A Congitive Developmental Approach to Adult Learning



Running Head: A CogNitive Developmental Approach to Adult Learning

A Cognitive Developmental Approach

to Adult Learning

Ray S. Jones

2000

Abstract

This paper explores cognitive psychological development adapting to it an organizational learning approach in an original way in order to derive a possible application for individual adult learning. The cognitive development model of Robert Kegan (1994, 1982) is superimposed on the narrative form of organizational learning (Tenkasi & Boland, 1993) with the purpose of extracting implications for the individual learner. A social psychological cognitive perspective based upon scripts common to the meaning making approach provide a structure for these implications.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to explore one current and appealing model of cognitive psychological development, adapting to it an organizational learning approach in a way that I believe has not been proposed before, and from this derive a possible application for individual adult learning. I will begin with an examination of the cognitive development model of Robert Kegan (1994, 1982). Then, from a proposal to consider narrative as a form of organizational learning (Tenkasi & Boland, 1993), extract implications for the individual learner. Tenkasi and Boland had argued that cognitive psychology is the wrong framework from which to approach learning. However, they only discussed the computer metaphor model of cognition (Varella, 1991), which is not a universally accepted model. Yet, when Tenkasi and Boland’s approach is considered from a social psychological cognitive perspective, many new possibilities arise. It is these possibilities that I believe can affect adult learning. The basis for this argument is derived from Abelson’s (1976) theory of scripts, the importance of which appear to be a common meaning making approach with direct implications for training design. Kolb’s (1971, 1984) learning theory will provide a structure for these implications.

Robert Kegan (1994, 1982) has produced what can be described as a post-Piagetian theory of adult cognitive-social development. He has described his theory over a ten year span, principally with two major publications. During this period of time, Kegan has been at Harvard with William Perry, Harold Gardener, and Michael Basseches, other notables in the field of educational psychology. Readers of the works of these theorists will not a similarity in the role of the cognitive process to that described by Luria (1973), Ellis (1979), and Piaget (1954, 1957, 1976), and the social learning theories represented in Bruner (1986), and Bandura (1963, 1986). It should be remembered that the three aforementioned cognitive theorists dealt with the realms of biological, sociological, and psychological human development. These realms were considered by many eminent early Twentieth Century theorists as being exclusive. The strength of the behaviorist movement in the United States, occurring coincidentally with the Genevan cognitive school, were destined to conflict. At least one writer, Bruce, 1994, describes the results of this clash at the Hixson Symposium in 1948. Others, Baars (1986), Gardner (1985), and Howe (1990) provide an in depth review of these issues.

The evolution of social developmental theory possessing a defining crisis has provided a rich theoretical environment that Kegan tapped into. Kegan’s (1982), The Evolving Self, provided a post-Piagetian model of the development of human consciousness, important in its extension of cognitive development beyond adolescence. In his second work, In Over Our Heads, 1994, Kegan refines his concepts of self as a perceiving consciousness, and discusses the implications of post-Piagetian theory in the complex content of our real world. It is this complex content in which adults must make sense of conflicting and competing demands, in order to succeed in work undertakings as well as in the undertaking of learning and developing. I would argue that the realms of work, learning, and development are conceptually close to epistemological realms of sociological, psychological, and biological in regards to the existence of any human in the late Twentieth Century context. It is the application of Kegan’s theory to this context that provides the powerful potential of this work. Kegan is no self-help writer, offering step by step help. He offers a perspective that can continue to be tested, and has a very reasonable applicability to therapy, education, and training. It is this theory, and some of it’s predecessors that I will discuss in this paper, and what I believe is their importance to teaching and training adults.

