AN ASSIGNMENT IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
CREATIVE LEARNING FOR FIRST-YEAR ECONOMICS STUDENTS

Joseph A. Ilacqua and Mary Prescott, Bryant College

The Reflective Judgement Model, constructed by Patricia M. King and Karen Strohm Kitchener, adopts a developmental approach to understanding cognition in adults. The model holds promise as a means of understanding cognitive growth in college students. The model's stages present increasingly complex conceptions of knowledge and outline the strategies that adults rely upon as they face problems with uncertain solutions. King and Kitchener maintain that progress through these cognitive stages can be promoted through exposure to problems with uncertain solutions.

In an effort to test the usefulness of the Reflective Judgement Model in a first-year economics course, we constructed problems with uncertain solutions and provided support for students as they moved through the stages of the model. The model helped us create conditions that would encourage students to develop successful solutions to problems characterized by uncertainty. In addition, the model provided valuable insight as we worked to interpret students' responses to such problems in research assignments.

The lamentable quality of student research papers and projects is a problem familiar to instructors of every discipline. Students, it seems, don't understand what research is about. They just go through the motions, we complain, and rarely present themselves as the future problem-solvers of an increasingly information-driven society. What is more, we often question the appropriateness of our own intellectual and emotional responses when students' work does not meet our expectations. When we closely examine our grievances against student researchers, however, we might be compelled to admit that the list really adds up to one desperate question: Why can't our students conduct research as we do?

Knowledge as a Developmental Process

The obvious answer is that we and our students are in very different circumstances as thinkers, seekers and shapers of knowledge. The specifics of the distinctions have been explored in various models of cognitive development, including a recent contribution, the Reflective Judgment Model constructed by Patricia M. King and Karen Strohm Kitchener. King and Kitchener's years of study revealed that when subjects are asked to draw conclusions about problems with uncertain solutions, "the way people justify their beliefs is related to their assumptions about knowledge" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 5). King and Kitchener maintain that the patterns of difference they observed among their subjects are indicators of developmental stages. They posit that an individual's progress through these stages depends greatly upon that person's learning environment, which includes work with assignments designed to foster reflective thinking (King and Kitchener, 1994, pp. 228-29).

Because King and Kitchener's study captured so beautifully the reasoning we have observed in our students over the years, we found the Reflective Judgment Model compelling. Naturally, we then felt bound to manipulate our students' learning environment so that we could nurture their capacity to confront uncertainty reflectively. At the same time, though, we heeded King and Kitchener's advice to "Show respect for students as people regardless of the developmental level(s) they may be exhibiting" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 231). We wondered whether it was possible to construct for an introductory economics course a research assignment that could (1) recognize the developmental character of student reflection (2) take advantage of the perspective achieved in King and Kitchener's Reflective Judgment Model and (3) change the ways students think about research. If it were possible to apply King and Kitchener's model to an assignment, what, we wondered, might students gain from the application? How much of our approach to research can we hope to transmit to our students? Could our familiarity with the Reflective Judgment Model help us to wean students from relying too strongly upon their own empirical experience and upon authority for their responses to problems characterized by uncertainty?

In our attempt to apply the Reflective Judgment Model we were influenced most strongly by Developing Reflective Judgement, the culmination of King and Kitchener's years of study. Besides knowing King and Kitchener's work, we were also familiar with Barry Kroll's account of his application of the Reflective Judgment Model in a course on the Vietnam War (Kroll, 1992). In addition, Paul F. Haas (1992) has noted the relevance of the Reflective Judgment Model to honors programs and to economics courses in particular.

The Reflective Judgment Model outlines seven stages that describe the strategies that young and mature adults rely upon as they face problems with uncertain solutions (King and Kitchener, 1994, pp. 14-16). The stages present increasingly complex conceptions of knowledge, beginning with a reliance upon empirical experience only, moving through points where knowledge is seen as the domain of authorities and later as idiosyncratic. Finally a person reasoning at King and Kitchener's latest stages will recognize knowledge as constructive. As a means of diminishing students' discomfort with uncertainty and encouraging their intelligent consideration of problems with many potential solutions, King and Kitchener recommend that educators provide for students "many opportunities and incentives to practice looking at issues from a variety of perspectives, paying particular attention to the evidence used and emphasized by each" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 237). Assignments should also be designed so that they "provide encouragement for students to make judgments and to explain what they believe" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 238). Our application, two research assignments for students in an introductory economics course, was designed with these goals in mind.

