In today's complex workplace, organizations have implemented mentoring programs to serve the needs of employees by providing career development and personal support. Mentoring relationships provide a variety of vocational, psychosocial and role modeling functions to proteges. Previous educational psychology research has examined the role of…

Purpose: This paper aims to argue that substantive changes are required in both curricula and pedagogical practice in higher education institutions to challenge dominant epistemologies and discourses and to unsettle current ways of thinking about, and acting in relation to, the environment. Central to such a shift, it is argued, is the need for…

We synthesize ideas from the foregoing articles in this special issue and from the broader literature on transfer to explore several themes. In many ordinary life circumstances, transfer proceeds easily, but formal learning often shows much less transfer than educators would like, making failure to transfer a focus of investigation. Transfer, like…

In the current socio-political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re-thinking the nature of mind-body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its…

The evolution of human-computer interaction design (HCID) over the last 20 years suggests that there is a growing need for educational scholars to consider new and more applicable theoretical models of interactive product design. The authors suggest that such paradigms would call for an approach that would equip HCID students with a better…

This article is a response to a request to consider the following three questions in relation to the recent history of research into student learning in higher education: What do we know?, What do we need to know?, and What might we do about it? A survey of article titles reporting on research into student learning was carried out in three key…

Feminist scholarship has put forth alternative epistemologies that use experience, intuition, and evaluation as modes of knowing. For these new ideas to emerge in a powerful way, there has to be a locus for their emergence. Women's studies is that place. (Author/RM)

This pilot study tests a new model of undergraduates' information-seeking behavior that incorporates the epistemological development theories of college students and suggests stages of cognitive processes that students undertake as they construct knowledge. Results suggest that students' stages of epistemological development directly impact their…

Surveys modern language and cognitive theories and their implications for the teaching of undergraduate composition. (JL)

Explores a metaphor in the Burkean tradition which brings together two ideas not normally brought together: Plato and social constructivism. Aims to articulate a new place for Plato in conversations about social constructivism and the teaching of writing. (TB)

Argues that the view of writing as a social activity fails to account for individual cognition. Suggests that subjectivity results from a dialectical interplay between consciousness and ideological forces. Calls for further investigation of how context guides cognition and what role cognition plays in the social negotiation of knowledge. (SG)

The author responds to a comparison of her learning conceptions theory with another theory, applauding the effort to link theories of learning and gender. Complexities of relationships among epistemic structures, patterns within structures, and learning activities are highlighted, as well as dilemmas in assessing multiple layers of learning.…

Examines the epistemological beliefs of 100 underprepared college freshmen by asking these students what their beliefs are when they enter college, if these beliefs change after the initial exposure to college, and what structures underlie their beliefs. Claims the beliefs of underprepared students are best represented by two belief dimensions,…

Serves as an introduction to a set of articles on constructing meanings from data. Takes the viewpoint that internal mental processes, epistemological considerations, and pedagogical contexts are deeply connected, each providing structuring forces upon the others. (MM)

In composition studies, negotiation and consensus are threatened by growing epistemological schisms that privilege one way of knowing, one kind of knowledge, even one kind of language over another. Those who assert that one epistemology is more "right" set the stage for paradigmatic conflict. Some theorists predict a dismal resolution of…