Jean Piaget was a discoverer, an explorer as important as Magellan. Where as Magellan sailed uncharted waters with navigation devices of his own crafting, so too did Piaget sail uncharted waters of the mind with navigation devices of his own design. Piaget explored the perceptive processes of children with half full water beakers, discovering that the ability to reflect on sensations and actions is connected to chronological maturity, and that consciousness must develop in its capability to provide the child with a widening view of the world (1976). A reading of Piaget’s works will inform the reader that Piaget was did not fancy himself a developmental theorist or psychologist, but considered himself a genetic epistemologist (Kegan, 1982, pg. 26). Yet, he captured the human ability to see the reality of the world without having experienced all of it, and recognized how it developed through childhood to the adult state. This understanding of developmental movement has far reaching implications. Briefly reviewing Piaget’s Era I of physical - cognitive development, one finds the child developing from pure reflex as its only response to stimuli, to a search for and eventual resolution of absent objects; all within the first two years of life. I believe an equivalent intellectual growth for an adult would be Forrest Gump to Stephen Hawkins in the same period. The subsequent Eras are less dramatic, but show the increasing ability to relate from the internal sensory perspective to a capacity for reasoning about reasoning.

Kegan (1982), using Piaget’s development theory as a basis, makes a strong case for refining the theory beyond the last Era, Operational Thought, into stages of adult cognitive development. He does this through the paradoxical device of subject-object. Kegan perceives Piaget’s stages as the consequence of how children deal with the relationship of themselves as either the object or subject of perception. The subject-object balance, argues Kegan (1982), is an evolutionary movement of differentiation. In other words, the person emerges from embeddedness, in which the child sees itself as one together with all it perceives, to a reintegration with the world rather than embeddedness in it. The infant, Piaget believed (cited in Kegan, 1982), perceived the parent playing hide-and-seek, as actually being physically removed from its perceptive space. The infant at this point is of the world it sees; it conceives of no other possibility than here or gone. It is embedded in its world as a fully subjective entity. Yet, soon the infant constructs a permanence about objects that lead to perceiving the world as independent of its own perceptions. This objective view is a differentiation of perspective. Throughout childhood, the person renegotiates its embeddedness as it develops more complex cognitive abilities.

Piaget discussed assimilation and accommodation as principal means of integrating new perspectives, and these concepts are equally relevant to adults. Assimilation being the integration into one’s world view through the mechanism of reorganizing perspective (schema) to accept the new information. This is the root of attitude change, sort of a rearranging house to make room for the new. Accommodation was less reintegrative, being the use of some mechanism to allow coexistence with the new concept; perhaps a trying on of the new to see how it fits, or even use of defense mechanisms in the Freudian sense. Kegan believes Piaget demonstrated in the biological sense, indeed Piaget was a geneticist by training, that the human develops by periods of dynamic stability and balance followed by periods of qualitative instability and qualitatively new balance. To Kegan (pg. 44), the key question is to what extent does the organism differentiate itself from and thus relate itself in a new manner to the world?

This is an approach to assimilation and accommodation that allows for more complexity of an adult context. This differentiation/relating is the basis of meaning. The person receives much sensory stimuli in any given period of time; only selected elements of this plethora of stimulation is allowed into the person’s perceptions in a permanent way. This acceptance and integration results when the stimuli are arranged perceptively by the individual in a manner that endows them with meaning. It is when stimuli have meaning that the individual will potentially reintegrate, assimilate, and learning will occur. The specific cultural triggers to the process take on importance, especially when considering the role of cognition in learning.

There has been intriguing research into the process of meaning making in adults. In one study, McAdams and associates (1976) theorized that mid-life adults constructed plans for the future from the dual perspectives of complexity and generativity. Generativity considered by them a mostly adult phenomena. They cited work by Neugarten (1986) and others that characterized adult lives “in terms of relative complexity versus simplicity at a given point in time,” (p.800). McAdams et al. described a multifaceted environment and highly differentiated schedules for work and personal activities in which change, diversity, challenge, and growth occur. In opposition to this complex environment is one that is more simplistic, absent obstacles, and uncomplicated and stable. From this contrast, McAdams et al. determined that amount and diversity of goals and emphasis on growth and change would provide the evidence of complexity that could be evaluated in terms of ego development. Citing Loevinger’s construct of ego development (1976) and measurement (1978), McAdams et al. (p.801), hypothesized that “higher ego development will be associated with greater complexity in an adult’s personal plan for the future.” McAdams and his fellow researchers did not address cognition directly, however, their research suggests a relationship between complexity and other cognitive processes.