The Reflective Judgment Model also influenced Barry Kroll's assignments in a course focusing on the Vietnam War and has informed Paul F. Haas's appreciation of the excitement and uneasiness that honors students display when challenged by problems involving uncertainty. Haas identifies grade anxiety as one outcome of assignments that require students to consider critically various economic theories. He also maintains that the Reflective Judgment Model can help make instructors sensitive to the fact that even honors students will not enter courses at some uniform level of cognitive development. Kroll created assignments which led students to consider problems of increasing uncertainty as they studied the events of the war from multiple perspectives. Kroll's assignments were carefully sequenced to familiarize students with uncertainty and to encourage the development of strategies adequate to the task of sorting perspectives and reaching intelligent conclusions. Like Kroll, we recognized the need for sequencing. Our application differs in that we collapsed the sequence into each of two research assignments.

The collaborative nature of our application lends itself to the development of reflective judgment in ways that instructors might not typically anticipate. King and Shuford (1996) make the point that nurturing an appreciation for human differences is a worthy goal for higher education. They recognize a connection between students' abilities to reason reflectively and their capacities to understand different perspectives. King and Shuford argue that the Reflective Judgment Model is relevant for professionals working in the realm of multicultural education. We might adopt their line of reasoning and suggest that collaborative assignments, in which students are confronted with colleagues who display different perspectives, can also provide an appropriate environment for the development of reflective judgment.

This study was conducted in two first-semester classes of Mirco-principles of Economics at a small college whose graduates are most likely to earn the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Most students in these classes were enrolled in a business major, although a few were liberal arts majors. The two groups of students were defined by different levels of experience with higher education and with life in general. One class was composed entirely of young first-year students attending college full time. The other class, which met in the evening, was populated almost entirely by older, part-time students. Students in the evening class had significantly more years of experience in higher education and had completed more college courses. They also held full-time jobs and had substantial work experience.

Research was organized around special class assignments, two of which were collaborative and will be our primary focus in this discussion. These assignments were designed to promote cognitive development by encouraging students to exercise reflective judgment. Early in the semester, students received two handouts: an explanation about "Becoming a Creative Learner" (see Addendum 1 on page 107 and Addendum 2 on page 109) and a guide in the form of a checklist. These handouts focused upon increasingly complex stages of reflective judgment defined by King and Kitchener. The class discussed the handouts, and the students were challenged to become the creative learners that King and Kitchener recognize as operating at Stage 7 of their Reflective Judgment Model. Students were informed that, although it was not expected that everyone would reach Stage 7, each group should make every effort to progress through the stages of thinking presented in the handout. Students were instructed that the checklist would form the basis of assessment and grading for upcoming assignments. The resulting work performed by the students produced data for our consideration, including instructor observations about student performance and a student survey.

The first collaborative assignment (Assignment One) required that students work in groups of five or six to research retail marketing of gasoline. Using economic and business literature and field research, students were instructed to study market structure, practices, strategies, and outcomes. Students were invited to judge the extent to which the marketing of gasoline complied with economic models presented in their textbook. Although at this early point in the semester course coverage had not moved beyond the simple perfect competition model of markets, students were aware that they could consult the text for information about more complex models such as oligopoly and monopolistic competition. In their analysis students were asked to first consider the simple perfect competition model, but they were told that the monopolistic competition model would probably fit better and they should be prepared to modify and reshape models in search of the best fit between theory and market reality. Students were told that their conclusions ought to add to the understanding of the marketplace. In addition to field research, students gathered quantitative and qualitative information from the library and the Worldwide Web, and some students gathered data from their own surveys with varying degrees of success. The assignment concluded with group presentations before the class.

The second collaborative assignment (Assignment Two) offered the opportunity for small groups of students to select the market they wished to explore. Essentially the requirements were the same as they were for Assignment One: students assessed the fit between the retail marketing of pizza or athletic shoes, for instance, and economic models that they considered applicable.

All of the collaborative groups synthesized background information appropriate to the research questions involving the retail marketing of gasoline and other products of their choice. This background material established a qualitative and quantitative overview of the market. Groups also used surveys, interviews, and personal observations to complete their research. Even with limited coverage of market models in the classroom, the research teams showed an inclination to classify the evidence they collected in accordance with different market models. All groups in the evening class and three of six in the day class worked to arrange what they had discovered about market structure in keeping with market models in the text, noting the extent of the fit.

