Learning Partnerships

Theory & models of practice to educate for self-authorship.

Edited by Marcia Baxter Magolda and Patricia M. King

Grounded in developmental theory and neuroscience, Marcia Baxter Magolda and Patricia King in Learning Partnerships address how student learn and how collaboration and partnerships can be designed into higher education classrooms and curricula. Building on the longitudinal (twenty years) research of Baxter-Magolda (Making their own way: Narratives for transforming higher education to promote self-development, 2001; Creating contexts for learning and self-authorship: Constructive-developmental pedagogy, 1999) this book documents examples of the practices advocated including the learning outcomes of this practice. Educating students for twenty-first century learning is made visible as we see examples of challenge and support, of balancing guidance and student responsibility for learning.  Resting on three developmental aims, the authors enable us to see how we can develop environments and support to enable our students to develop their capacities for learning as they learn. 

The three areas toward which all learning can contribute include:

How people view themselves and construct their identities is the intrapersonal dimension of development. (p 9) 

How people view themselves in relation to others and how they construct relationships is the interpersonal dimension of development. Mature relationships are characterized by respect for both one’s own and others’ particular identities and cultures as well as by productive collaboration to negotiate and integrate multiple perspectives and needs. The developmental capacity for interdependence stands at the base of this learning outcome. Interdependence requires openness to other perspectives without being consumed by them. . . Mutuality is possible because of the capacity to explore others’ perspectives as well as one’s own. These interpersonal capacities are central to mature relationships as well as to the other learning outcomes. . . authentic engagement in interdependent relationships requires an integrated identity. It also requires the acceptance of multiple perspectives and the internal belied system possible with cognitive maturity (p 9 - 10) 

Regarding students as on one side of abridge and the educational goal on the other, he  [Robert Kegan] argued that educators must create conditions that simultaneously respect and welcome students’ ways of making meaning on their side of the bridge yet facilitate their journey toward the other end.(p 30)