Michael Basseches (1985) described developmental transformations occurring because of constitutive and interactive relationships, in which relationships make each party to the relationship what they are, while concurrently being in a state of action. In this way he defined dialectical thinking in adults, which is beyond formal thinking because dialectical thinking implies ability to recognize continuity in anomalous situations. The cognitive ability to confront events not previously faced through the use of dialectical thinking indicates the importance of complexity to development. Certainly all adults are not operating at the level of dialectic thinking, however Basseches (1985, 1988) and others (Commons, et al., 1984, and Mines & Kitchner, 1986) believe dialectic thinking results from cognitive development, with the highest incidence of occurrence in adulthood. The second process has been described by Abelson (1976, p.33) as a “coherent sequence of events expected by the individual, involving him either as a participant or as an observer.” This “script” as he termed it, is learned throughout a lifetime and varies from individualized to universal depending on the nature of the causal events. It is reasonable to assume that child rearing, social motives, and plans for the future may be culturally weighted and derived from a “script” that has been cognitively internalized. McAdams et al., do not directly address scripts; but they do provide evidence that degrees of complexity can affect ego development. From this information I will make an assumptive leap that complexity also affects learning as a cognitive developmental process.

Abelson’s (1976) concept of scripts reflects Piaget’s schemata theory, and as described by Abelson, operates at an integrated level. Scripts may be internalized and called upon to address a specific class of situations, thus reflecting internalized schema, and may even have become ego components in the sense of Loevinger (1976). The difference between Piaget’s and Abelson’s concepts is demonstrated in the contrast between the purposes of schema and script. Schema is the set of learned perceptions that pulls together ideas and information about a stimulus, while script is an internalized operation called upon by the schema to respond to the stimuli. Thus, script as a concept extends Piaget’s theory into a realm of adult context. One can recognize scripts as the mechanism which the adult goes about collecting new information that may reinforce the script or its originating schema, may facilitate assimilation that changes the schema and script, or becomes accommodated through other adaptive mechanisms. Without further elucidation it is evident that script and schema are important concepts for training design, because information structured by an educator or trainee will create the most behavior change if it can effect assimilation (differentiation followed by integration) into new schema.

Kegan (1982, p.32) describes this process as evolving a new “psychologic,” which is the relationship of subject-object in a person’s perception. Perhaps this occurs before scripts change, in that scripts require some testing for their effectiveness before they become internalized. This may be why adults can assimilate behavior change before they show direct evidence of it, sort of a “mulling over” effect. If one considers the nature of script as an object, not subject, in other words as the activity itself, then techniques to facilitate scripting are easier to discern. One particular technique that has become prevalent in research concerns the use of qualitative interview information. This approach relies upon verbal interchange in an interview (see Belenkey, 1986 and Gilligan, 1982, for examples), and result in theory development as the process is described by Glasser and Strauss (1967). Qualitative forms of information exchange, such as the story telling, anecdote, and narrative have been used in teaching and training for many years, especially in the social sciences area. Extending the concept of narrative as a method for organizational learning was explored at the University of Southern California, by Tenkasi & Boland (1993), and has interesting parallels with individual learning.

Tenkasi & Boland (1993, p.1) wrote that “It is in narratives that we find cognitive structures and schemas being produced and reproduced. As our narratives change, structures change. Narratives are the generative process in cognition.” They argue that meaning making and subsequent changes in the structures of meaning are represented in organizational action, because “in action…we produce and reproduce the systems of signification, domination, and legitimation that define our organizational structures and our culture at large” (p. 4). This argument offers many possibilities for both understanding adult learning and describing organizational learning. Unfortunately, the paper by Tenkasi & Boland focuses on narrative as the principle means of learning, replacing all cognitive models as representational of digital computer operations. Their argument neglects the social and psychological components of more complete views, such as Kegan’s (1994, 1982) described above. Drawing from Gidden’s work in social theory (cited in Tenkasi & Boland, 1993), Tenkasi & Boland (1993) rightly disagree with cognitive structural-functionalism as an incomplete representation of cognitive processes. Structural-functionalism can be likened to a computer metaphor, and has been outlined as such by Varela et al., (1991). However, Tenkasi & Boland (1993) incorrectly imitate that Varela as his associates (cited in Tenkasi & Boland, 1993, p. 3) have established what would be a metatheory relying on a computer model of the human brain as the “central tool and guiding metaphor of cognitivism.” Varela, as well as other organizational and psychological theorists (Bruner, Stubbart, Gardner) are cited by Tenkasi & Boland (1993) as contributing to the digital computer as the predominant model for cognitive theory as applied to groups. This representation is not wholly accurate.