Differences emerged from the approaches and conclusions adopted by the two classes of students. The younger students, those in the day class, collected information from authoritative sources quite competently, but had considerably more difficulty pursuing analysis toward a sophisticated solution to the problems. For Assignment One they were likely to rely upon a simple supply-and-demand model, at times combining it with the monopoly or perfect competition models. These day students included in their presentations simple surveys which were ineffective because they were based on very small samples. On the other hand, students in the evening class were more complex in their approaches and conclusions. For instance, groups in the evening class noted that changing market definition and boundaries gave a better understanding of the observed economic activity. On the first assignment one group noted that gas stations on a turnpike behaved very much like a monopoly, those at highway exit ramps behaved somewhat like monopolies, and those on a street with several gas stations were much more competitive in their prices. In the evening class, students adopted more complex models such as oligopoly and monopolistic competition and referred to the greater detail provided by those models. Even as early as Assignment One, a group in the evening class was able to combine the best fitting attributes of the oligopoly and monopolistic competition models to create a more robust paradigm for what they observed. Groups in the evening class also discussed multi-product competition in their findings. For Assignment, two switching models and combining model attributes became the norm among the evening students, while one or two of the day- student groups adopted these strategies.

Most groups were accomplished at gathering information from authoritative sources such as would be accessed through library research or the Worldwide Web. Students demonstrated that they could become passionate collectors of data. Presentation skills also were strong. Particularly in Assignment One, however, day students tended to present this information without analysis that would lead them toward their own conclusions. Students' apparent reluctance to construct conclusions or knowledge of their own complies with the King and Kitchener's observations about the role of authority in the quest for knowledge. Stage 2 of the Reflective Judgment Model defines the thinking of people who depend upon authority for knowledge. The students in the day class deferred to authority when they adopted established models without tampering with them and refrained from changing market definitions or boundaries. This reluctance to play with the established models would prevent students from synthesizing elements from them to construct solutions to the problem.

Students in the day class also had a hard time moving from a presentation of information to a conclusion about a model that had the strongest logical relationship to that information. These students could not consistently recognize their information as potential evidence that could support the validity of one model or another. It is possible that the students were baffled by the number of choices they had. Most of those who did attempt to link their information to a model selected the supply-and-demand model, perhaps by default because it was popular wisdom, familiar to them even before they enrolled in an economics course, and, therefore, more likely to be "certain." The Reflective Judgment Model defines Stage 3 as the type of thinking that recognizes differences among authorities (such as those who developed the models in the economics text) and concludes that, although a certain resolution to the problem does exist, certainty has yet to be achieved. According to King and Kitchener, the confusion of Stage 3 thinkers "stems from the need to make decisions without absolutely certain knowledge and without understanding that belief and evidence are separate entities that must be coordinated in the process of justifying beliefs. To the outsider, such views often appear arbitrary, unjustified, or unstable" (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 57). Understanding this confusion among Stage 3 thinkers helps explain the students' apparently unjustified decision to rely upon the supply-and-demand model. Behavior that looks like laziness or resistance to the problem has roots in students' capacities as thinkers. If the day students have Stage 3 assumptions about knowledge, those assumptions could also shed light upon the students' reluctance to compile evidence that would thoughtfully support a particular model or a hybrid of models. Their perfunctory work with surveys also suggests that they did not understand that they could gather their own information and evidence (not an authority's), increase its reliability through their own methods, and use this home-grown information in response to uncertainty.

Evening students reacted to the assignment with greater confidence, including a willingness to rearrange the models supplied by authorities in an authoritative textbook and an enthusiasm for creating information of their own by drawing conclusions from well-developed surveys. Their performance reflects the type of thinking defined by Stage 6 of the Reflective Judgment Model.

Stage 6 is characterized by the belief that knowing is a process that requires action on the part of the knower; the spectator view of the knower that characterizes earlier thinking will no longer suffice. There is an initial recognition that ill-structured problems require solutions that must be constructed and that even experts are involved in a similar process (King and Kitchener, 1994, p. 66).

This group of older evening students may have been better prepared for the rigors of this assignment at the outset, because they were more accustomed to handling problems with uncertain answers, such as those that surround major life-shaping decisions. The expectations of the assignment may have appropriately reinforced their predispositions and their more sophisticated thinking patterns. This possibility is not inconsistent with the conclusions King and Shuford describe (1996). Research involving the Reflective Judgment Model has found that education level is a more powerful predictor of a person's stage of development than age is likely to be. On the other hand, adult learners will progress more rapidly than younger students through the reflective judgment stages. Age, experience, environment, and level of education collaborate to influence an individual's stage and rate of development.

It is important to recognize that the efforts of the day students, though revealing their inexperience relative to the evening class, were significant. Besides displaying their talent for gathering information from authorities, students became more competent in Assignment Two, when they used surveys as a means of constructing their own reliable information. Some groups even were able to transform this constructed information into evidence that could support an economic model.

