining or renegotiating relationships given his new ways of thinking. Such conversations
would have likely eased Benjamin’s transition and made his experience less overwhelming.
Benjamin seemed more comfortable in his college life during his second year and less
conflicted that his post-high school experiences diverged from those of his friends. Yet, he still
faced dissonance around his identities:
I: You talked in your introduction about how you were raised poor, and I’m wondering
how that is for you now as a college student.
S: Well, it just prepared me…like right now I don’t have that much money but then I
don’t see it as being poor anymore. I’m actually thankful I have clothes. I’ve got food. I
mean I have all the necessary things. …A lot of people tell me, “Oh, you’re still dressing
ghetto.” It’s like, that’s my style. …they portray how I dress to how I am and…My eyes
look at…I dress with how I’ve always been dressing. I’m not gonna change just because
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I came over here. Of course, you know, looking at other people does have an effect on
how you think now.
I: How has it affected you?
S: Well, sometimes with sweaters all worn out and sometimes people…will tell me, “Oh,
you need new sweaters” …sometimes I don’t want to wear it just because I don’t want to
be portrayed as this and that. But then I don’t really care. Why am I doing this or why
am I thinking like that.
I: Yeah, so how do you handle that?
S: I just process it and really think about it, like, “Oh, I should go shopping. I should do
this.” Sometimes my friends and we go out and buy clothes and then straight up
sometimes I just go return it after we’re gone I go return it because I don’t like the style.
So I try to fit in to what they’re trying to dress but then it’s just realize am I doing it for
myself or am I doing for them or am I doing it for who and if I don’t think I’m doing it
for myself then after awhile I process and say, “What am I doing?” So I think that it
takes me awhile but then it takes me back and makes me realize that it’s more what I
want instead of what other people want.
Benjamin was learning to mediate external influences on his own. However, if he had
established a relationship with a learning partner during his first two years of college he would
have likely had an easier time working through the dissonance that he experienced as a lowincome Latino college student. Benjamin is an example of a high-risk student who would have
significantly benefitted from an educator’s support as he navigated the challenges associated
with marginalization.
Daryl and Benjamin are examples of students who would have benefitted from
establishing learning partnerships with educators on their campuses, particularly in the area of
diversity affairs. Processing their experiences with others would have promoted these students’
development and eased their journeys through college.
Creating Reflective Campus Cultures
In the previous section I identified functional areas well-positioned, and often charged, to
support high-risk students. Reflective conversations based on the LPM (Baxter Magolda, 2004)
offer an effective strategy for educators in those areas to support high-risk students. Such
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conversations are particularly promising because they address the critical elements of
development identified in this chapter and the findings—developmental capacities, dissonance,
support, and self-reflection. In addition, the flexibility of these strategies allows them to be
tailored to fit the specific needs of different institutions, populations, and cultures. By
facilitating self-reflection and development these practices help students use the criteria for
sound decision making and foster the development of their internal voices, enabling them to
mediate external influences and dissonance.
In addition, all offices, not just those explicitly charged to work with high-risk students,
could use reflective conversations based on the LPM (Baxter Magolda, 2004). Residence life,
student activities, career services, and other student affairs departments, along with classrooms
beyond academic support, have the potential to learn more about high-risk students’ experiences
and promote their developmental and decision-making capacities through these processes. The
more opportunities high-risk students have to engage in learning partnerships, the more likely
they are to establish such relationships. Furthermore, LPM-based practice in all student affairs
and academic affairs divisions would also benefit students outside of the high-risk population as
they have opportunities to examine their own experiences and grow in their meaning-making
capabilities. Such practice would create an ethos of authentic, meaningful conversations in
which educators are partners with students. Changing campus culture by altering the
educator/learner relationship to support reflection, developmental capacities, and decision
making is the only way to ensure that high-risk students consistently and purposefully receive the
support they need to be academically successful and grow in their meaning-making capacities.