Jerome Bruner (cited in Baars, 1986, p. 71), who had been influenced by psychoanalytic theory, did propose in the late 1950’s that motivation may influence perceptions, and did considerable work through the 1970’s in representing this perception process in a conceptual model. Close examination of Bruner’s early work shows his inclination toward modeling perception as he and other early cognitive theorists sought empirical defense for their challenges to behaviorism. His professional association with George Miller and Noam Chomsky (cited in Baars, 1986, p. 210), theorists who based their cognitive work on linguistics, which easily fell into representational models, does not, however, assume Bruner to be an advocate of the computational metaphor, as Tenkasi & Boland (1993) suggest Bruner, in fact, produced more qualitative social theory than most of his contemporaries, and as a result his influence has been limited in experimental psychology according to Baars (1986). George Miller, in an interview with Bernard Baars (1986, p.210), stated “When Jerry Bruner and I started the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard, did we mean to exclude anything that a computer can’t do? Emotion, will, motivation? No, of course not.” I also disagree with Tenkasi & Boland’s (1993, p.5) position that Howard Gardner supports “making the computer model of the mind a dominant aspect of the whole field…” I find no such evidence in Gardner’s (1985), The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. More recently, in 1993, Gardner wrote (p.7) “I define intelligence…as the ability to solve problems, or to fashion products, that are valued in one or more cultural or community settings.” This definition cannot be workable from a purely digital computational standpoint. Likewise, one will find no direct support for the computer model in Kegan (1994, 1982).

Unfortunately, Tenkasi & Boland (1993) have weakened their compelling argument for narrative learning as a cognitive process by theoretically demanding all or nothing. Their (p. 1) fundamental view that narrative learning is the basic organizing principle of cognition is a fascinating perspective but it is not supported empirically, and is difficult for me to accept for the very reason they argue for it. The cognitive process they describe exists in paradoxical state. People create the cognitive model while they are themselves not using it to learn from, yet this process becomes the model for learning. This paradox is, in my opinion, the very reason some cognitive structuration is necessary to understand learning. With schema and like processes, the circular differentiating – relating explained by Kegan (1982) balances the natural tensions between existing knowledge and what to do about the newly perceived. Additionally, the work of Kahnemann & Tversky (1974) on heuristics in decision making, that of Kohlberg (1973), Toulmin (1974), Selman (1971), and Chandler & Boyes (1982) reporting on social cognitive processes, provides extensive support for the presence of underlying cognitive structure. Narrative alone does not fill the bill. Nonetheless, Tenkasi & Boland provide an extremely compelling argument for consideration of narrative as a meaning making process. For that reason I will discuss their points most relevant to adult learning processes.

The affect of narrative on learning in adults can be described as “application”. An adult will understand a written text by relating it to its own context in terms of examples from experience; thus this application process relies upon the individual perceiving the world from a unique and particular point of view (this may be represented as ego identity, self, or other such encompassing ideas). Therefore, understanding is a mediation between text and the reader (Tenkasi & Boland, 1993, p. 12). Certainly a child uses this process, but the adult possesses greater amounts of experience that has been integrated and reintegrated. This broader adult cognitive foundation and more complex context makes for learning differently than the child. I will not use space further to describe or define these differences between child and adult learning processes, but recommend Merriam & Caffarella (1991) for a more complete discussion.

