Aracelie_Reading Pt II_23 Feb_”Making Their Own Way…”

Posted by on February 21, 2010 
Filed under Reading logs

Making Their Own Way:  Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to Promote Self-Development by Marcia B. Baxter Magolda

The second portion of the book, Promoting Self-Authorship in Higher Education, takes the observations her interviews with the participants in their 20s and presents an actual framework for use with higher education.  It is a “framework consisting of three core assumptions and three principles for educational practice to connect the assumptions to students’ development”.   The core assumptions are that knowledge is complex and socially constructed, self is central to knowledge construction, and expertise is shared mutually in knowledge construction.  The three accompanying principles are to validate learners as knowers, situate learning in learners’ experience, and define learning as mutually constructing meaning.

After the overview of the framework, the author discusses the experiences of the participants within higher education institutions.  She begins with the participants’ graduate education experiences and highlights many of the differences the participants found when they compared those experiences to their undergraduate years.  Many discovered they were afforded opportunities to apply their experiential knowledge and to share their opinions and beliefs.  “Critique, feedback, and ongoing evolution of perspectives were mainstays in their experiences” (p 211).

And with that I must continue reading, because the book is much larger than I anticipated…

Comments



One Response to “Aracelie_Reading Pt II_23 Feb_”Making Their Own Way…””

  • Darren Cambridge on February 23rd, 2010 5:48 pm    

    I know this is a lot to process quickly, but you’ve done an excellent job of summarizing the key ideas of the book so far.

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