At the end of the semester students responded to a brief questionnaire designed to elicit information about their previous experience with research and their reactions to the assignments they had just completed in their economics course. A number of students took the hint and compared their most recent research assignments with earlier ones. The day students in particular commented that their research assignments in economics were not as well-defined as past assignments had been. One student maintained that "the only reason the assignments seemed difficult is because of the lack of explanation of the assignment." Another student wrote that while the assignments "forced me to look at the whole picture in the real world," she "was never sure how well I was actually doing." Echoing this theme of uncertainty, another student wrote that "There are many different economic theories that could have been used and when it comes to opinion there is no right or wrong answer. Looking up what the experts thought didn't help much. You just had to use what you knew." Students were clearly uncomfortable with the uncertainty of these assignments because, in the words of one student writer from the evening class, they were problems "with no definitive solution."

Some evening students displayed in their survey answers impressive insight into the nature of the assignments and could examine their own reactions to uncertainty. "My increased life experience played a part in my approach and my perspective as well," one student explained. "I was less apt to take information as accurate, and questioned premises . . . more quickly and to a greater degree." Another student, claiming that she has "a love hate relationship with this research," discussed her enjoyment of the challenge and her fear of earning less than an A. She concluded her comments this way: "It gives me confidence that I can learn anything, that I can become an expert and conquer any issue that a teacher will throw at me."

Economic models are instruments that invite reflective judgment, because they occasion application, evaluation, and modification. We hoped through particular assignments involving models to set conditions that would encourage students to display and increase their capacities for reflective judgment. The problems students faced had uncertain solutions. Students could respond to this condition by ignoring the uncertainty, attempting to turn uncertainty into certainty, or creating a solution that could be defended in the face of uncertainty. The assignment revealed distinctions in students' abilities to contend with uncertainty. The older students in the evening class were able to approach the problems of the assignments with greater imagination and were more likely than the younger day-school students to come away from the assignments with a heightened sense of confidence.

Our findings suggest that the thinking of these economics students can be better understood with the help of the Reflective Judgment Model. Furthermore, we conclude that the Reflective Judgment Model can provide the basis for assignments that are specifically tailored to heighten students' capacities for reflection.

Problems with uncertain solutions will always pose special challenges for students. Sharing with them information about the sophisticated paths their thinking can take is instructive and motivating and can help them recognize the kind of reasoning that their college experience should foster. Like Barry Kroll (1992), we are convinced that inquiry is central to undergraduate teaching and that the Reflective Judgment Model offers a framework for structuring that inquiry and for comprehending students' responses to uncertainty. It is, after all, quite possible that college instructors routinely misinterpret student reactions to problems with uncertain solutions. We may attribute less-than-desirable outcomes to low levels of commitment and interest or to resistance against hard work. These problems certainly exist, but the Reflective Judgment Model offers alternative interpretations that often are verified when students have the opportunity to articulate their thoughts about challenging assignments involving uncertainty. Under such circumstances, the model can powerfully facilitate greater communication and understanding between student and instructor.

Making students aware of the stages of the Reflective Judgment Model and explaining these stages as developmental can have significant consequences, as well. Students acquire perspective on an instructor's requirements when those requirements are seen in the context of the Reflective Judgment Model. In addition, students can gain some sense of what a college education can and should offer them. They know that real-world problems are uncertain, and they can gain confidence from the fact that in college they are learning to contend with uncertainty in ways that would have been beyond them as high-school students. The Reflective Judgment Model's developmental emphasis highlights for us ways that the college experience ought to be shaped in the interests of students. In a time when the necessity for a college or university credential is regarded with a mixture of resignation and cynicism, the Reflective Judgment Model can guide us toward meaningful justifications for higher education.

Stages of the Reflective Judgement Model

Stage 1: Knowledge is assumed to exist absolutely and concretely.
Stage 2: Knowledge can be obtained directly through the senses or via authority figures.
Stage 3: Knowledge is assumed to absolutely certain or temporarily uncertain.
Stage 4: Knowledge is uncertain and knowledge claims are idiosyncratic to the individual.
Stage 5: Knowledge is contextual and subjective since it is filtered through a person's perceptions and criteria for judgement.
Stage 6: Knowledge is constructed into individual conclusions about ill-structured problems on the basis of information from a variety of sources.
Stage 7: Knowledge is the outcome of a process of reasonable inquiry in which solutions to ill-structured problems are constructed.