Tenkasi & Boland (p. 13) write: “Cognitive work is required of the reader to find a way to understand text. It entails bringing a sense of the whole to a reading [of] even the first words, yet remaining open to allow the sense of the whole to emerge from the words themselves. This…hermeneutic circle…is fraught with paradox and indeterminacy. It involves different and divergent understandings which have to play off one another in the process of gaining meaning.” Humans, according to Tenkasi & Boland, must address this indeterminacy in order to learn. The manner of doing this is derived from Gidden’s modalities of structuration (cited in Tenkasi & Boland, 1993, p. 20). According to this view, people measure external stimuli with a rationalization process that represents personal perspectives on goals, plans, interactions, reactions, surroundings, and other meanings. This process, according to Tenkasi & Boland (p. 21) is “impelled by and involves giving narrative accounts of our actions to ourselves and others…narrativizing our experience in a way that makes is believable and livable within the canons of signification, legitimation, and domination that is our culture.” At this point in the discussion of narrative, one can find commonality with Bruner’s (cited in Tenkasi & Boland, 1993, p. 24) observation that “…narrativizing our experience is not a match with a reality or a predefined system of logic…but achievement of coherence, livability, and adequacy.” Likewise, Abelson’s (1976) scripts, which operate at an integrated level to address specific situations, reflect this concept. Clearly, it is possible under this rubric to see where narrative would affect, and perhaps construct schemas. The power of narrative receives excellent treatment by Rosaldo (1993) in Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. For example, Rosaldo (1993, p. 131), notes that narrative analysis places potentially discrete factors within larger sets of relationships, rather than isolating them as separate variables. He observes (p. 135) that time and narrative are dialectically related because time becomes human when shaped by narrative form, and narrative becomes meaningful when it depicts human experience in the flow of time. Taken together, these views support narrative as a basic process for determining construction and change in external context; whether narrative is the principle means of meaning making is arguable.

A consideration for the role of myth in culture demonstrates the role of narrative processes in a manner that resembles scripting of cultural schema. Bruner (cited in Rosaldo, 1993, p. 129) has observed that people tell stories to one another because stories embody compelling motives, strong feelings, and vague aspirations. Rosaldo believes that such stories can shape behavior and define reality. In culture as well as in organizations, the repetitive story becomes revered of itself, and takes on encompassing proportions as myth. Dandridge et al., (1980, p. 80) define myths as “culture specific, shared semantic systems that enable members of a given culture to understand and to cope with the unknown.” Kamens (1977) discussed how organizations legitimize myths, thereby incorporating them into the organization’s culture. Myth being a group or cultural phenomena, it nonetheless both affects individuals and is constructed by them.

Kegan (1994) proposes that some individual meaning making is derived from our cultural membership. This becomes a second order, or once removed from the individual meaning-making structure, and allows for individual failure to take responsibility for certain constructs that result in the invented nature of the resulting construct, for example ethnocentrism. Kegan proposes that adults can pursue a self-expansion through both therapy and learning, which can alleviate the cultural baggage described. The transmission of myth can be the printed word when myth is elevated to some acceptance of truth, or the narrative. Tenkasi & Boland describe an organizational change process at the Planned Parenthood organization, showing the narrativizing of identities that were important to the change process. They describe members of the organization applying metaphors to link their own identity to a narrative of how the organization should change, thereby lending both creditability and value to the narrative, which becomes the structure for the subsequent change. The metaphors used (p. 28) reflect existing cultural meanings, for example “Marcus Welby-like care giving.” These cultural meanings fit the definition of myth provided by Dandridge (1980). Tenkasi & Boland argue here for the consideration of narrative as determining the schemas that will be used to effect change. I mostly disagree with this conclusion, believing that the narrative in fact reflects cultural schemas, to include myth, value schemas, and the results of an assimilation into existing schema. Yet, the paradox remains, in that the narrative elements of the change process integrate schemas while in turn being affected by the schemas. This paradox is important to the teaching of adults, because, as stated above, adults have considerable experience and integrated attitudes, values, and perceptions that are at work within this circular paradoxical process. There is considerable research that supports the value of experience in adult learning, and directly demonstrates the use of narrative like learning processes (Kolb, 1984, provides a good example).