Future Research
This study elucidates the relationship between high-risk students’ developmental
capacities and decision-making processes. It also refines understanding of the complicated,
recursive relationship between personal characteristics (i.e., developmental capacities and selfreflection capabilities) and environmental conditions (i.e., dissonance and support) that mediate
high-risk students’ developmental meaning making and abilities to make good, well-informed
decisions. I offer recommendations for future study based on these outcomes.
My first recommendation stems from this study’s finding that complex developmental
capacities (i.e., an internal voice) are a necessary but insufficient condition for good, well135
informed decision making. Research examining the salience of particular developmental
dimensions (cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal) in relation to decision making would
provide better understanding of the relationship between decision making and developmental
capacities. Such research would identify how the different dimensions interact in the context of
decision making and whether a particular dimension is more salient than the others in decision
making. In addition, I identified dissonance, support, and self-reflection as dynamics that
influence students’ use of the decision-making criteria. Dimension-focused research has the
potential to identify other dynamics related to students’ decision making. Furthermore,
longitudinal research examining the relationship between decision making and developmental
capacities in students without high-risk characteristics would illuminate the nature of decision
making for that population. This work would provide a point of comparison between non-highrisk and high-risk students and identify differences in how the two groups make decisions, use
the criteria for sound decision making, and evolve in their decision making over time. It would
also provide an opportunity to determine if the nature of the environmental conditions and
personal characteristics that promote or inhibit development differ for the two populations.
Finally, longitudinal research that continued interviewing non-matriculating students (i.e., those
who stop-out, transfer schools, or drop-out) would have the potential to identify experiences,
environmental conditions, and personal characteristics unique to that group of students and may
offer suggestions for practice to improve the retention of some high-risk students. Additional
research examining the decision making of non-matriculating high-risk students could further
illuminate any differences that exist between matriculating and non-matriculating high-risk
students.
Further studies examining the intersections of dissonance, support, and self-reflection are
also needed to understand the nuances of these dynamics. Research exploring how these
dynamics promote or inhibit students’ engagement with dissonance would be particularly
beneficial given this study’s finding that some students experienced dissonance but did not
address it. Such work has the potential to identify other personal characteristics or
environmental conditions related to students’ engagement with dissonance as well. In addition,
this study found that students’ use of the decision-making criteria evolved as their developmental
meaning-making became more complex. Similar studies focused on self-reflection could
determine whether a parallel evolution occurs in students’ abilities to self-reflect as they grow
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developmentally, and if so, delineate the nature of that evolution. Such research could also
identify the specific conditions and experiences that facilitate or inhibit students’ abilities to selfreflect. Future research exploring the relationship between self-reflection and development
would further refine our understanding of development and potentially introduce new strategies
for effectively facilitating students’ development.
My final recommendation calls for research exploring the conditions that promote highrisk students’ developmental capacities. The students in this study identified conditions that
provided them with support and helped them develop (e.g., campus involvement in Greek
organizations and volunteer efforts). Future studies are needed to identify the specific practices
and characteristics of these beneficial experiences in order to refine student engagement efforts
to be developmentally effective and supportive of high-risk students. For example, some Greek
organizations promote development while others inhibit development. Research is needed to
identify: the differences between these two types of organizations; characteristics of supportive
organizations; practices for implementing the supportive elements; and practices for eliminating
harmful or unsupportive organizational components. Additional research on current practices in
place in support of high-risk students would also be beneficial. Such research could identify
practices that promote reflective conversations and learning partnerships and closely examine the
effects of those practices on high-risk students’ development.
Closing Thoughts
This longitudinal study refines understanding of high-risk students’ decision-making
processes, the relationship between developmental capacities and students’ abilities to make
good, well-informed decisions, and the relationship among conditions that mediate students’
development (i.e., dissonance, support, and self-reflection). These findings and interpretations
are not meant to be generalized directly to all high-risk students. However, the experiences of
the 22 students in this study and my interpretations of those experiences can serve to sensitize
researchers and educators, deepen understanding of decision making, development, and high-risk
students, and inform future research and practice. It is the responsibility of readers to determine
the extent to which and how this study best translates into the particular contexts of their work.