King, Patricia M. and Kitchener, Karen Strohm (1994). Developing Reflective Judgement. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Addendum 1

BECOMING A CREATIVE LEARNER

As a college student you have joined a community of scholars, in which you will develop new ways of learning and solving problems. You may already feel that you approach problems differently than you did just a few years ago. This change may be a consequence of your expanding experience or perhaps you are having to solve different types of problems and advance to new levels of learning.

The college experience will affect the way you approach learning and problem- solving. The reasoning or analytical change that you are undergoing will stand you well in the future. To advance in your profession and to achieve a better quality of life, you will need to be able to learn when there isn't one simple true-false answer and to be good at constructing reasonable solutions to problems that don't have one obvious, simple solution.

As you rise to the higher levels of understanding and solution-finding, you will find that your learning pushes the envelope of our knowledge a little further forward. You will find that your problem-solving yields a net gain in well-being. You will become a creative learner.

Up to now your learning has probably put to use simple ingredients that looked something like this:

PREREFLECTION>>>>
    Sometimes this is just a "gut feeling."
      EMPIRICISM>>>
        Learn by simple or not so simple direct experience: let's see the numbers.
          AUTHORITY>>>
            What are the experts saying? What does the theory tell us?
              OPINION (CONCLUSION.)

Do not stop here. Empirical experience and the answers from authority figures have been a comfortable way to learn the right answer. When you get to college you learn there is not always one simple right answer. At that point there is the risk that you may decide that learning is just a matter of opinion. That's not true. It is time for you to move beyond opinion toward a higher-level consideration of evidence.

Your higher-level learning will use ingredients that look more like this:

EMPIRICISM>>>
    AUTHORITY>>>
      >>>>INTERPRETATION OF EVIDENCE>>>

There is not just one path to the truth. There are different ways of thinking about what knowledge is. Here you are weighing the evidence and concluding which authority gives the best, most compelling answer. You are beginning to create an interpretation and to make critical judgments. What are the important influences? What "other things equal" assumptions should be reexamined?

You are beginning to create an interpretation and to make a critical judgment.

            >>>>>>CONSTRUCTIVE SYNTHESIS

At the highest level of knowing you become a truly creative learner. You act as a catalyst for knowledge, bringing about new ways of looking at information and ideas, forming a new mix from known conclusions. You are acting as a kind of entrepreneurial learner.

Here you must stand back and apply a new objectivity. Being inventive, you take things that don't seem related and see the relationships. The envelope of understanding is pushed forward with the invention of new knowledge.

Please note that the highest level of thinking is not always the best approach to a problem. Sometimes empirical evidence is what is best. Authority often offers the best answer. The two combined can be most useful. However, to reach your full potential, you should always be ready to reach the highest level of knowing.

EMPIRICISM

Learn by simple or not so simple direct experience (let's see the numbers).
What are the facts and figures here?
What has happened?

Quantitative evidence-- the numbers Qualitative evidence-- what people are saying

AUTHORITY
What are the experts saying? What does the theory tell us?

Who is saying what?
Experts
Theory
Frontline
Related happenings and issues

BASIC CONCLUSIONS
What is the obvious, simple, right answer?

INTERPRETATION OF EVIDENCE
Weigh the evidence to see how it seems to balance out. Which authority gives the best, most compelling answer?
Create an interpretation and make critical judgment. What are the important influences? What assumptions should be reexamined? Are there "other things constant" that have not been constant?

Assessment of the Evidence
How do you classify and arrange the different evidence? Group evidence by type and perspective.
What patterns do you see? Points of agreement or disagreement? Broad based or anecdotal?
Select key point(s) of important disagreement.
Who does a better job of presenting an explanation or argument?
What makes it better?
What argument is most compelling?
Why is it most compelling?
What reasoning seems best?
Critical analysis of empirical evidence
Critical analysis of authority

Cross boundaries and look at alternative perspectives.

CONSTRUCTIVE SYNTHESIS
Are you forming a new mix from known conclusions?
Stand back and apply a new objectivity.
Take things that don't seem related and see the relationships.
Bring together different types of sources of knowledge.
Different authorities
Different perspectives
Dropping and eliminating authorities

Integration from other sources

Have you created a new edge of understanding?

References

Haas, Paul F. (1992). Honors programs: applying the Reflective Judgment Model. Liberal Education, 78, 20-23.

King, Patricia M. and Kitchener, Karen Strohm (1994). Developing reflective judgment: Understanding and promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

King, Patricia M. and Shuford, Bettina C. (1996). A multicultural view is a more cognitively complex view. American Behavioral Scientist, 40, 153-164.

Kroll, Barry M. (1992). Reflective inquiry in a college English class. Liberal Education, 78, 10-13.