Faculty Members' Assumptions about College Students' Reasoning.

This paper reports on a study investigating the beliefs of general education faculty, including their assumptions about "typical" undergraduates' approaches to reasoning. The article maintains that in studies designed to identify and examine variables affecting complex cognitive tasks, researchers have discovered that performance often depends on individual epistemological beliefs. In addition a growing consensus is reported that adult reasoning behavior is affected by cognitive developmental patterns that evolve beyond adolescence. The Reflective Judgment Model served as the basis for the study. Seven faculty members completed a questionnaire on courses and students taught, focus of teaching and prior experience as well as the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. The professors were then interviewed by a graduate student regarding their course goals, teaching and assessment methods and kinds of assignments given to students and given a task involving judging reflective thinking levels of typical responses to a problem. The study found that, in general, professors assumed that their students possess epistemic beliefs consistent with the earliest levels of reflective judgment, whereas they view their own approach to reasoning as consistent with the very highest stages. Appendices provide more detail on the measures used and a graphical representation of the results. (Contains 23 references.) (CK)