My hope is that this study prompts you to rethink and refine your understanding of high-risk
137
students, decision making, and development, and that you incorporate those insights into your
educational practice and/or research.
138
APPENDIX
139
APPENDIX A: Example of Combined Chart of Decision-Making & Developmental Profile
Decision Making
WNS Developmental
Assessment
Revised Developmental
Assessment
1. Student transitioning from
teen to adult; learning to
negotiate this transition
(excited about the freedom at
times; at other times likes
safety of parents).
Cognitive-values of family &
4
elders adopted from family [7] .
Agree w/Solely External
2. Respect for parents is value
shaping decisions.
Interpersonal-acts to acquire
parents’ approval [2], doesn’t
want to let them down [4] &
motivated to work hard by their
yelling [5].
Dustin
Year 1
3. Compartmentalizes world &
treats it as absolutes.
Intrapersonal-defined by
relationship w/family, motivated
by not disappointing them [2].
* Solely External
Year 2
1. Starting to make decisions
on his own but always
prioritizes parents’
expectations.
2. Progress from last year of
not seeing things in black/white
– his perspective & context
matter.
3. Values continue to play out
in his decision making (respect
for parents).
Cognitive-starting to question
info from media but using
external formulas adopted from
class to do it [2], sees multiple
perspectives but follows script
of college profs [3,5] – relies on
authorities to resolve conflicting
info.
Agree w/Solely External
Intrapersonal-beginning to
think about who he is, but
preliminary [10].
Interpersonal-defers to
external, family, didn’t take
break before college [7] doesn’t
want to disappoint them, defers
to girlfriend [8].
* Solely External
Year 3
1. Some decision making is
very practical – focused on
future, success & interests.
2. Continues to figure
out/struggle with how to
negotiate his independence
with his desire to meet parents’
expectations.
3. Struggles to accept/initiate
change when thinks it’s
necessary.
4
Cognitive-follows formulas,
script of college ‘pure partying’
[3,4], relies on profs as
authorities to tell him what’s
important [5].
Agree w/Solely External
Intrapersonal -external
motivations to overcome greed
& ambition, was reprimanded
[7].
Interpersonal-acts to get
approval but is getting
frustrated w/this, obligated to
help brother stressed him out
Numbers reference student quotes from Wabash National Study transcript summaries.
140
[9] & wants to make parents
proud, last hope [9].
* Solely External
Year 4
1. Entire transcript about
student taking ownership of his
life – present & future. Selfdirected & self-reliant.
Cognitive-sees need for own
vision of future & created his
own plans [2,3,4].
Agree w/Leaving the
Crossroads
Intrapersonal-confidence &
direction, self-reflected to
clarify vision of identity & goals
[3], experience w/fraternity [1]
& refined view of family [2]
increased confidence & gave
internal voice & identity.
Looking for external validation
w/credentials [4].
Interpersonal-less reliant on
family [2].
* Leaving the Crossroads
Summary
of 4
years
Shaky at first, knew he was in
time of change, liked it on 1
level (freedom), not on another
(no safety of parents). Middle
ground of decision making on
own, but struggled to negotiate
with desire to meet parents’
expectations. At end he’s
figured it out – ownership of
decision making & life, selfdirected & true to his values.
Student progressed from
SOLELY EXTERNAL to
LEAVING the CROSSROADS.
In first 3 yrs student was
consumed by pleasing his
family. After joining fraternity
he gained confidence &
changes in family dynamics
spurred him to have increased
confidence & direction.
Reflected on what he wanted,
not worrying about what would
make his parents happy &
began listening to his internal
voice for the 1st time in year 4.
* Movement
to
Reflective Ownership of
Decision Making
141
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