Thesis advisor: Jane E. Regan / This project explores the concept of identity through the lens of narrativity, a multifaceted concept that describes the way the consciousness makes meaning about life, throughout life. Narrativity depicts meaning-making as both an intensely personal and communal endeavor, epitomized in the way people tell and listen to life stories together. Narrativity is endemic to who we are as humans; yet it dramatically evolves over time. Indeed, it must continuously evolve, so that we might continue to learn, love, and maintain hope amidst the myriad circumstances and exigencies we face. And so when theologians and researchers in the social sciences alike speak of an “identity crisis” at work in the United States today, they are speaking directly to a deficiency in the way people make meaning together—a deficiency that, in the present view, is indelibly linked to the country’s history of hegemonic, colonizing practices of exclusion and domination by those in power. This history, which is also our present, has profoundly shaped the capacities of people from every walk of life to co-create meaning. Understood in this way, identity formation must be seen as a pivotal task for Christian religious educators in the United States. Of course, such educators are typically interested in the formation of a “Christian identity,” and rightly so. But this work makes the case that nurturing narrativity—that is, personhood and personal identity-development—is part and parcel to Christian identity formation, which in turn is inseparable from social and political engagement. In this view, narrativity is actually ingrained into the very pedagogy and praxis of the discipling community that Jesus cultivated through his ministry. Present-day Christian communities should likewise consider themselves as discipling communities, who embody this collective (or communal) identity precisely to the extent that they cultivate narrativity through their missional-pedagogical practices. This will require most US churches to radically re-imagine their structure and aims. The primary tasks of this work are threefold: (1) It defines identity in terms of the psychosocial and spiritual notion of narrativity—and Christian identity in terms of discipleship, which awakens and restores narrativity. These definitions inform a holistic philosophy of narratival meaning-making, and a practical and liberationist approach to theological anthropology, ethics, and ecclesial mission. (2) It attempts to depict narrativity as it evolves through the lifespan, with the help of current research in neuroscience and narrative developmental psychology. This is articulated in terms of a “narratival-developmental” perspective. (3) Guided by these definitions, it suggests ways that churches in the present-day United States might begin to re-orient their missional and teaching practices around these notions of narrativity and narratival-development. Chief among these suggestions are four hypothesized principles for teaching for narrativity, which emerge at project’s end. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

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This research study breaks new ground in exploring differences in how managers’ reflection patterns, do or do not differ across levels of adult development as delineated by Robert Kegan’s Constructive-Developmental Theory. It was a basic qualitative study exploring upper-level managers’ thought processes and patterns of reflection in revisiting and reinterpreting episodes of conflict and change that had emerged in past organizational experiences. The purpose was to discern in what ways, if at all, those processes vary with the manager’s Stage in adult development in Robert Kegan’s adult Constructive-Developmental Theory that stipulates generally what one can reflect upon impartially as object—or what one cannot. Transcripts of fifteen Subject-Object Interviews (SOIs), that were previously conducted for the purpose of examining interviewee reasoning characteristics in relation their stage of adult development and had been professionally scored and certified for interviewee developmental level, provided the primary data for this study. These were sourced as a stratified, purposeful sample from an archival database of 148 interviews conducted by the Center of Creative Leadership between 2007-2009. Five each of the sample of 15 SOIs were selected to meet the criteria for one of three specific Stages or levels of complexity on Kegan’s adult constructive-developmental scale representing the Instrumental to Socializing transition, the fully Socializing equilibrium, and the fully Self-Authoring equilibrium. Without The managers’ individual developmental levels being revealed, the researcher blindly coded the individual SOI transcripts and inductively analyzed and synthesized the data of each to discern patterns in the interviewee’s reflection. In a final step, the known, certified SOI scores were revealed to the researcher, who was then able to explore the relationship between patterns of reflection he had discerned and the individual interviewee’s actual developmental level—in particular to see in what ways, if at all, those processes vary and are engaged in differently—or similarly—depending on the manager’s Order of Mind or Stage of Adult development as delineated by Robert Kegan’s Constructive-Developmental Theory. Mediating consideration of findings, the 5-participants-per-development-level samples were small and results thus not generalizable, and the interviews were conducted for the purpose of investigating reasoning as correlated with adult developmental level. Within that context, relatively consistent differences in patterns of reflection while either recollecting or currently reflecting upon past incidents that involved change and/or conflict were discerned in the following areas: granularity in description of emotion; recollection of inner dialogue; “stepping onto the balcony” for a changed perspective on issues; variations of “stance,” in terms of degree of self-focus rather than a relational or organizational one and demonstration of self-examination—mediated by what was at stake for the interviewee. Depending on developmental stage, current experience or, or recollection of past negative emotion could be either a prompt for self reflection or a barrier to it. Constructive-developmental theory posits different Ways of Knowing in adulthood; each denoting an internally consistent meaning-making system that shapes the ways one makes sense of and interprets experience. An in-depth descriptive analysis of the managers’ reflections within and across cases revealed different orientations toward the process of revisiting and interpreting experience with important variations across participants. To explain those individual variations, constructivedevelopmental theory (Kegan, 1982, 1984) appeared to be a valuable theoretical lens to shed light on some of the differences within and across the three different Ways of Knowing represented in the sample. This study overall supports the growing trend in the learning and development field toward paying more attention to supporting the development of leaders’ inner meaning-making structures as those will influence how they engage in, and take perspective on, their experience—and ultimately help their organizations and their members to learn. The researcher, blinded to adult developmental levels of the managers until after analyzing data for patterns of reflection, found the clusters of personally discerned patterns to closely match those that would to their subsequently revealed, certified developmental levels. This congruence suggests that Subject-Object Interviews may prove an insight-full source for further research on the difficult-to-probe subject of reflection-on-action.