Narrative is more appealing to listeners than data because of analogy, which provides a causal link that is salient to the listener. Analogy and similarity have been shown to affect learning and transfer processes. Holyoak and Koh (1987) reported results of a study that concluded accuracy in transfer depended on the degree of match between causal structures. They attributed this result to a matching process in which an individual assesses a topic and then matches it to a target. This occurs in short term memory until the target is located in long term memory, then a mapping process links the new topic with the target topic. The mapping involves making inferences about the relationship between the topics, adapting to either or both as necessary, and then analogizing the result, ending up with a newly designed schema, or topic. In 1993, Gentner et al. further extended the role of similarity in transfer, by reporting that different similarity processes are at work in determining likeness. In some cases subjective soundness was related to relational structure in that determinations of salience depended upon fit and function of the similarities. In these cases similarity by itself would only influence the accessing of a prior topic (fit), but would not assure a match necessary for the transfer if the topic functions were not a sound match (function). The importance of these findings is that we can assume that cognitive association may be based on similarity, which may be a learning process in that some cognitive change occurs as a result, but may not provide the necessary soundness for conceptual remembering. This supports a view that in an analogical (narrative) teaching process similarity of concept is most salient for the learning of concepts, and bears up that people rely on existing knowledge to pattern new ideas.

The use of existing knowledge (internalized representations) to pattern new ideas is exactly what Ward (1994) reported in his study of imagination. He suggested that imagination is limited by the existing schemas, but at higher levels of cognitive process, such as dialectical thinking, the results of the combinations can be complex. (Basseches, 1988, proposed that dialectic thinking is a later state of adult development in which relating of valuations occurs in a true dialectic manner.) In an examination of schema development in imagination, McKenzie (1994), found that intuitive judgment strategies were enhanced when subjects considered alternative strategies (complexity), thus providing access to more existing schemas. That McKenzie used intuition is important because intuition would rely on internalized representations that could be acquired from analogy or narrative processes. Intuition in this sense is a judgment process as opposed to a reasoning process which would involve the application of learned rules of logic to evaluate options.

Among the phenomena important to the study of cognitive processes are cognitive perspectives that adults hold in regard to many external events. The perspective that allows a person to subjectively believe or disbelieve is a judgment process according to Smith, Benson, and Curley (1991). They outlined a model in which reasoning is used to translate data into conclusions, while judgmental processes qualify those conclusions with degrees of belief. In this model cognitive activity involves the use of existing knowledge and beliefs to reach conclusions. Selected conclusions are thus grounded in data, matters of fact, or opinion deemed relevant. The relevance and evidenciality encompass the way humans conceive interdependencies among phenomena. Smith et al., argue that judgment is a nonsymbolic process that characterizes stimuli across certain dimensions, while reasoning is the propositional content of evidence (see Kahneman & Tversky, 1974, for more discussion of reasoning and judgment). This is also important to the concept of how visual representations are stored. Cave et al. (1994) wrote that the interaction of a visual image stimulus with a visual image representation occurs before spatio-topic coordination and transformation can happen. In other words, people probably do not store visual images based on a spatial schema, but possibly use a storage process involving relationships between subsets of objects in the visual field. This would infer that abstract representations are called upon to cause as associative recall; thus visual representations would also be important to conceptual thought. If judgment is nonsymbolic, as Smith et al., argue, then the judgment process could involve accessing representations in the same manner as visual objects (Cave et al.).

What does this all mean to adult learning processes? For one thing, if these studies are an accurate representation of what occurs, then adults learn through a complex balance of similarity and association, storing the results in a pattern of concepts rather than data points. The recall of learning occurs through a multitude of means from intuition to logical reasoning, a process based, most likely, on the context of both the learning and recall environment and the presented problem. This represents an embeddedness relevant to the adult. When narrative is considered as a process to access this embeddedness, a possible conclusion is that narrative is an important cognitive process for adults to maintain a subject-object balance.

