After reading Marcia Baxter Magolda’s work on Gender-Related Patterns in Knowing, I found that I disagreed with the vast majority of her work. I want to highlight the idea that the development of knowing is a streamlined process from absolute knowing to contextual knowing. Throughout her work, she highlighted two students and their cognitive developmental and their process from being an absolute knower to contextual knowers.
My personal experiences have proven that students don’t start always start as absolute knowers. I am a first generation, Black woman who comes from a lower social economic household. For the majority of my development, I was not an absolute learner. An example of this is applying to college. Throughout that process, I …show more content…
It does not take in account students who hold marginalized identities and how their cognitive development will look drastically different. When we do not challenge theories that put whiteness in the center, we as educators, those of color included, implement those theories as true for all students we serve, causing us to implement Eurocentric, masculinity knowledge (Collins, 2000, p. 188).
I was a college and career counselor at Riverview East Academy, a Cincinnati Public School. I was placed in the school to create a college-going culture and to help seniors apply to college. Now that I have an understanding of cognitive development and with Eurocentric, masculinity of knowledge being the core of k-12 and higher education, I realized I delayed my students’ development and I was not an active learning …show more content…
My students were conditioned and believed that I was the sole provider of knowledge. Now that they are in college they are having a difficult time navigating that environment and locating their sole provider of knowledge. For example, one of my students is at the University of Cincinnati and is having a tough time adjusting. Yes, students naturally have difficulties in their first year of college but I believe her challenges are stemming from being socialized as an absolute knower. I first acknowledged this the day she moved in. She called me the morning of to express how she didn’t want to live on campus anymore because there wasn’t a set time that she could move in. When I asked her what she needed, she responded that she wanted someone from UC to tell her the exact time to move in. The autonomy that she was now given was so uncomfortable for her. When I told her there was no “right” time to move in and the only “right” time there was the time that was convenient for her and her family. I continued to explain that this was the time in her life, where she had to take ownership of her experience and she needed to get used to making decisions on her
My personal experiences have proven that students don’t start always start as absolute knowers. I am a first generation, Black woman who comes from a lower social economic household. For the majority of my development, I was not an absolute learner. An example of this is applying to college. Throughout that process, I …show more content…
It does not take in account students who hold marginalized identities and how their cognitive development will look drastically different. When we do not challenge theories that put whiteness in the center, we as educators, those of color included, implement those theories as true for all students we serve, causing us to implement Eurocentric, masculinity knowledge (Collins, 2000, p. 188).
I was a college and career counselor at Riverview East Academy, a Cincinnati Public School. I was placed in the school to create a college-going culture and to help seniors apply to college. Now that I have an understanding of cognitive development and with Eurocentric, masculinity of knowledge being the core of k-12 and higher education, I realized I delayed my students’ development and I was not an active learning …show more content…
My students were conditioned and believed that I was the sole provider of knowledge. Now that they are in college they are having a difficult time navigating that environment and locating their sole provider of knowledge. For example, one of my students is at the University of Cincinnati and is having a tough time adjusting. Yes, students naturally have difficulties in their first year of college but I believe her challenges are stemming from being socialized as an absolute knower. I first acknowledged this the day she moved in. She called me the morning of to express how she didn’t want to live on campus anymore because there wasn’t a set time that she could move in. When I asked her what she needed, she responded that she wanted someone from UC to tell her the exact time to move in. The autonomy that she was now given was so uncomfortable for her. When I told her there was no “right” time to move in and the only “right” time there was the time that was convenient for her and her family. I continued to explain that this was the time in her life, where she had to take ownership of her experience and she needed to get used to making decisions on her