Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship (review)
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Society expects college students and graduates to "assume positions of responsibility," "manage complexity and engage multiple perspectives," "gather and judge relevant evidence . . . to make decisions," and "act in ways that benefit themselves and others equitably and contribute to the common good" (p. xviii). Based on Baxter Magolda's longitudinal study of intellectual development, the Learning Partnerships Model (LPM) introduces learners to those expectations. It is a framework for promoting self-authorship, "the internal capacity to define one's beliefs, identity, and relations with others" (p. 8). The LPM "portray[s] learning as a complex process in which learners bring their own perspectives to bear on deciding what to believe and simultaneously share responsibility with others to construct knowledge (p. xviii). Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship presents the LPM and practical examples from the college course, program, and institutional levels of how to prepare young adults for the professional, civic, and personal challenges of their lives.
Learning Partnerships is divided into four parts. In Part I: A Theoretical Framework to Educate for Self-Authorship, Baxter Magolda describes self-authorship as the common goal of 21st century education (chapter 1) and the LPM (chapter 2). Based on several reports, she argues that contemporary college learning outcomes should include cognitive maturity, an integrated identity, and mature relationships. [End Page 453] Maturity in these three areas enables effective citizenship. She asserts that "educational practice has yet to be substantively reformed to facilitate these outcomes," in part because of the lack of attention paid to the "developmental foundations on which complex learning outcomes stand" (p. 7). Those learning outcomes require self-authorship. The foundations of those learning outcomes involve three dimensions of development—epistemological (how people use assumptions about the nature, limits, and certainty of knowledge to make knowledge claims), intrapersonal (how people view themselves and construct their identities) and interpersonal (how people view themselves in relation to others and how they construct relationships) (pp. 8-9).
In the next chapter, she explains the LPM, a combination of the three key assumptions and three key principles about learning characterizing environments that promote self-authorship. The LPM assumes that knowledge is complex and socially constructed, one's identity plays a central role in crafting knowledge claims, and knowledge is mutually constructed via the sharing of expertise and authority. Self-authorship is supported by three key principles: validating learners' capacity as knowledge constructors, situating learning in learners' experiences, and defining learning as mutually constructing meaning. The LPM is a grounded theory offering a flexible approach to promoting the learning goals of cognitive maturity, an integrated identity, mature relationships, and effective citizenship.
Part II: Models of Educational Practice to Promote Self-Authorship contains 6 chapters. In chapter 3, Carolyn Haynes describes the challenges of working with seniors writing theses in Miami University's School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Haynes developed a four-year writing curriculum "that helps student move toward self-authored, interdisciplinary inquiry, and scholarship" (p. 65), a plan founded on the core principles of the LPM.
In chapter 4, Anne Hornak and Anna Ortiz explain the Multicultural Education Framework, how it exemplifies the assumptions and principles of the LPM, and its implementation in a community college course on workplace diversity. The course and outcomes assessments are described in some detail.
An urban leadership internship program in which Miami University students participate in a 10-week, full-time, paid, summer internship is described and evaluated by Katie Egart and Melissa Healy in chapter 5. The educational assumptions of the LPM are inherent in the internship settings. The students' processes of making sense of their experiences "closely resembled steps on a journey to self-authorship" (p. 129).
In chapter 6, Kevin Yonkers Talz describes a program in which students, many from Jesuit colleges and universities, go to El Salvador to work with the poor and engage in academic study and reflection. He explains how the...