It has been long known that groups of adults learn and enact their learning in certain ways; what is little known is how groups learn and how they develop in cognitive complexity. This dissertation proposes a theory of group cognitive development by arguing that intentional adult groups are complex and dynamic, and that they have the potential to evolve over time. Groups are complex in that they are made up of individuals within different orders of consciousness (Kegan), and they are dynamic in that different orders of consciousness interact and conflict (Lonergan) during the formation and enactment of group vision, values, and procedures. Dynamic complexity theory of group development as it is referred to in this study is grounded in Robert Kegan’s constructive developmental theory and in Bernard Lonergan’s transcendental method. While both Kegan and Lonergan attend to the growth of individuals, their theories are adapted to groups in order to understand the cognitive complexity of groups, intragroup and intergroup conflict, and the mental complexity of leader curriculum. This theory is applied to two case studies, one from antiquity in the case of the first century Corinthian community engaged in conflict with its founder, St. Paul, and in one contemporary study of American Catholic parishioners engaged in contentious dialogue with diocesan leaders from 1994 to 2004. The parish groups experienced a series of dialogues during a ten year period over the issues of parish restructuring and the priest sexual abuse crisis yielding cumulative and progressive changes in perspective-taking, responsibility-taking, and in group capacity to respond to and engage local and institutional authority figures. Group development is observed against a pedagogical backdrop that represents a mismatch between group complexity and leader expectations. In Corinth, Paul’s curriculum was significantly beyond the mental capacity of the community. In the case of Catholic parishioners the curriculum of diocesan leaders was beneath the mental capacities of most of the groups studied. It is proposed that individuals sharing the same order of consciousness, understood as cognitive constituencies, are in a dynamic relationship with other cognitive constituencies in the group that interact within an object-subject dialectic and an agency-communion dialectic. The first describes and explains the evolving cognitive complexity of group knowing, how the group does its knowing, and what it knows when it is doing it (the epistemologies of the group). This dialectic has implications for how intentional groups might be the critical factor for understanding individual growth. The second dialectic describes and explains the changing relationship between group agency, which is enacted either instrumentally or ideologically; and group communion, which is enacted ideationally. The agency-communion dialectic is held in an unstable balance in the knowing, identity, and mission of groups. With implications for the fields of adult education and learning organizations, dynamic complexity theory of group development notes predictable stages of group evolution as each cognitive constituency evolves, and notes the significance of internal and external conflict for exposing the presence of different ways of knowing and for challenging the group toward cognitive growth. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry.

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54-55).

Universities are increasingly applying student developmental theories in a variety of contexts in order to better understand students and to accomplish institutional educational objectives. Robert Kegan's constructive-developmental theory has been utilized in the creation of the Community Standards Model, a program designed for use in university residence halls. The purpose of the Model is to promote student development from Kegan's third order of consciousness, in which student identity is based on a fusion of their peers' expectations and ideas, to the fourth order of consciousness, in which one becomes the author of his or her own values, beliefs, and ideals. The Community Standards Model has been in place in Brigham Young University-Provo residence halls since 2000, yet no studies have been done to determine its effects. The present study examined the development of student self-authored identity as it occurred during the implementation of the Community Standards Model at BYU-Provo. The Student Developmental Task and Lifestyle Inventory was used to evaluate student development across three general developmental tasks. Two populations were sampled: students at BYU-Provo residence halls, where the Model was practiced, and students from BYU-Idaho residence halls, where the Model was not practiced. Students were tested at the beginning and at the end of the 2004-2005 academic school year. Split plot ANOVAs were conducted and no significant interactions were found for any of the three task scores. This study did not detect any significant differential effects with regard to student developmental task achievement that could be attributed to the Community Standards Model. Study results indicated that the Community Standards Model may not fit well at BYU. Many reasons exist as to why the Model may not promote student self-authored identity at BYU, including a mismatch between the Model's emphasis on self-determination of values and ideals and the institution's imposition of certain behavioral and belief standards. However, the Model may have beneficial effects in other areas, such as the development of community. Further research is needed to more fully understand which effects, if any, the Community Standards Model is having at BYU.

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