The subject-object balance described by Kegan (1982) has evolved by 1994, into five orders of consciousness in which the influence of William Perry, Kegan’s teacher (Kegan, 1994, p. 277) and Michael Basseches, his contemporary, is evident. These orders of consciousness are both hierarchical and progressive, and define the possibilities for educational expectation. Kegan believes that most adults have reached the third order, “Traditionalism.” At this level, a person has evolved beyond Piaget’s formal operational stage, into a post-formal capacity. Kegan defines the condition of this level in terms of subject-object. Subjectivity and self consciousness characterize the individual’s inner states, where the person can reflect upon the world in consideration of his own subjectivity, but does not evaluate or relate to this subjectivity. The individual in this stage remains concrete, reflecting his own points of view and preferences, but has not evolved the ability to abstract from his subjective perspective to an object that can be evaluated externally, as only an object could be evaluated. It is at this typically adult order of consciousness that I propose narrative is a principle stimulus for making meaning. The traditionalist perceives the external from a lens of self that reflects the unique and particular point of view that is the individual. As discussed above, narrative serves as the application of some reality to conceptualization, through similarity, representation, and association. At the third order of consciousness the individual’s cognitive structure represents meaning across and among categories, allowing hypothesis generation, inference, and generalization. This order level apparently works fairly well for most adults in home, avocation, and work contexts. When the adult becomes exposed to a learning context that attempts to change existing schema, such as affective or cognitive training realms, then difficulties with order three become evident. Kegan (1994, p. 273) describes the evolving central intellectual mission for adult education to be self directed learning. However, he cautions (p. 275) that “educators seeking ‘self-direction’ from their adult students are not merely asking them to take on new skills, modify their learning style, or increase their self-confidence. They are asking many of them to change the whole way they understand themselves, their world, and the relation between the two.” This directly moves the adult from perceiving mutuality as the subject of perception, to mutuality as the object of these perceptions, thereby requiring autonomy, identity, and individuation to occupy the space left in the subjective perspective.

What I have attempted to do is combine some existing theory into a practical cognitive model of learning. A summary of the points described above can be condensed into this model as follows:

• Humans change their perspective, or view of reality, as part of a normal social-psychological-biological development, as they gather and make meaning of information, and in response to stimuli that require either an adaptive response (accommodation) or a change in perspective (assimilation)

• Humans developmentally alter their perspective in a manner that evolves from an increasingly complex differentiation of self in relation to the world, known as ego development.

• Humans build scripts that provide a means to address new situations, based upon existing knowledge or schema.

• More complexity in developmental achievement will provide recognition of continuity in anomalous situations, or higher order cognitive processing.

• Narratives are representational scripts that contain information, culture, and a link into internal cognitive processes – they are the verbalization of scripting.

- Analogy and similarity provide matching and then mapping of narrative to schema

- Mapping to schema is necessary in different ways to the process of judgment and reasoning. In reasoning it matches logical and “real” information to action, while in judgment processes it characterizes stimuli along nonsymbolic dimensions such as attitudes and values. This is seen in the process of associating abstract visual images which appears to be a conceptual rather than spatial relationship.

- Imagination and intuition are, under this model, judgments rather than reasoning processes.

From this information it appears that there is a continuum of scripting. In a linear fashion it could be described as occurring from the most rational of processes, assessing logical data in a reasoning effort, to the other end of the continuum in which imagination and intuition are evolved from nonsymbolic processes. I would argue that the process is not linear, but the continuum provides a workable model for discussion. The activities on the logical end of this continuum would be the ones most affected by external events, the most immediate access points for experiential learning. This does not preclude subsequent nonsymbolic meaning making, but is likely the first point of entry for the ongoing. The intuitive end of the continuum is where symbolism and abstraction occur. It may be here that narrative forms of instruction are most relevant. I believe that this cognitive model can be used to understand adult learning. One way to test this idea is to see how it aligns with an existing model of adult learning. The learning theory of Kolb (1984) provides practical boundaries for this comparison.

