Cognitive Developmental Approach
Running Head: A COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO ADULT LEARNING
A Cognitive Developmental Approach
to Adult Learning
Ray S. Jones
2000
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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 meaningmaking 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
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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
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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 socialpsychological-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.
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


2
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.
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
2
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
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2
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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2
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