David Kolb described four phases of learning from experience: Concrete experience, Reflective Observation, Abstract Conceptualization, and Active Experimentation. These phases or stages are sequential, beginning with learning from direct interaction with the environment. While Kolb (1981) proposed these as sequential stages in the development of learning how to learn, he did not apply them to learning as fixed stages. Instead, he believed that people pass through the stages sequentially, and may remain in a stage in a particular interaction with the environment. He further proposed that a stage becomes preferred by individuals, and each of us would have one stage in which we most often operated. He defined these stages as follows:

• Concrete Experience, the first stage, is characterized by personal involvement with others. This facilitates a tendency for reliance on feelings more than logic in problem solving. These people are more adaptable to change.

• Reflective Observation is the stage where understanding of different perspectives occurs. Kolb believed that people relying on this stage used feelings to form opinions.

• Abstract Conceptualization relies on logic rather than feelings to understand problems. Systematic planning characterized people in this stage.

• The last stage is Active Experimentation in which the individual takes an active role in influencing the situation. People in this stage have a practical approach and value results.

Kolb (1971) further developed “Learning Styles” from these stages, but the application is not as important to the theory in this discussion.

When I overlay the cognitive model developed above on Kolb’s (1984) stages, it appears that Concrete Experience aligns with earlier cognitive development in which self is the object of perspective. It could be expected that as people develop scripts and assimilate new information, the reliance on direct involvement with the environment will change. Evolving schemata could be expected to accommodate less and assimilate more, or growth would cease. At the point of moving from self as object to other as object, a person could be expected to acknowledge different points of view. This objectivity is still a reasoning, logical comparison, and may not involve a truly holistic viewpoint. In these two stages similarity would ease access to stored information, probably symbolic and spatial. However, as a person becomes capable of abstract conceptualization, the development of plans based on ideation would occur. This represents accessing more abstract script processes. This stage, I believe, is most like Piagetian post-formal thought (Kegan, 1982). The last stage, active experimentation is described by Kolb (1984) as influencing or changing the environment, with elements of ingenuity. Some aspects of this definition are hard to align with Kegan’s (1982) cognitive development, such as Kolb’s practical approach and need to act. In this case I believe that because Kolb focused on expressed learning rather than cognitive processes he reported a phenomena rather than a process. The dialectic thinker must engage his or her environment with regularity in order to maintain the diverse perceptions necessary to this mode of thought. Kolb saw this interaction, and reported it as a more narrowly defined learning stage. I feel that Kegan’s theory offers more flexibility towards understanding the dynamics involved.

The results of this epistemological exercise offer interesting implications for designing adult training approaches. First, if the process of information integration and reintegration in adult schemas relate to perceptions (ego development) and these perceptions can be described in terms of the embeddedness of the object-subject relationships, then these relationships are an access point for learning. Second, if the level of complexity affects cognitive development, and if complexity of cognitive output reflects cognitive capability, then appropriately moderating levels of complexity to capability will affect effectiveness of the learning. This is not surprising, I believe trainers and educators have recognized issues with complexity for some time. What I propose is that the paradigm be changed from matching complexity with learning objectives and audience, to actively moderating complexity as a positive developmental affect when strategizing learning approaches. In other words find ways to design training at concurrently different levels of complexity, actively moderating its impact during presentation of the information. I believe this is a dialectic capability that educators can themselves learn, and the best use now. Conceptually, I believe complexity offers a link between education and development that is not well understood. Last, if scripting is a human method for integration and reintegration in adults, then external representation scripts such as narratives are an important method to access embedded object-subject relationships. This means to me, that experiential and synectical learning strategies are most likely to be relevant to adult learning, but that educators must find salient ways to use them as developmental process.

The adult learner is a product of individually unique social-cultural, psychological, and biological development events. This results in individualized perceptions and capabilities. However, there are common threads between all of the family of man, while some threads are only more culturally differentiated. One process appears to provide a mechanism for making meaning of the relationship between the individual and his or her context, and that is narrative. The developmental process and the perceptions of reality appear to be accessible through narrative, and as such provide a unique opportunity to affect both. Thus, training design should take this process into account. To ignore human cognitive development forgoes potentially, for the future of an individual is the development that is yet to happen. When we find ways to raise cognitive capabilities to more dialectical levels, then I believe we are on to ways to reduce less desirable aspects of behavior from social and organizational perspectives.

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